Growing up in Wichita, Central Air was a necessity. The summers are long and terrible-- the heat is 80+ from April through October (I recall more than one Halloween wearing shorts and a t-shirt to school). It is not uncommon to go directly from the air conditioned house, to the air conditioned car, to air conditioned work. Public schools have half days the first week of school because the heat is so bad. Actual contact with Nature is driving the car to the neighborhood pool and spending the afternoon swimming (resultant in first day of school green hair each September, but that's another story). Henry Miller titled his 1945 critique of American culture, "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare."
"Nowhere else in the world," Miller wrote of the United States, "is the divorce between man and nature so complete."**
Before coming to college in Boston, my cousin told me not to bother packing t shirts-- it would never be warm enough in my 9 months academic year to wear them. She was correct, and I realized also the Central Air for people's homes was practically non-existent. Air conditioning units are the prefered means of keeping cool, when needed. In fact, many people get by with a window or stand alone fan.
The temperature hit near 100 this past weekend and I would have suffered through sans fan or AC, but for an inheritance from G-- his AC window unit to use while he travels for the next month. I generally prefer to keep my windows open, enjoy the cool night breeze and be awakened by the sounds of birds and garbage trucks-- idyllic morning sounds. But the past several nights I have guiltilly enjoyed the AC, being able to snuggle under the blankets and wake up refreshed-- not sweaty and sticky.
I'd like to believe that once G leaves on Friday, I'll revert back to my normally conservative persona and open the windows...but sometimes it's nice to be spoiled.
** Thanks to the New York Time's story Shivering for Luxury, printed Sunday June 26.
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2 comments:
I doubt if you not going use the AC, epically on those 90 degrees days!
During my visit to a rice plantation house on the Georgia coast, the philosophical guide suggested that without air conditioning no one would be living in southern Florida - it's no accident that the state capital is Talahashee in the far north east of the state where at least summer temperatures were bearable in the old days.
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