I didn’t live in a house with AC until I was fifteen years old 1985. For the most part, we just got through the summers by saying “ehh” and doing what we could to stay cool. For most of the summers, I just lived in the city swimming pool. At nights we just sweated in front of fans.
We did have an old fashioned ice box in the garage that was rarely used.
I heard that the southwest wasn’t very populated until the appearance of air conditioning in the 50s and 60s. Does anyone know if that is true?
If so, people dealt with it by not living there.
My ancestors wintered in a cave in Florida. During the summer they moved north to a cave in the Catskills.
Heck, the house I live in now doesn’t have air conditioning. On hot days we stay downstairs and use fans.
They sound like they belonged to some… tribe perhaps?
My people belonged to a similar tribe.
I went to college in Louisiana in the 1950s, there was no AC in any building. Buildings were designed to be usable without being constructed around the AC. Trees were left in place to shade the grounds. Sleeping in the dorms was always comfortable. Even cars had no AC yet, you open the windows and let the air blow through. You dress airy and move slowly. ROTC drill on the parade grounds 1-2pm, in uniform, you just do it.
I lived in Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee through the summers into the 60s, never had AC in my house or car or workplace. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, you just lived in it. Electric fans are helpful. Still you’d hear people fanning themselves saying “Ahd lahk to dahd”. The heat was more of a useful excuse for inactivity, than a troublesome cause of it. I loved the South, loud with night sounds, pungent with blossoms. That’s all gone now.
I’ve been in the Philippines for a year, coldest overnight low has been 77 I think. No AC, but with fans, I never feel uncomfortable in the house, where it’s always 80+. Few people have AC, many who do hate to use it, they don’t like the smell of the AC air.
My ancestors handled it by living north of St. Petersburg. The one in Russia, not the one in Florida.
The house I grew up in didn’t have air conditioning. My parents had a large wall unit in their bedroom, but rarely ran it, or only ran the fan. We all used fans and if it was so bad that my mom finally cracked and turned it on, I remember crashing on their bedroom floor. That is a trait I did not inherit from my mom. We have central air, and in the summer it’s usually always on I cannot stand being too warm.
On my mother’s side, one great-grandfather had two houses in the same town. The summer house was in a modestly cooler location across the road from a tidal river not far from a saltwater bay. That house had big screen windows and the kitchen was in a separate small building. The winter house was a few miles inland with small windows and had the kitchen inside the house.
On my father’s side, my grandfather–when he could afford it–rented a lake cottage for the family, usually within 50 miles of wherever they were living at the time. The wife and kids stayed at the lake but he often had to stay at home and work except on weekends.
My own father was so cheap he would only air-condition one room of the house, and then only for the ragweed season (mid-August to late September). We lived in a brick house that soaked up the sun’s heat during the day and never properly cooled off at night. He was even opposed to using fans because he thought they used too much electricity. Yes, it was miserable. We kids often slept in a tent in the back yard on the worst nights.
By using fans and trying not to drown at Horseneck Beach.
What is known about the tribe shows they were a highly ritualistic society with a number practices based on food and telling jokes.
Air circulation. Most of our houses (the one I live in now is circa 1914) actually do pretty well as you have lots of doors and few “blank walls”. You can make each floor almost one large room and take advantage of any breeze or night-time cooling you get. My Dad, in our 1950 vintage cheese-box we lived in when I was older, could put one fan on each floor drawing air from the basement and knock even 95+ days down to a not-bad level.
Hot showers before going to bed were another trick we used. I am still surprised how cool 90 felt after getting out of a steaming shower.
Ancestors??? My childhood home didn’t have a/c. What we did have was a fan in the dining room that my mom would turn on at bedtime, blowing out. We would open the bedroom windows about 3-4" and the cooler night air would be drawn in. If it was really hot, I’d take a damp washcloth to bed and periodically wipe myself down.
You don’t miss what you’ve never had.
My husband’s parents had an attic fan. They were very late to air conditioning in their neighborhood. I think he was well into highschool before they got it.
Only by comparison to today’s population figures.
Mexico, for instance, had more than 32 million people in 1955. That’s more than today’s population of Florida, Texas, Arizona, etc.
I can guarantee that no more than a very tiny handful had AC. And yet somehow they survived.
I guess that I (and some others) are going to have to keep repeating this until we’re blue in the face–IT’S THE ARCHITECTURE!
I grew up without air conditioning until I was 12 (1991). We spent the summer at the outdoor pool and had a large willow tree in the front yard that shaded the whole yard and the house.
When I went the band camp from 92-96, our dorms (at Slippery Rock U in Pennsylvania) didn’t have air conditioning. What a crock of shit, especially after marching all day. We took 3 showers a day and everyone had to bring their own box fan (one inside the room and one pointing out the window).
When I bought my house I thought I could live without air conditioning. I could not. Working from home all day without AC is way different than being at the pool all day. I had it installed by July.
I was born in 1961. The house I grew up in (in Michigan) was built in 1891. We didn’t have air conditioning until we moved to Minneapolis in 1976. We had radiator heat for the winter and high ceilings, thick walls, window shades and windows that open in the summer. You’d cool the house down at night, then close it up and draw the shades during the day.
My current house was built in 1849. I have one window air conditioner, in my bedroom. I do much the same things we did when I was a kid.
StG
It’s absolutely true. Here’s a handy chart that shows the population by state on graphs.
Sure, there were a lot of factors involved in post-WW2 population patterns – Interstate highways, the growth of the petroleum industry, yadda yadda. But Maricopa County, Arizona doubled in population between 1950 and 1960, and that wouldn’t have happened without A/C.
There are huts like the second house, all over the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other Pacific and East Asian countries.
I’ve rarely lived in houses with air-con despite living in a region that can see summer temps top 35C for days on end. I don’t even recall having a fan as a kid! My ancestors would have been similarly deprived.
Architecture in the Australian outback incorporated large verandahs right around the house that would allow the winter sun in and keep the scorching summer sun OUT. Often these verandahs were enclosed, and provided a cooler place to sleep once the sun had set. One renowned town, Coober Pedy, is famous for ‘dugouts’ and while they originally were just a space fashioned after an opal mine had been exhausted, nowadays they are quite spacious and luxurious with all the mod cons.