Slide the bottom sash up to let the breeze in … slide the upper sash down to let the hot air out … easy peasy …
Nope, never have had A/C in all of my adult life … complete waste of money … but then in Western Oregon we have very low humidity during “hot” weather (if you call 90ºF hot) … just spraying yourself down with a garden hose cools you more than enough …
So I once asked some Las Vegas roofers how they handled the summer heat and they said drink plenty of water … and if you ever feel thirsty up there, it’s too late, get down, cool off and treat for heat stroke …
Transoms were common for the same purpose. They allowed heat to escape up high and a cross breeze where there were only windows on one wall.
Before we got some window air conditioners in the 60s I never noticed the heat that much. Get hot out in the sun and go into some shade. Inside turn on a fan. I wouldn’t want to live without it now.
When I was a kid, air-conditioning was considered an extravagance.
One summer my dad decided to splurge and bought a big window air conditioner. It was heaven! We all slept on the floor in the dining room.
About a week later my mom was listening to talk radio. She heard a story about a kid with cancer who could not be discharged from the hospital due to the heat. His parents could not afford an air conditioner. My mom called the station and was put in touch with the family. They found someone with a truck, came over and got our unit.
The radio station did a feel-good story about the kid being able to go home with his family. It made us a little less miserable. But the kid died at home less than a week later. We figured the family would return the air conditioner eventually, but they never did. My childhood air conditioning experience was limited to one week. My dad never purchased another unit until the kids were grown and gone.
(When I’ve mentioned this to people, I always end with, “and that’s why I hate kids with cancer”.)
I grew up without air conditioning until I moved out of my parents’ place, because they never got air conditioning. The house was very old, had low ceilings and thick stone walls, and my parents had no concept of how to deal with this house despite my father living in it his entire life. So the windows past a certain point in spring were always open all the way until fall, all day and night unless the rain was coming in. So there wasn’t any “keep the windows closed during the day to keep the heat out” common sense. There was no insulation, either. The attic was always blazing hot, and I couldn’t imagine how my half-brothers ever slept up there (it’s no wonder they left for their mom’s place quickly). There was no door to the cellar inside the building, nothing was built for a cross breeze, no window awnings or porches, no pool or lake or creek to get into. And it was always very humid so no evaporative cooling would work. In the end, the house was always hotter inside than it was outside, day and night. And it was torture. We each had a single fan in our bedrooms, which felt like it did next to nothing. I would lay in bed at night with the fan at full blast, wearing nothing, without a sheet on me, sweating and sweating and unable to fall asleep. It drove me nuts with exhaustion. I hated it. I hated it so much. In the winter, my radiator was broken and they never believed me to fix it (despite walking in in the morning going, “oh, it’s so cold in here!”), so it was always extremely cold as well. Living in that house was awful and I’m glad I’ll never have to live like that again because I’ll be damn sure I can afford proper heating and cooling for my own house.
TL;DR my parents had no concept of how to deal with the heat, everything was awful, thanks
I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania in the eighties and early nineties. We lived in a small twin house until I was nine, then moved into a bigger house. Neither house had central air conditioning. It seemed like all the other kids’ houses had central air conditioning. When I would go over to their houses in the summertime, it was almost miraculous! You could just go inside and be comfortable; the sense of refreshment was sublime! I was insanely envious. I would periodically ask my parents if we could get central air conditioning, but the answer was always “we can’t afford it.” Our house had radiator heat, no ductwork, so installing central air wouldn’t even have been possible without majorly gutting the house. We had a couple of old window units lying around, but we were seldom allowed to use those either, because we couldn’t afford the electric bill. Once in a great while, we were allowed one night of putting one into either my or my brother’s room, and then both sleeping in the same room.
Maybe I was a petulant kid, but this lack of air conditioning was one of many sources of resentment toward my parents I nursed over raising me in a working-class family surrounded by professional-class families. I went and got a professional job, such that my monthly electric bill is pocket change to me, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still occasionally hear my air conditioning click on and think “take that, Dad!”
Our grandmothers may be related. She heard one of those stories about people longing for the good ol’ days when you’d drink lemonade on the porch to cool off. “Say, I’ll bet you those people were never the ones who were in the kitchen slicing lemons and boiling sugar water or washing the dishes later!” When she was a teenager, she was at her boyfriend’s house and his mother decided they should have ice cream to cool off. And that David and Geneva could spend some time together by being the ones who stayed in the kitchen and cranked the machine until it was made. Grandmom evidently decided this relationship would never work out. She opened a can of sauerkraut, dumped it in the mix, and went home.
I remember being miserable in the heat. Even after we had central air, my mother would turn it off at night. I cannot sleep if I’m too hot. I don’t think i got a decent night’s sleep until I moved into the firm’s at collage.
Our house never had an AC system, just a Room AC unit in my parent’s bedroom. We sleep upstairs; there was an exhaust fan that pushed out the heat. The house was on the water and well shaded and most nights it’d cool down to comfortable levels.
Elsewhere, I’d just use an electric fan. I didn’t get AC until I was out of college and on my own.
I can’t remember the exact quote but doesn’t Harper Lee in one of the early chapters of Mockingbird have a lovely description of her childhood hot summers and how the adults dealt with it?