This morning we finally got the air conditioning going at our apartment here in Boston. One window unit is next to my desk here in my attic office, which had been an oven up until today. We had another one put in at the far end of the attic as well, so that space can now serve as a useful guest room. The third one went in the “master” bedroom (which isn’t much bigger than a closet). This means I might be able to sleep under covers tonight, rather than laying spread out in the path of a window fan.
The rest of the house will continue to suffer, with summer misery lightened by cheap window fans in every room.
It’s amazing to me that most of my life has been lived without much benefit of AC. We didn’t have it in any of the three houses where I grew up in New Jersey. (Well, my parents put in a unit for the dining room about the time I was shipped off to high school. Before that the home was cooled by an exhaust fan.) We didn’t have it in any of the public schools I attended, or in the high school where I lived for three years. We didn’t have it in my college dorm, or in most of the classrooms. Or in any of the places I lived off-campus. This was in Greensboro, NC, where it gets plenty hot in up to four seasons of the year.
I didn’t have AC that worked in any of the cars I drove, until I finally bought the first and only new car I ever had: a 1985 Camry.
With the single exception of a double-wide back in the woods that we lived in for a year north of Chapel Hill, there was no AC worthy of the label at any of the houses and appartments I occupied during my 20 years in North Carolina. Nor in the additional 5 years I spent in New Jersey before moving south.
Among all the houses I’ve occupied in California, I think only one had AC that was worth a damn. Our house in Santa Barbara has none and doesn’t need any. The climate there does the job.
Anyway, I’m enjoying the luxury, even if it’s noisy and environmentally unfriendly. (Though I’m told that window units are more efficient than central ones. We can always use good rationalizations.)
