August 1, 2023
Just Saying…
The Dog Days of Summer – My A/C-free Life
By Q.C. Jones
I feel as though I am one of the last people on the planet who can claim to have lived in an air-conditioner-free world. Growing up, I had a short taste of the air-conditioned lifestyle. During portions of my childhood my family had a working A/C unit; most of the time we did not. Our first A/C made a cameo appearance during my Texas Gulf Coast years. The heat and humidity near Galveston Bay went well past the “oppressive” mark on the human suffering scale.
Sometime late into the Eisenhower Administration, my parents could take the heat no more. They decided to invest in a window unit for our house. Even though my life experience spanned only five years, I can still recall the day my dad arrived home with a monstrous window unit ready to add a new dimension of luxury to our lives. But the joy of victory soon turned into the agony of defeat. When all the fiddling with wooden supports, plastic covers, and window sashes was complete, the A/C plug didn’t fit in the receptacle. Back in those days, window Air-Conditioners ran on 220 Volt power. This meant another grueling day of heat and humidity while we waited for our neighbor “Bunky” to run a special plug to the wall near the A/C.
All the while the hot Texas sun and Gulf Coast humidity beat down. I was mostly oblivious to the effects of heat and humidity, but I could sense a growing tension of my parents. Before the idea of an air unit, our family lived with an attic fan. In south Texas, these were standard equipment.
I still remember this giant fan well. A few months before ours broke down and my dad climbed into the attic of our house to have a look at it. I could see him up in the attic and hear him fumbling around with tools attempting to make a repair. He shouted down for me to flip on the switch and immediately following I could hear a howl.
I honestly cannot remember my dad ever swearing. I saw him cut off the tip of a finger, get third-degree burns from a welder, and fall off the roof without a single curse, but he had a way of letting us know he was in pain. The howl he let out after the attic fan episode was probably equivalent to a half-hour string of profanity from your Pal QC Jones who occasionally cusses like a maritime professional. His finger was nicked by the fan. Ouch.
Now back to the A/C story already in progress.
Bunky came to the rescue. I don’t remember much about Bunky but he was a genuine Cajun from the Louisiana Bayou. He and his wife moved from the swamps to the Texas Coast. When I first heard that term, I didn’t really know what it meant but supposed it equated to eating just about anything who crawled, swam, or slithered through the underbrush. He had electrician skills and was going to give us the blessedly cool air of our dreams. During the evening hours he and my dad managed to connect the proper electrical plug for the big Air Conditioner.
Once plugged in, the big unit made a few clunking sounds, a fan began to whirl, and deliciously cool air flowed into my parents bedroom. The family huddled in front of the outlet and soaked up the frigid air. Mom hustled the entire family out of the room and shut the door. We immediately congregated on our little back stoop; Bunky, dad, all the kids. The sun was falling but the earth was still simmering with heat. Humidity flowed from the rice paddies directly behind our neighborhood. The air was thick.
Bunky and my dad were still dripping with the sweat generated from a couple of hours of hard work and from crawling around in the airless attic. It was at this very point in time that Bunky said, “These are the dog days of summer.” I had never heard the term, and the words sparked my imagination and curiosity.
I summoned up the courage to ask, “Mr. Bunky, what happens to the dogs during these days.” On a side note, it was Texas, and it was 1959. We said sir, ma’am, and even our closest family friends were referred to Mister and Misses. Even though the young QC has never suffered from either shyness or false modesty, this was kind of a nervy question. I wasn’t sure if I would get an answer, a laugh, or feel the sting of my dad’s massively powerful paw to my five-year-old buttocks. But I got an answer.
Bunky said, “The dog days of summer are the hottest, meanest days mother nature can throw our way. Even the heartiest hound will crawl under the porch and wait for the weather to break.”
Speaking of weather, and breaking, a few weeks later Hurricane Debra hit Galveston. All the wind and water broke our Air Conditioner. Dog-gone, we were living A/C-free again.
Just Saying…
