Window Fan Days

The temperature has been in the 90s all week in Columbus, so that walking around outside feels like taking a stroll in a heated oven. The contrast between the indoor and the outdoor makes you appreciate something we take for granted these days: the sweet coolness of air-conditioning comfort in your home or in any public place.

If you grew up in the era before air conditioning became standard, though, you really never quite forget what it’s like to be in a house that doesn’t have it. The first two houses I remember did not have air conditioning, and when a heat wave hit and the temperature climbed up to the 90s there really wasn’t much you could do about it. Every window in the house was thrown open in hopes of catching a breath of a cooling breeze, but there usually weren’t many cooling breezes to be had. Because the house became a hot box, child and parent alike stayed outside as much as possible and welcomed the drop of a degree or two when twilight fell and the lightning bugs came out.

When bed time finally came, you entered the window fan zone. Dad and Mom would set up window fans in the bedrooms where they stayed for the entire summer, and you adjusted to sleeping to the thrum of a rotating fan. UJ and I were assigned a blue metal box fan, like the one shown above, for the window to our room. It didn’t anything to actually cool the air, but did move it around, so instead of sweltering in a room with no air movement at all you slept in a room where hot air blasts circulated. You’d wake up bathed in sweat either way.

The fan had adjustable settings, and if you put the rotation on maximum the fan blades would rattle and become much louder, so you had to consider the combination of noise and air movement in determining the fan’s setting. UJ and I typically reserved the “maximum” button for when we wanted to project our voices through the fan and hear the whirr of the blades chop our words up and make them sound funny.

I remember those days, but I don’t miss them. People who talk about how great the old days were often forget the little things–like trying, without success, to stay cool on ungodly hot summer days. Air conditioning has been a hugely positive game changer in allowing people to get a good night’s sleep during the summer months. On hot days like those we’ve had recently, we remember, and we thank our lucky stars that AC was invented.