My Life in Air Conditioning

Most people my age probably remember a time before air conditioning.  Before central air, anyway.  My first  memories of air conditioning are all tangled up with ancient resentments. We lived in an attached house on a tree-lined street in Queens, but the house belonged to my grandmother.  The first of her two children had gotten married and brought their spouses home to live under their parents' roof for a couple of years, before buying a house a few blocks away, Italian-style, and producing grandchildren.  My father, the baby, did the first part, but some time between bringing his bride home and getting me started, his father died. 

That may or may not have made the difference.  I arrived, named for that grandfather. A few years later my sister arrived. We never moved out till we left home.  

The first air conditioner to move in went into my grandmother’s bedroom, which, being largest and in the back, with a double window onto the back yard, was the most comfortable to start with.  Huge, it went into a sleeve they built into the back wall. Her children from the other two houses often visited her there, if not downstairs, and that’s where she used to watch Divorce Court, the Defenders, and Queen for a Day, on the second TV. 

Of course, being a lot older than anyone else, my grandmother probably had more need of an air conditioner than the rest of us, but I didn’t quite see it that way.  For me, it was just one more proof of our relative unimportance to my father.  On hot nights my sister and I sweltered in a room not much larger than our bunk bed, while a small metal fan clanked back and forth.  With our window and the bathroom window open in the back, we theoretically had what my parents called “cross ventilation.”  They also must have relied on fans in the second bedroom, without cross ventilation.

But when it was miserable enough, I could also sleep on a mattress on the floor in my grandmother’s room, between her bedframe on one side and the bullion fringe of her grey upholstered chair on the other. Heaven! Comfort! Crisp, non-clinging sheets! And a nice even thrum of the AC to drown out any potential snores.  I think I was the only one to take this option.  I don’t recall if resentment kept me from sleeping there more often, at the time, or to whom I might have directed it.  I do remember the blessed relief of entering that room. And the draining heat of leaving it.

My sister and I eventually moved into the cooler basement room, half underground, after the tenant moved out. My grandmother died a few years after that. Her bedroom furniture lay in state for a year or so until my aunt finally took it, and my parents moved in. And some time before any of these things happened, they put a sleeve in the dining room back wall and air conditioned the downstairs.

The first house my husband and I bought in NJ, back in 1983, had an in-wall unit labelled "Vornado." This was a brand once sold by Two Guys, a department store, like Bambergers, that my NJ aunts shopped in while my New Yorker mom shopped at Macy's and Alexanders. I felt more rooted to New Jersey by virtue of that old air conditioner, which for many years after Two Guys had closed still did an ok job of cooling down the living and dining room and kitchen. It didn't reach the bedrooms too well, though.  We had a separate window unit for our bedroom. Also its switch no longer worked; we operated it through the circuit breaker downstairs.

Central air was a must-have for our second house.  Relief comes now from the humming outdoor enclosure and an octopus-like contraption in the attic whose tentacles reach the vents in every ceiling. Sanctuary, the moment you step in from the garage or the front door. The freedom to move from room to room in consistent comfort.  But wasteful; I wish I could seal off an unused bedroom or at least have two-zone control. We close off the laundry room and half bath just so we can visit the true temperature from inside and appreciate the difference. And as soon as the heat wave relents, we open the windows and turn on the paddle fans.