Like many West Virginians, much of my early childhood was spent in a house without air conditioning. My father built our house — a two-story block structure with garages on the first level and the living quarters on the second.
Of course, heat rises and with the sun beating down on the tin roof, our apartment as we called it, was like an oven on sizzling summer days and nights.
We had one window fan in the living room. It was a beast of a machine that, when running on high, sounded like an airplane. I had trouble understanding why it blew air out instead of in, but my parents assured me that it was better to work as an exhaust fan rather than just blow in more hot air.
And it did help … some. We were reasonably comfortably, I suppose, because we did not know any better.
I remember visiting a friend whose family had just built a new house and noticing how uncommonly cool it was. They had something called “central air.” Magical, but certainly not something our family could afford.
Then one summer, as the days got longer, the temperature got even hotter. Our mighty exhaust fan roared, but there was only so much it could do. Faced with the prospect of sweltering days and sweat-soaked nights, my parents broke down and bought a window air conditioner.
It was a putty brown Hotpoint about the size of a small oven. My father thanked the tired exhaust fan for its dedicated service and wedged the air conditioner into the same window. He plugged it in, turned it on and it roared to life.
Within seconds, wonderfully dry chilled air was pouring out of the top vent. It had different settings for fan or AC, high, medium or low, but that summer we pushed the button for “high” and there it stayed.
We lived on a farm, so there was lots of work outside in the hot sun. It was such a joy to come in the house, soaked with sweat, and stand in front of the air conditioner, letting the cool dry air wash over us.
Of course, it was just a room air conditioner, but my mother got the idea of setting up box fans strategically around the house to try to circulate the air. If no one interfered with her ventilation plan, the bedrooms would be tolerable by bedtime.
A few years later, we left the farm and moved to town. The air conditioner, now an integral part of the family, came with us and took its rightful place in the dining room of our new home, which also did not have central air.
During the heat of the summer, the only time my mother would turn the AC off was for a few minutes at dinnertime so we could hear each other talk. But immediately after dinner, the ol’ boy was back on high, cranking out waves of cold air.
I don’t know when that air conditioner gave out, but it was long after I moved away. My parents replaced it with a smaller unit and added a couple other window units around the house. The old Hotpoint had given all, and I suppose was unceremoniously discarded along with broken stoves and faulty refrigerators.
I can’t help thinking it deserved better.
Today, I have central air conditioning everywhere — at home, at work, in my car. I enjoy the cool, dry air, but there is something very impersonal about it. You don’t see the air being chilled and are barely aware of the sound of air coming through a vent. I take it for granted.
I’m not as grateful for the air conditioning now as I was back then. But sometimes, on scorching summer days, I think about how that Hotpoint battled against the heat and humidity and gave the grateful Kercheval family cooling relief.
