Unconditional Air.

    Ahh...  Yes.  It's another delightful day here in the Land of Cheese.  The weather is destined to be hot and humid today, and since the wind is belching out of the west, this is one of those rare occasions where the phrase "cooler near the lake" is  nothing but a meaningless collection of words.  So, it's finally time to flick the little switch on the thermostat from "heat" to "cool" and put my archaic AC unit through its paces.  It struggles so.

    For some reason, I am reminded of my great aunt who, during her lifetime, could never quite grasp the concept of air-conditioning.  To her, though it was a nice thing to have on a hot summer day, it was also a potential silent killer.  Many times, I've walked into her house to find myself asking, "Why are your windows open when the AC is running?"
    "I'll be damned if I'm going to let that little gizmo suck all the air out of the house," she would say with a wild wave of her arms.   "I don't want to suffocate."

    And that's the way it was.  The only window that was even close to closed in her house was the window holding the pale-green General Electric air-conditioner tightly in place.  The window beside it, and pretty much every other window in her house save for the one in her bathroom that she'd nailed shut to keep the immigrants out, was wide open letting in the hot city wind of summer.  If things got too hot in the house, the only option was to hang your head over the poor, struggling, overworked appliance that sat churning out cold air while begging for this madness to end.
   
    And, there I stood with my face plastered to the sad little machine to the point that I would spend the rest of the day with the letters "GE" imprinted in reverse on my forehead. 

    Those were some weird summers. 

-DP