What's cool? AC, that's what!
Horses and cattle sweat, men perspire, and women glow, goes the old saying, as I recall.
Whatever.
Anyway, I love air conditioning. I guess it's my favorite invention of the 20th century, at least next to penicillin and some of those other great medical advancements and discoveries.
Above even the automobile for me, although a part of the best of all possible worlds is having a car with air conditioning (as I hope most Kansans do, unless they're very "cool-blooded").
The computer? Naaah. Television? No.
Perhaps if I lived in Michigan or Minnesota or some other "northern" state, I wouldn't be such a devotee of AC.
But I live in hot, dusty, sweaty Kansas. I must love it; I continue to live here. But I do not always love the summer weather.
My family, living at Ransom, on the Dutch Flats of northern Ness County, hot and dusty in the summer, got its first real air conditioner, a Carrier half-ton window unit, in the summer of 1954.
Ah, blessed event! (I know, that's customarily reserved for the birth of a child, but
No more lying in a pool of, yes, sweat, unable to sleep nights. No more fogged-up glasses from the humidity. No more shirt-sticking-to-the-chairback. No more "this air is too wet to breathe."
Before that, we had, like most folks, a "window cooler," a fan with water being "injected" behind it, also in the window, of course.
It helped, but it was no Carrier, to paraphrase Sen. Lloyd Bentsen's remark to Sen. Dan Quayle during that vice-presidential candidates' debate 15 years ago.
Cool, Daddio! Thank ya, Mr. Carrier.
— JERRY BUXTON
