My Air Conditioner Started All This

So, we got this new air conditioner. It came with a fancy schmancy glow-in-the-dark-for-three-seconds touch-pad thermostat that I don't know how to use. You can set this bad boy for all sorts of usage patterns and such.

Well, the guy that showed us how to use this bad boy said that you can set it to raise the temperature three degrees at like 2AM and since your body is in REM sleep it won't notice and you'll save $50 a year or something like that. Well, I think I'm noticing. At least that's what I'm telling myself as I wake up more at night since I'm in my 40's.

Anyway, I got to thinking about what people did before air conditioners. I've lived in Southern climates my entire life and have always had air conditioners. In Texas in the summer, we pretty much move from refrigerated boxes to another refrigerated box. Home-car-work-lunch-work-home. All cool. Then we complain how hot it is.

It reminded me of the time I had to interview somebody who lived through the Depression for a high school history paper. I chose my grandmother...who made it seem very normal in how they were resourceful. She said that her neighbors raised rabbits for meat. Her job involved growing some beans and peas in her garden. Others grew other fruits and vegetables. They all shared what they had. At various times somebody would get a job and they'd help out those that didn't have one. Then the tables reversed.

She must've thought I was bored with all that because she told me the person I should've been interviewing was her brother-in-law Irl. Apparently, he ran moonshine throughout East Alabama and Western Georgia and ran a betting book on the side. He told me the Depression was the best time in his life.

But that Depression-like resourcefulness is what I began thinking about today.

It reminded me of our visit to the Hopi Nation years ago. The boys of the village all went down this very steep hill to bring water to the village in buckets on their shoulders. They ran the whole way there and came back as fast as they could. (Apparently, the U.S. Olympic team wants the majority of these boys to run marathons because they do the task in world-class marathon times with water on their shoulders. One problem: The Hopi can't leave the reservation unless they renounce their Hopi tribe. Getting back in is brutal, so they don't.) The women's bodies were hairless despite the lack of Gillette being there...apparently they have this deal involving infant girls where they rub ash on them for 30 days after they're born, which kills all the hair follicles. They can grow corn in three inches of soil (apparently, Israel and other nations come to study it and can't replicate it).

Resourcefulness. It was cool to hear about it.

How did people keep cool in say, Arizona, before air conditioning?
What did people do before cold medicines were invented?
What did people do before orthodontia? Was everybody's roof of their mouth too narrow?
What did people do at night before television/radio/movies?
For that matter, before the proliferation of books?
How did people get food before grocery stores?

Stuff like that.

I think our grandparents had a lot of answers to those questions.

And I wonder if we're somehow less resourceful in practical ways because our "needs" are different now. I mean, we're a plenty resourceful lot. Look at computers and car technology and all that bells and whistles in our society. They're putting huge windmills in the middle of the ocean to try to harness wind power, for crying out loud. TiVo. The Internet. We're plenty resourceful.

But I'm wondering about all sorts of home remedies and stuff like that which we've lost. And I'm wondering if we should get them back, and how we might.

Like I said, my air conditioner started all this.