As he almost always does, my early-morning pal Big Daddy Graham gave me another great trip down memory lane this morning.
Most of you are probably still in a coma-like state at that hour. But I get to the office early, and Big Daddy is my commuting pal as I listen to his overnight show on WIP 94.1.
Most nights he does a segment he calls, "Let's Go Back to Your Childhood." I almost always connect with it.
He teased it going into the break this morning, saying he was going to talk about "the greatest invention" in history.
I happen to have some strong thoughts on this topic. I personally believe the TV remote control is the single greatest invention ever, a device that fundamentally changed our society. My kids still have trouble believing that when I was a tyke, if you wanted to change the channel on the tube, you actually had to get up out of your comfy seat, walk over to the TV, and change the dial manually. I'm not making this up.
But that's not what Big Daddy had in mind, and in light of what we're dealing with weather-wise in the region this week, it's hard to argue with him.
Big Daddy wanted to praise the merits of air-conditioning.
All together now: Ahhhhhhhhhh!
Even better, he wanted to point out something else I distinctly remember: Life without air-conditioning. We had similar upbringings, although he grew up in a city rowhouse, and I did my early years in a small country town. Neither of us grew up in a house that was air-conditioned.
I mean not one room. None.
Yes, we also slept on the floor downstairs. When it got really hot, as it is around here this week, we would actually "camp out" on the screened-in porch.
The second floor of the house was like an oven, almost unbearable. Never seemed to stop my mom and dad from making the trek up the stairs every day.
There was one thing my dad refused to do, however. During one particular wicked heat wave, our mother got the idea to do dinner down in the basement, where it was decidedly cooler, but also decidedly unfinished. We're talking about a basement that often got water, that had concrete floors and more than a little assorted junk sitting just about everywhere. The washer and dryer set in one corner, along with a line where my mom used to hang clothes.
The kids all thought dinner in the basement was a fabulous idea. Hey, it was different from what we did every night. We even helped set the table. We looked at it as an adventure. Our father did not. He was not exactly the adventurous type. He was interested in meat and potatoes. He was a man who was - how should I say this? - fairly set in his ways. He took one look in the basement, shot one look at my mom, and promptly took his normal spot at the dinner table in the kitchen. That's where he ate, while the rest of us dined in the basement.
To this day I am not a big fan of air-conditioning. I'll take it in the office. But I hate using it at home. I love hot weather, and humidity. I know, that makes me more than a little weird. I look at it this way: Air-conditioning does something that I hate; it reminds me of winter, I'm trapped inside a house. That's why I so loved my screened-in porch, and why I like the sunroom that replaced it in the winter, it's not the same in the summer. Add in this year's voracious crop of mosquitoes, and I can barely get in any time out on the deck at night before I'm being eaten alive.
There's something else I noticed this week. Where I sit at our kitchen table (and does every family have assigned seats at this table? I don't think we've ever sat in any other arrangement) is right above one of the grate, which these days is pumping out the A.C. I hate it. As I sat there last night, I thought about dad, and his decision not to dinner in the basement.
I couldn't help but smile. I know how you feel, Dad.
Thanks for another great memory, Big Daddy!
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