Staying cool

During this long -- much too long -- spell of heat and humidity that has grabbed the throat of Southeast Missouri and is squeezing tighter and tighter, I continue to thank Mr. Carrier and all the others whose genius led to the invention of air conditioning.

My wife and I have had several conversations in recent weeks about the early years of our marriage, the pre-AC days, when summer's waves of heat were endured with the aid of an oscillating fan that stirred the air and fooled us into thinking we were somehow staying cool.

Our first apartment, in the mid-1960s, was in the third-floor attic of an old house. You can imagine how hot it was in August that year. We didn't pay much attention, because we had lived with the fury of the eighth month all our lives. We survived.

It was in our 100-year-old house in Nevada, Mo., in the 1970s that we endured one of the worst Augusts on record. We had fans, of course, but we often didn't get to sleep until the wee hours of the morning when the temperature would drop below 90. We survived.

Our first home with central air was in Maryville, Mo., another 100-year-old house that had been completely gutted and renovated.

With central air, we now realize, it's easy to forget about droughts and choking humidity. Like Texas, an air-conditioned Missouri is a tolerable place to be, even when everyone in France is smart enough to go on vacation.

Several years ago we replaced the heating and air-conditioning system in our 50-plus-year-old house. We purposely chose a system that would compensate for the unusual layout of our house and the fact that the largest room, a family room, has floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides -- a room, by the way, that generally faces south.

In the few years we have had the new central air system, we have come to realize that it was somehow defective from the start. After a year of operation the condenser motor pooped out. That shouldn't happen. The second motor lasted two years. The third motor lasted two years. When the repairman came this last time, he told me the latest motor was a "temporary" motor that should have been used only while waiting for the proper motor to be ordered and installed. Now he tells me.

Then a critical component in the outside AC unit (solenoid?) exploded. The repairman (we're on a first-name basis) said it had probably always been defective, which might have led to the motor problems. You think?

Amazingly, with the proper motor and a new solenoid, the AC works like we expected it to. The house is staying cool. The indoor humidity is stable enough to keep the piano in tune for more than a month at a time.

The AC actually shuts off occasionally even during these near-100-degree days. Our electric bill has eased off a bit.

Then we remember: We could be sleeping in a third-floor attic with an oscillating fan pushing the heat from one side of the bed to the other.

Thank you, Mr. Carrier.

jsullivan@semissourian.com