 | Faye Graves, a native Wichitan, attended school at Friends and Wichita State, concluding at Midwestern Theological Seminary. He has been active in media for many years with Channel 12, KIRL, KFDI, KOOO AM & FM (Omaha), KFRM & KICT 95, as an owner, manager, producer, director and announcer. He has served as President of the Haysville Board of Education. He has also served on several national boards of the Southern Baptist Convention. Faye currently serves as Executive Pastor and Director of Administration and Education at Immanuel Baptist Church, 1415 S. Topeka, Wichita. You may contact Faye by e-mail fmgraves@amenibc.org, or by phone at (316) 262-1452. |
Nostalgia
2009-07-01 12:05:00
Remember...
Answer: Do I ever. It’s one of my most favorite memories. Let’s roll back the clock to the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s, the days before air conditioning. When I was a boy living on S. Water Street, we had many days that were over 100 degrees throughout the summer.
Those days we would sleep on the front porch at night. Mosquitoes and bugs of all kinds, even noise didn’t bother us. It was just great to feel the cool night air blow across your army cot, and you, and give you some relief from the hot summer day you had just endured. The windows in houses were raised up to get as much air as possible. Fans were running full time at maximum power. We kids would chase the ice truck until it stopped so we could get the chips from the bed of the truck. The chips tasted so good and so cool. Then someone came up with evaporative coolers, a large metal cowling filled with straw.
You could hook your garden hose up to it, moisten the straw, turn on the fan and get cooler air! It wasn’t really cold air but to us, it felt great.
Then someone came up with the same concept for your car. The cooler hung on the door and had a water storage tank and a pump that you would press and cooler air came from it into the car.
In the early ‘50s, I rode in a 1954 Oldsmobile that actually had air conditioning. It had a big unit in the trunk, two large vents coming up from the shelf by the rear window and cold air moving into your automobile. It was like “hoggy heaven.” Finally, homes and businesses had air conditioning. The businesses advertised with signs that had icicles and the words “It’s cool inside.”
I don’t know now how we made it back then, but we did. When you think about it, short of walking into a freezer at a meat processing plant, there was no way to get as cool as you can today by just stepping inside nearly any home or business.
I still can’t get that picture out of my mind of all those kids chasing that ice truck and seeing them enjoying those ice chips. Stay cool.
