I was sitting at the kitchen table this morning with the doors and windows open enjoying our unseasonably cool morning, answering email and reading the daily news and views (as in blogs), when my youngest daughter wandered in and wanted to know why the AC wasn’t on. Now folks, the outside temperature at the time was just hitting 72 (I told you it was unseasonable for SE Texas), and I had really been enjoying the breeze along with the birdsong and wind chimes.

I think the poor girl would shrivel up and die if she had to go through the summers we went through with only an attic fan. Now for those of you who don’t know what an attic fan is, it’s a large fan that is built into the ceiling (usually in a central hallway) that pulls the hot air out of the house. Usually, when you ran it all night with the bedroom windows open it would get so cool you had to have a quilt or a blanket before morning. During the day you would turn the speed of the fan down and close up the house to keep the cool in while blowing just enough fresh air through the attic to keep the heat from building up too high before evening when you would start the whole cycle over.

As I remember things, the fan would provide a low white noise (not that we knew what that was back then) and you could still hear the night sounds through the open window. I guess we could be a little more trusting back then, ’cause I’m sure not many folks today would want a window open all night by their bed…

Being as we were deep south here the only real disadvantage to this whole affair was that the humidity would still permeate the whole house and everything in it. Even so, some night I really miss the old days.