I see that a little town around here is having a 3-day festival. A lot of little towns have festivals with old-fashioned midway games and food booths and a DJ playing records at a park in the evening. One of the major attractions at this festival, according to the notice, is the return of the mechanical bull. (Perhaps they had a bull at Little House on the Prairie gatherings – only a real one.) There’s a picture: this mechanical bull is set up in the middle of what looks to be a giant turquoise air mattress. On Sunday, they are reviving an old tradition – a community picnic.
I notice there is never a “Relive Summers Past in an Un-air-conditioned House” attraction. They could set up a family kitchen with a porch attached – a porch that has a swing. People could spend time in the “kitchen” with fans going and sweating iced-tea glasses and then as their clothes begin to cling to them, they could move out to the porch where they could talk to people passing by on evening walks. Or you could set up a circle of fake porches, chock-a-bloc and folks could talk back and forth over the narrow space between them while using a fan from a funeral home or church to stir a bit of personal breeze. You know, one of those cardboard cut-outs stapled to a piece of wood that resembles a small paint stick.
I didn’t live in a house with air conditioning until the early 1990’s and that was a noisy window unit. They could add a second story to this house and challenge people to sit up there to get the experience of trying to sleep without a fan or central air.
I do miss people sitting on their porches. Neighbors knew each other back then, of course, in the city we heard everything, arguments and um making up through those open windows.
I remember sitting on Grandma Grismore’s swing on the porch and listening to everyone come by and talk to Grandpa. A highlight of my summer.