Trees are green, even the shy pecan tree that waits until the very last second to put out leaves, camellias finished blooming, and most of the azaleas, pesky sticky vines getting into everything, fox grape picking up where it left off last fall. I am not even going to mention wisteria that waves tendrils in the air looking more like alien fauna than flora.
Winter is finished. Spring has sprung.
Summer is definitely on the way.
The calendar says so. After all, it is the last week of April.
There was something different the other day, a moment when I stood outside in all of that new green and for the first time in a long while, I felt that Lowcountry “je ne sais quoi,” the air wet and hard to breathe, not yet August hot, not sauna-like, but enfolding me in an invisible cocoon, a precursor of summer down south, an explanation of “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humidity.”
Somehow, BAC, that’s “Before Air Conditioning,” we learned to cope, to walk slowly, in the shade if possible, accepted white shoes and seersucker suits as indicators summer had arrived
We covered our furniture with Eisenberg cotton and brought electric fans down from the attic, closed Venetian blinds on the sunny side of the house, and dug out the recipe for tomato aspic.
Some were lucky to escape to the mountains of North Carolina.
Some went to Tybee or St. Simon’s Island and inhaled refreshing ocean air.
Some of us went to Bluffton, our summer place where we learned to live by the tides.
We all knew when summer comes, it is hot and humid outside, and it is hot and humid inside.
Enter my hero, Willis Haviland Carrier, who in July of 1902 invented modern air conditioning.
Our rescuer from sleepless sweaty nights was born Nov. 26, 1876, in Angola, New York, won a four-year scholarship to Cornell University, and in 1901 earned a degree in electrical engineering.
Smart man. Not bad looking, either. Married thrice.
Fresh out of school, Carrier joined Buffalo Forge Company as a research engineer and became chief engineer of the firm in 1906.
As early as 1907, it wasn’t the comfort of individual homes that became the beneficiary of his talents, but factories, especially textile mills. Seems blowing cold air on bolts of cloth kept the humidity at bay and all of those dye molecules happy, ensuring the same coloration in every bolt.
Then in 1914, Buffalo Forge decided to concentrate solely on manufacturing, leaving the field of air conditioning. Carrier and his band of young engineers found themselves out of a job. The next year, this inventive group of seven created the Carrier Engineering Corporation with a pooled fund of $32,600, bought a factory in Newark, New Jersey, in 1920 and off they went into the world of cool.
Detroit’s massive J. L. Hudson department store in 1924, United States congressional chambers both House and Senate in 1928, and two years later in 1930, over 300 movie theatres were fitted with air conditioning units. Oh, and Madison Square Garden in NYC.
The public was taking notice of this new air conditioning that was being installed in public places, and in 1939, during the annual fair, Mingledorff Inc. put up a tent at Savannah’s Fair Grounds and offered patrons a place to “cool off.” Later that year, they put the first commercial central air conditioning in the esteemed C&S Bank on Johnson Square.
It was still a long wait before we could stand in front of a cranky, noisy window air conditioning unit in our own personal private space. And to have an affordable central unit to cool everything?
Unbelievable.
But we do. We rather take it for granted.
And to Willis Haviland Carrier
Love you, Willis.
Next time I’m out at Forest Lawn, I’ll make sure to stop by.
Annelore Harrell lives in Bluffton and can be reached at anneloreh@aol.com.
