LIFE IN HELL WITH VLADVAMPIRELORD: THE EAST COAST HEAT WAVE

 There are a lot of people bitching about the 97 degree heat wave in the New York / New Jersey Metro Area, but at least most of us have air conditioning.  In my abandoned church apartment, I have two air conditioning units and multiple fans keeping me frosty 24/7.  When I was growing up, we had no such thing.  My childhood home had no air conditioning whatsoever.  When I visited my grandparents as a child, they had no windows open ever and just some ancient box contraption that we loaded ice cubes into that had a wheel that blew out some air that did not cool the 100 degree temps in their apartment.  So I went outside in the heat to play and I usually got some nasty sunburn.  In the late 70s it was a practice for people to rub themselves with baby oil to get a better tan which today would be seen as lunacy.  When I was good and sunburned in the 90 degree heat as a child, my grandmother washed my face with cold water which normally would feel good, but she had rings on her fingers that scratched my face.

At home we had no air conditioner and in the living room we had a broken air conditioner that just made thing worse when we assumed it was working.   Our refrigerator/freezer ice would melt from the heat inside the apartment and water would leak all over the floor and if you were wearing socks you ended up with wet feet to make things more humiliating.  At night I slept with a box fan in my window and it just blew hot air which made sleep almost impossible.

In our car there was no air conditioning so we rolled the windows down to get hot air blowing in.  The car would sit in the sun and the seats would burn you as you sat down and the steering wheel was hot to the touch.  It was unbearable.

At school, all the way through high school, there was no air conditioning, but they still conducted gym classes outside as you worked up a nasty sweat and came back to the classroom a sweaty mess.  Then there was the body order that was produced from the sweat and heat.  That alone could choke you to death.  You think you could get relief shopping, but most stores did not have air conditioning either.  It was a long, dirty hot, sweltering Summer.

If you grew up in the late 1970s and 1980s there were two groups, those that died from heat stroke and the survivors that one day grew to know the joys of air conditioning.  Nobody today could live under those conditions not having air conditioning.  Nobody.