DATE: Sunday, July 20, 1997                 TAG: 9707180217

SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN             PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: John Pruitt

                                            LENGTH:   63 lines

AH, A FRESH BREEZE, REAL AIR CONDITIONING

When the first air conditioner arrived in my home town, my mother scoffed at the idea of having something that noisy and ugly blocking a fresh breeze's circulation through her house.

For the longest time, it was the only air conditioner on Tangier Island. I recall the wonder of it: stepping into Stanley and Anna Laura's house, moving immediately from the stifling heat of summer to the chill of a fall day - from sweat to chill bumps.

People visited just to look at the machine and to immerse in the cold air - which most condemned as unnatural even as they enjoyed the novelty.

That kind of change couldn't be healthy, some of the island folks said. Stanley and Anna Laura could have that contraption; they'd just continue to accept whatever weather God gave them.

In those days, everything eventually got to God's intentions - whether it was man's venture into space or creature comforts like a machine to transform hot, muggy air into coolness. We could count on certain folks to be amazingly confident of their knowledge of His intentions.

But that wasn't the issue with my mother. We loved the kind of breeze that set our summer curtains to moving, ghostlike, from the window frames.

It was rare, even on the hottest days, for those curtains to stand still. With windows open all over the house, there generally was air circulation, albeit sometimes hot and humidity laden.

Just sit still, my mother would tell me and my brothers; if you wouldn't move around so much, you wouldn't be so miserable. Or go swimming; just don't sit around here telling me how hot it is.

My father was among those who believed it his lot to accept whatever weather conditions God created. He never said so, but you could tell it by the way he approached hot weather.

When others complained, even with a pleasant, ``Boy, this is a hot one, ain't it, John?'', he'd smile and declare, almost with reverence, `Well, it's about right for the middle of July.''

If he rolled up the sleeves of his traditional long sleeve shirt, you knew summer had turned up the thermostat. And it was the stuff of coworkers' and neighbors' conversations.

For the longest time, we got along with fans - usually box fans that could be removed whenever there was breeze enough to cool the house, and one free-standing version that generated so much air it would set our hair to flying and our conversation to the wind.

My bedroom, which usually got a breeze right off the Chesapeake Bay, had a double deal that my father bought from a Baltimore man who came to Tangier about twice a year with all kinds of merchandise.

What you do, the huckster told my father, was to point one fan in, the other out; fresh air in, warm air out.

What he didn't tell him was that the fan kept making more noise than it was worth. Hot nights came down to a choice: circulation from what sounded like a cranky airplane engine or just enduring.

I never figured this out, but even on those nights, a soothing breeze developed before we got up at 3:30 or 4 a.m. to work our crab pots. Just the way God works, I bet my father would say.

Eventually, when my father was confined to home, my mother installed air conditioners - window units, but not in her windows. She had a carpenter cut through the walls of her house and place them permanently.

On good days, she turns off what she still disdains as those noisy things, lifts the windows and sets the curtains to moving.

The way God intended, she would say. Amen.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu