Welcome to The Senate Site

By Lyle Hillyard
Senator, District 25

The office building where I work every day has a very good air conditioning system that makes it so cool that some of the secretaries wear sweaters to keep warm. Try as we may, we can’t get them to raise it so it is not so cold. The problem is when I leave and hit the hot outdoors, it melts me. By the time I get home, I have lost any desire to go outside and work until just before sunset. This made me think about what it was like before air conditioning. We, of course, did not have it on the farm as I was growing up. In the summer when we had to haul hay and work outside during these very hot days, we would begin as soon as it was light and then work until dark with a several hour break during the heat of the day. It was a challenge to do the milking in between but we would separate so that some of the workers would milk while the rest of us would carry on. During the heat, we would take some time to play in a ditch or canal to cool off. No one seemed to be concerned about contracting some unknown disease from that water.

In our home, which was also not air conditioned, we had some relief from the heat by the adobe walls and a big shade tree that we grew on the west side of the home. It was the home in which my father was born in 1901 so it was not new. It seemed to be cool or maybe just cooler than outside. At night, I would often sleep on the patio outside. Although, that posed two problems - first I would receive a number of mosquito bites. I can’t remember if we ever had mosquito repellant. Secondly, we would roast. It was on the east side of the house so as soon as the sun was up, it was bright and there was no sleeping in like you could do with a good blind in the bedroom.

It was always a treat to make home-made ice cream. Maybe it was the anticipation of it being made or knowing you could control the ingredients. But nothing tasted better than home-made ice cream in the hot summer.

Contrast that to now. I find the air conditioning going in the car even when the temperature reaches a high of 70. It is nice to cut out the noise, wind and dust from a moving car but as gas prices continue to rise and air condition impacts fuel economy, you may see more and more people going open air.

I don’t know if we are really warmer now than we were 60 years ago but I am sure that we have lost our ability to adjust to the changes. I learned as a scout master that if you went camping in the snow and it got gradually colder, you were better prepared to change clothes so you could sleep in a snow cave. The thought of leaving a warm house in the middle of winter and doing the same thing outside in the snow is unacceptable. As energy costs spiral out of control, maybe we will have to begin using some of the methods our parents and grandparents did to handle the heat but it won’t be easy to give up the easy life.

By the way, when you begin making the home-made ice cream, call me if it is pineapple. I wonder how the pioneers made pineapple ice cream - it was probably just good old vanilla.

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