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How was the Panhandle settled before air conditioning

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2seaoat



What a miserable hot and humid swamp with incessant rain and bugs. I love the weather in October through April usually, but this constant rain and humidity makes me think people would simply go insane in pioneer times living in this jungle where a person has to fight constantly not to have a clearing revert back to jungle.....standing water everywhere. I asked a county official about how everything north of 98 and west of Panhandle in Navarre is basically a swamp and why did they not put in a proper drainage and retention system before letting lots be settled......it now is standing water, people living out of rvs in front yards of broken down manufactured homes with abandoned cars everywhere........as few maintain their property........I was angry to see such neglect.....until a few years ago I realized in the summer its too damn hot and humid to do normal maintenance outside, and that folks had given up. Well the County official said that it was wetland and there is nothing that could be done....BS......the Zika virus is going to change the reality of allowing human habitation in a swamp.....it will be a game changer.

Vikingwoman



Better yet, how did women wear all those hoop skirts, crenolins and all that those undergarments and hose in the summer back then?

2seaoat



It is such an unpleasant environment when it gets so hot and humid. It literally is a jungle. However, other months this place is like paradise. Air conditioning makes life bearable, but I could not imagine living in this place in the summer in the last century.......oh by the way the blonde headed kid waited on my at office depot....smart kid, and he helps me every time.

RealLindaL



Front passing through today (Tuesday 5/3), supposedly with thunderstorms, will usher in drier air on a northerly wind, at least for a few days.   Should be sunny and beautiful starting Wednesday, though a bit on the breezy side.

Hallmarkgard



I was born in 1942.   I know that my elementary and middle schools were not  air conditioned.  Dads 48 Ford even had a "cowl" vent. Auto A/C was a dream. I would guess we did not get a household "Window" unit until around 54 or 55

We did everything we do today.  It was hot but you learned to adjust.  A/C puts you out of tune with nature.  We try to make the world some type of artificial place rather than what it is.  As a shipyard welder for many years I know that running in and out of Air Conditioning will destroy your ability to  handle heat.
Many many people still live with out Air Conditioning.   The real question is not about A/C but man made ice,

https://www.floridastateparks.org/park/John-Gorrie-Museum

Gorrie, who used air as the working gas in his machine, took his idea north to the Cincinnati Iron Works, which created a model for public demonstration. But the notion that humans could create ice bordered on blasphemy. In the New York Globe, one writer complained of a "crank" down in Florida "that thinks he can make ice by his machine as good as God Almighty."

Having found both funding—from a Boston investor who remains unknown—and a manufacturing company willing to produce the contraption, Gorrie became the first person to create a commercially available refrigeration machine. But he quickly fell on hard times.

In 1851, the year Gorrie received a U.S. patent on his ice machine, his chief financial backer died. With his invention being ridiculed regularly in the press, his other investors fell by the wayside. Gorrie suspected that Frederic Tudor had spearheaded a smear campaign against him and his invention. It was to Tudor that the doctor was presumably referring, says biographer Vivian M. Sherlock, when he wrote that "moral causes...have been brought into play to prevent [the machine’s] use."

Without funds, Gorrie retreated to Apalachicola, where he awaited word on a patent for his other innovation, the air-conditioning process. It never came. Reflecting on his troubles, he concluded that mechanical refrigeration "had been found in advance of the wants of the country." Suffering from a nervous collapse and devastated by failure, he died in 1855 at age 51.



Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/chilly-reception-66099329/#Fzcq15QXvmOB7ZMP.99

Hallmarkgard



My Grandmother said the first "ice" she ever saw was in Tampa when she was about 12 years old. I have all ways been interested in how people lived without ice.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/22407/surprisingly-cool-history-ice

Joanimaroni

Joanimaroni

As a child we used 1 large window fan to draw air throughout the house. 

I never remember being hot when I was young and we were  without A/C. We played outside, drank from the outside faucet and wet ourselves with the hose. I guess at night, we were to tired to think about it.

2seaoat



I graduated from high school and never slept one night in my family home with air conditioning. We also had a fan. However, the humidity levels in the Panhandle are simply intolerable without air conditioning. When I lived in Mexico they had no air conditioning, but the way they built their homes with the thick adobe walls allowed the cool nights to cool the mass, and then during the hot days the home would remain cool. Also, it was very dry.

I hope the next few days the humidity drops because the heat and humidity in my weakened state simply limits my physical activity to nothing....and I have to keep moving. When I lived on the beach the cool winds off the water often had us not running the AC. However, I am in the jungle right now.

RealLindaL



Joanimaroni wrote:As a child we used 1 large window fan to draw air throughout the house. 

I never remember being hot when I was young and we were  without A/C. We played outside, drank from the outside faucet and wet ourselves with the hose. I guess at night, we were to tired to think about it.

This describes much of my own childhood to a T.   How wonderful it felt as a very young girl to wake up on a spring Virginia morning with the window fan in the hall drawing in cool, fresh air through my bedroom window, while I snuggled under crisp, clean sheets that had been dried on the outside line....   {{{sigh}}}

RealLindaL



2seaoat wrote:I hope the next few days the humidity drops because the heat and humidity in my weakened state simply limits my physical activity to nothing....and I have to keep moving.  When I lived on the beach the cool winds off the water often had us not running the AC.  However, I am in the jungle right now.

Hang in there, sea.  Cooler and definitely drier is on the way.

The winds off the water are a true blessing in summer but a curse in winter, bringing a damp, penetrating cold.  Still, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

Vikingwoman



If you go on the historic tour downtown and see the houses,they explain how people lived w/ the heat back then. The balconies and upper story porches were slept on at night to get some relief from the heat. They show a block of wood where they placed their killed game and cut them up and never had enough thought to clean it off often causing sickness and death from it.

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