By Jim Hagarty
Not too many years ago, I used to spend endless summer nights sweltering in the little tinderbox I call my home, wishing my family and I had central air conditioning.
For most of several months each year, I’d sit in my shorts or less and wipe great rivers of sweat from my eyes as four big fans blew hot air on my sizzling body in a futile effort to keep me from suddenly boiling over. I would drift in and out of various heat-induced psychotic states, issuing the occasional odd utterance that would alarm the other members of my household.
But, those were the old days. Today, we have central air conditioning. A happy little unit sits on a concrete slab just behind our garage with a few discreet tubes and pipes snaking out from it and into our house, like a big intravenous bottle set up to provide life-giving nutrients to the patients sitting helplessly inside.
Acquiring this little genius required some radical surgery on our bank account but it has since been making a slow but steady recovery.
