My Old Man Overcame His AC Addiction.

We write a lot about TED here at Energy Circle, and we almost always mean TED, The Energy Detective. But it should be known that there are other Teds out there, and one is my father. He comes to mind as I pack up on this sweaty day because he is a keen appreciator of air conditioning, which, for reasons entirely unrelated to my father, I really don't like. I don't like having to carry a sweater around when it's raging hot outside. I don't like feeling like a flaccid refrigerated carrot. I don't like the persistent hum of electrical effort to make me smell better. But my father, he loved AC. He lives in New Jersey, which is a relatively good place for AC lovers to live.

We didn't have air conditioning growing up. At least, I didn't think we did. In those days, my mother packed my brothers and sisters and me into the station wagon the day after school ended and drove us for 13 painful hours - to "the cottage," far away from the titillating pulse of New Jersey summers - back seats and cigarettes and the opposite sex. We left my father smiling in the driveway, saying things like, "Have a nice drive," which on reflection must have felt to my mother like a taunt. Two dogs, five kids, two persistent barfers, 13 hours? Nice drive? Insanity.

When I got older and returned to Jersey for summer work, I had a glimpse of what my father did in those moments after we left that big old Victorian house and backed out of the driveway. He sealed it up. He closed the doors to the kitchen and his bedroom, dug window air conditioning units out of the attic, turned them on full tilt, and climbed into his air-conditioned car to drive the six blocks to his refrigerated office. Setting aside the brief excruciating jaunts from car to kitchen and kitchen to bedroom, my father was in cool, peaceful heaven.

I recently read a piece about the personal dangers of air conditioning. After the predictable (and quite real) concerns about utility bills and indoor air quality, I found two gems: Number one: you are trapped inside - more likely to fear the hot outside than run out and enjoy it. Indeed, during those hot summers, my father treated outside the way people in movies treat nuclear fallout zones - possible to live through, but only if you're speedy and quick-witted.  Number two: Isolation. I had to laugh. The drone of those units was so loud that my father, even then, while his hearing was ace, couldn't hear a blood-curdling scream from the next room (I know, I tested it out). I don't think he minded. He never was much for music.  He was a busy man, making spicy food for other busy men.

As this summer approaches and we once again make our way to the lake, I think of my father. He'll fly up and join us on an air-conditioned jet, once again skipping the drive. But he's mellowed quite a lot. He has fans on at home, not air conditioning. It's easier on everyone, he says. More peaceful. Softer. Quieter. Like he is. But then again, it's only June...