A few CVRR pictures and some other related pictures....

[rogruth]

Air conditioning, IMO, is what led to the growth of the southern U.S. and that includes AZ, NM and TX.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Air conditioning, IMO, is what led to the growth of the southern U.S. and that includes AZ, NM and TX.

very interesting point. I wonder what other states' populations may have been affected by the appearance of AC on the American scene.

[webenda]

We kids even tried sleeping in the backyard sometimes to find some movement in the air.

Screened porches were once so common in Arizona they were called, "Arizona Rooms."

According to a website run by Phoenix newspaper The Arizona Republic, residents slept in their Arizona room during the summer months, before the advent of air conditioning, because the flow of cool night air made them more comfortable than in an enclosed bedroom

The screening was required to keep insects and animals out. Rolling over on a scorpion causes a rude awakening.

Sonoran Desert Scorpion.jpg (24.95 KiB) Viewed 1995 times

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Is that a model train layout in the background ? It looks good.

[webenda]

Is that a model train layout in the background ? It looks good.

Background is a typical Tucson street, no curb, no sidewalk, no grass, plastic trash can waiting for trash truck with an automatic pick-up-and-dump-arm on its side to come along (nobody has to pick up and dump trash cans anymore, driver stays inside air conditioned cab.)

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Is that a model train layout in the background ? It looks good.

Background is a typical Tucson street, no curb, no sidewalk, no grass, plastic trash can waiting for trash truck with automatic pick-up-and-dump-arm on its side to come along.

Oh, that's very interesting. The subjectivity of a person's reference points came into play in what I was imaging I was seeing there. In my mind, the roadway became the vertical fascia, like where I have installed plywood, along the outer edge and viewing aisle in my train room (see photo). I thought the trash can was a remote handheld train control resting on the layout(!!!)

[Rufus T. Firefly]

[rex desilets]

re AC:
I was raised in Tupelo MS. Summer nights were hot & sticky. So we had an attic fan (this was w-a-a-a-y before home AC) installed. Pop would run it when the evening "cooled" and the house would be semi-comfortable all night. What a blessing.

[J. S. Bach]

Background is a typical Tucson street, no curb, no sidewalk, no grass, plastic trash can waiting for trash truck with an automatic pick-up-and-dump-arm on its side to come along (nobody has to pick up and dump trash cans anymore, driver stays inside air conditioned cab.)

The real advantage is crew reduction.

[robert.]

Background is a typical Tucson street, no curb, no sidewalk, no grass, plastic trash can waiting for trash truck with an automatic pick-up-and-dump-arm on its side to come along (nobody has to pick up and dump trash cans anymore, driver stays inside air conditioned cab.)

The real advantage is crew reduction.

Funny how that trash can still can't make it back on top of the curb

[MurphOnMillerAve]

It was what looked to my subjective eye like two tunnel portals , along with appropriate landscaping along the side, behind that hand's middle and ring fingers, that made me think I was seeing a model train layout.

[rogruth]

Murph,
I can see that. Possibly an outdoor larger scale layout.

[Wolf]

Murph,

You have the description of the furnace just right.
In our case the coal was dumped on the sidewalk in front of the house.
My grandfather had a cart that just fit between the house next door and ours.
He loaded the cart and puhed it up a ramp and shoveled it through a window
into the coal bin in the basement next to the furnace. I don't remember how
long a truck-load of coal lasted. There were a lot of nuances to having a
good fire in the furnace.
After my grandfather died a gas furnace was put in. It was almost as big
as the coal furnace. I was long gone from that house by then. It seemed
to me when I visited that gas was a lot less trouble but coal was warmer
and cozier.

When I was attending 4th Grade in Annandale, VA, due to space shortages
my class met in a room that was backstage of the auditorium stage (they
made us meet elsewhere whenever the school was going to have an assembly,
rolled a wall back, and presto! the stage for the auditorium was created). That
backstage room was also over the school's boiler room, which necessitated
some non-verbal sessions at the times when the coal truck would drive up
and another load of coal would go rumbling down the chute the basement.
I also recall several neighbors still having coal-fired furnaces when we lived in
Pennsylvania earlier in the mid-fifties.

We had an oil-burning furnace when we first moved into my current house fifty
years ago, but the data-plate (stamped brass!) still had the ratings for hand and stoker
coal-firing listed. That one got replaced many years later with a gas furnace about half
the size (with same capacities). Looks kinda lost down there!

[MurphOnMillerAve]

I wonder how many times in a day coal had to be shoveled into such a furnace in a home. I have no memory of either of my parents doing so. And what happened when a homeowner lived alone and got too sick and weak to bound down the cellar steps to feed the belly of the monster? Or some poor soul living alone in a cabin out in nowhere that needed to feed a potbellied stove endless cords of wood!

The good ol' days took some tough people, even just back as far as 6-7 decades, let alone back as far as Colonial times in America. My wife sometimes quips that if it had been up to her to tough-it-out in Colonial times, we would all be singing "God Save the Queen," not "God Bless America." Make your own soap! Tote water from a well or stream into the one-room log house built by hand! Nope. Don't have it in us. In fact, just this morning, I had to talk myself into the effort to drive to the grocery store to stock up on fruit, beverages, and other miscellany! Ssheeeesh! What a lazy bum! Spoiled, too!

[webenda]

Make your own soap! Tote water from a well or stream into the one-room log house built by hand! Nope. Don't have it in us. In fact, just this morning, I had to talk myself into the effort to drive to the grocery store to stock up on fruit, beverages, and other miscellany! Ssheeeesh! What a lazy bum! Spoiled, too!

I wonder how you are going to like, "The Glorious New Creation"
Isaiah 65:17, 21-22 New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

17 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.

21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

Like building scenery for a model railroad except 1:1 scale.