I Liked It Better When ... #6

-- By Tom Phillips  

Beach Haven, 2018

I don't like to rail against modern conveniences and comforts – don’t want to go back to washing dishes or clothes by hand, or typing stories and correcting them with white-out.  But I liked it better before beach houses were air-conditioned.  

Our guest blogger Linda Given makes the case for a salty air and the sound of surf:  

My parents both grew up in New Jersey and as a result, I’ve spent time at the Jersey Shore since I was a very young child.  One of my first distinct memories being there is of sleeping in a little bedroom under the stairs of a rental house, with my window open, feeling the ocean breeze and listening to the waves rolling back and forth along the shore.  In the morning, I heard seagulls and footsteps and the occasional car. Some sixty years later I’ve just returned from a beach vacation and things have changed!

 I've seen it coming for awhile. The house we’ve rented for years got central air-conditioning about ten years ago, and while we didn’t use it much, it was definitely appreciated on a hot and humid 95-degree day. On nicer days, we just opened the windows and doors and let in the air.  Maybe five or six years ago I noticed the screen for the door in the bedroom I use wasn’t there.  I searched the closets but couldn’t find it so had to choose between fresh air and mosquitos.  Gradually, the screens disappeared from all the downstairs doors, and one year we opened the downstairs windows only to find storms in most of them - the ones we could actually get open. So we were cool on very hot days, and stuck in an air-conditioned box on all the rest.

It’s a strange feeling to spend your whole day soaking in the sun and sound and air at the beach and then return home to a sealed-up house - in my probably not humble enough opinion, it just doesn’t feel right.  We used to be able to talk to the people on the back patio through the kitchen window while cooking dinner or washing dishes - now they can’t hear through the glass.  The “breezeway” has become more like a sauna. --- no a.c. there, but no breeze either.  And even sitting on the roof deck looking at the stars at night, it’s hard to hear the surf through the roar of all the cooling units on the beachfront.  To me, it feels like we’ve been robbed of an essential part of the beach experience.  So, I couldn’t agree more with Tom’s introduction - I wrote this on a computer and I’m glad I didn’t have to pull out the bottle of white-out. I’m glad that publishing this post is just a matter of a few clicks.  But - I liked it better when the windows opened!

Copyright 2018 by Tom Phillips and Linda Given 

"I Liked It Better When … " is an occasional feature about disappearing aspects of life.  Readers are invited to contribute!  
Email submissions to this retro address:  Roadtodotage@aol.com