Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
We were driving through Oklahoma City on a hot July afternoon a long time ago. Mom and Dad’s 1962 Chevy Nova station wagon came without air conditioning. From previous years, when we lived in Puerto Rico, I remember mom always telling dad that if a car had a heater, it should have an air conditioner too. Being an Arkansas farm boy who spent most of his life outdoors in the heat and humidity of the mid-South, he ignored her.
That July afternoon, it was hot, well above 100 degrees in Oklahoma. We had the windows open, but the old “4/60” air conditioning (four windows open at 60 miles per hour) didn’t cut it. It was so hot that the plastic eyes on my little sister Susie’s Teddy bear were beginning to melt and droop.
We made it to Grandma and Grandpa Gasser’s house, where the weather was much nicer. On the return route, we left in the late afternoon. Dad drove across Nebraska in the dark, then dropped down into Missouri.
Mom got her wish, sort of. The Nova was underpowered with just a 194 cubic inch inline-six-cylinder engine. It only produced 120 horsepower. Adding an air conditioner would have seriously reduced power and performance.
My father and his fellow Air Force sergeants were an inventive bunch. They were constantly tinkering with each other’s cars.
On the trip to Wyoming, we took my grandparents to Yellowstone one day. Before we loaded the car, Grandpa filled a tan colored bag with the head of a Native American on it with water and attached it to the front grill of the car.
I didn’t know what he was doing, but at seven years old, anything my two grandfathers did was okay with me.
He still had the bag hanging in his log garage years later. It was made in Pueblo, Colorado, by the Pueblo Tent and Awning Company. They sold tens of thousands of the “Minnequa Water Bags.”
When we arrived in Yellowstone, he took it off the grill, opened the cap, and poured out ice-cold water. I was impressed.
I think that must have been the catalyst for Dad’s “air conditioning” attachment.
There are two ways to cool the air: either by adding moisture or by taking it out. Air conditioners remove moisture while swamp coolers add it. Swamp coolers work great out here in the arid west. They’re not as efficient in a place as humid as northeast Arkansas, but they do work, especially if you add ice to the holding tray.
Dad attached a swamp cooler between the front seat on the hump of the car where the driveline ran to the rear axle. It was powered by the “cigarette” lighter, AKA the 12Volt socket or in today’s terms, the auxiliary power outlet.
I had three speeds and it cooled the little station wagon off nicely.
You can still find 12-volt “swamp coolers.” They’re popular with RVs and tent campers. Just add a 12-volt battery, connect the leads and you’ll get cooling immediately.
Dad’s swamp cooler couldn’t compete with the window-mounted air conditioner on the house. That thing poured out water at a constant rate during the hottest days of summer. It created a pool of water about three feet wide, which was aided by my placing rocks in a circle and filling it in with dirt. I was hoping to get a few tadpoles growing in it.
Only later did I learn that air conditioners produce distilled water as a byproduct, and tadpoles can’t live in it.
Live and learn, there is a science lesson in just about everything a youngster can find outside.
Later in life, in my teenage years, I found another wonder, the JC Whitney Catalog.
For those of you who didn’t change your own brakes and oil, replace starters and pressure plates, and time your engines, it was a fantastic booklet filled with gadgets, all designed to make your jalopy stand out among all the rest.
One interesting item was the “Car-B-Cue” a hotdog barbecue unit for your car. Just plug it into the cigarette lighter and in a few minutes you had a couple of grilled hotdogs ready to eat. It was an amazing innovation though we did something similar on hunting and fishing trips when we’d wrap cheese or ham and cheese sandwiches with a little butter in tin foil and put them on the exhaust manifold.
If you drove too far, they’d burn, but a trip of 20 to 30 minutes, and you had a great, gooey toasted cheese or ham and cheese ready to eat.
A few years ago, I decided to restore a 1961 Chevrolet Corvair. These were General Motors’ answer to the Volkswagen, with a rear-mounted, air-cooled engine. There were all kinds of warnings by Ralph Nader on how unsafe these cars were since they were prone to rolling over on fast turns.
Ol’ Ralph should have addressed the heating system. It was mostly exhaust fumes pumped into the cab. The Corvair wasn’t ideal for our winters, but once again, J.C. Whitney came to the rescue, albeit online now, not from that vintage catalog.
They made a 12-volt ceramic heater that sat between the front seats, under the dash, and had a two-speed fan attached. It wasn’t exactly toasty, but it did keep the frost off the windshield and prevented frostbitten toes. I used it one winter. It did keep the car “warmer” not exactly warm and the windshield still fogged a bit, but it was better than the exhaust fumes coming from the dashboard.
I donated the Corvair to the Childhood Diabetes Foundation after a couple of years. It was my first and most likely last, experiment with restoring an air-cooled GMC.
Today, the variety of 12-volt accessories boggle the mind. Portable coolers, fans, air purifiers, back massagers, AC converters, air compressors, and of course, the two most popular items, radar detectors, followed by the overwhelming usage today, cell phone chargers.
We didn’t think of that rolling across a blistering Oklahoma 63 years ago.
The cigarette lighter was just something you played with until someone burned their fingers. It was difficult to start a fire with those glowing red, concentric coils, but if you were patient, you could get one going. Kleenex worked the best as kindling.
Modern vehicles still have 12-volt sockets, but they don’t come with cigarette lighters much anymore. They started disappearing in the 1990s and were completely gone within the following decade.
Power, ingenuity, and creativity will always find their way in solving a problem, even if it’s so hot the cheap plastic is melting.