I Remember When With Milton Rendell

Do you remember when the only air-conditioning in your family car was the window being down. Our car was a 1958 VW beetle so there wasn’t a lot of air coming in. There was a storage area or something we called our boot which was behind the back seat that I could squeeze myself into when we had a few mates in the car no seat belts. Dad’s car was black so it was a heat magnet so wasn’t the coolest car with only small windows in the front doors. Do you remember the old side windows in a lot of the cars then. Today as we are coming into the hot weather I reflect on those days. This was back in the late sixties and early seventies when at school there was no air-conditioner maybe a large fan at the front of the class and at home you use to leave the front door at night to let any breeze you could through. Most homes only had a flimsy old fly wire door not like the secure ones we have today. No local pool just swam down the river and many of us in Guildford use go over to Bassendean to do our swimming lessons in the school holidays. During the holidays when it was hot we did a bit of fishing as well as have a swim to keep cool. Many of us use to run around in bare feet how our feet survived who knows. It wasn’t uncommon for us to throw a blanket out on the back lawn at night and sleep there watching the planes fly over the sun use to wake you early in the morning. My Dad was a baker so he worked shift work so I have no idea how he survived in summer in our house we had no air-conditioning and lived in an old fibro house that consisted of two bedrooms, the front lounge a kitchen/dining and a sleep-out on the veranda where the bathroom was as well and out the back was the wash house/toilet. Our house was a typical late 1940-50’s design home. Gee today as I leave my air-conditioned office and get into my air-conditioned car then drive to my air-conditioned house, I think my Dad would tell me I’ve got a bit soft in my old age. I recon when Dad had a cold beer on a hot summer’s day it was pretty refreshing.