We should have a warm appreciation for Dr. John Gorrie around my house, but I suspect my family would have a cool response to his contributions to society.
Gorrie is the father of modern air conditioning and refrigeration. As part of his medical practice fighting tropical diseases in Florida, he cooled rooms with ice in a basin suspended from the ceiling. He developed a machine to make the ice and even got a patent to use his ideas to cool entire homes and buildings.
This little bit of history was lost on my children when the two inventions he inspired both went out at our house late this week. It led to cries about being “miserable” and “old-fashioned.” Apparently there are worse things in the world than the internet going down.
The refrigerator issue was a fairly minor inconvenience. We threw some spoiled food and condiments away when we found it at 60 degrees one day. We’re fortunate to have an auxiliary fridge in the garage, which happens to be the old one from our kitchen, so after a trip to the store for some basics, we were back in business.
It’s no fun throwing away food, especially if you grew up without an excess of food. Still, in the name of food safety, out much of it went, especially the dairy-based stuff. The kids kept saying it was too far to travel to the garage to get their sundry of fruits, foods and drinks, but they somehow survived those extra 25 steps.
The air conditioning proved to be a hotter issue in our house. We’re nearly midway through the summer, and the children are starting to get on each other’s nerves in the midst of their school break. Add in an 85-degree house with fans blowing, and tensions boiled over pretty easily.
It also reminds me how coddled we as Americans and my family in particular have become. I acknowledge AC is a luxury. I grew up in a house that didn’t have air conditioning. Some of my best childhood memories involve napping beside a giant box fan (or possibly talking into it for a cool Darth Vader impression) or listening to the distorted sounds of traffic outside going through a window fan.
My children are fortunate to have not lived in such squalor. Most American children haven’t, with 87 percent of American households owning AC in 2009, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The rest of the world thinks we’re stupid and coddled, a Washington Post article surmises. A University of Michigan researcher told the Post Americans prefer an average temperature of 70 in the summer, while Europeans set their thermostats higher in the summer and lower in the winter.
Admittedly, either setting would be lower than the 85 my house decided to settle on when no one originally noticed the AC stopped pumping Wednesday. That’s essentially what the high temperatures were for each of those days.
Luckily, we’ve climbed out of what my middle daughter called a “third-world” situation. The refrigerator returned to action Friday. The AC returned to work Saturday, with a key part to truly fixing it arriving sometime next week.
That should give us all some time to acknowledge how much more comfortable we are knowing that Dr. John Gorrie played a role in our lives.
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