The Summer Of 1915

Having only a window unit air conditioner in our house, we are developing an appreciation of what the summer of 1915 might have felt like in this house. I don't know what the actual temperatures were in 1915, but there was another summer not too many years later that must have been similar to the hot weather we're having now. It was 1921.

Since most of our evenings are spent either indoors (sticky) or outside working on removing the old deck (downright sweaty), we are getting a little dose of early 20th-century Americana, particularly the decades of hot summers that were spent in this house. My curiosity got the best of me, so I started looking for weather archives online. The only records I could find for 1915 were accompanied by a request for a hefty $34.95 access fee to the information. NoThankYouVeryMuch.

I did find, however, some old newspapers on the Library of Congress website. One of the newspapers from the 1920's was The Columbia Evening Missourian. The front page of each edition reported the weather for the day. The print dates available varied, but I was able to find an edition that came right from the steamy summer of 1921. July 12th, to be exact. Warren G. Harding was president.

The high on July 12, 1921 was 94 degrees. The forecast for today was 95 degrees, although I'm not sure what the actual high ended up being. Regardless, it was hot.

One of the things that must have made the summers more bearable years ago were the first and second-floor sleeping porches. The first-floor porch had windows added (along with lots of rough cedar paneling) sometime in the 1970's, but the upstairs sleeping porch is still pretty much intact. There are a few casement windows, and each one is flanked by a pair of shutters. Behind each shutter is a screen that can be opened up to ventilate the room.

Quaint as the sleeping porch is, in this heat, I'll take our window-unit-air-conditioned bedroom anytime. Speaking of which, it's about time to get ready for bed. I'd better start up the air conditioner so the bedroom will be bearable once I hit the sack....