But hose and shade trees (and a hot house with fans only).

inflatable.

So, it was rare and only because my Mom would teach swimming on occasion there

an indoor pool where lessons were offered. But my mother said it was too expensive--I believe it was a dime. My cousin used to sneak me in. It was outside and useful when it rained

fortunate, we might get a quarter to go to the air conditioned movie theater.

We only had one sprinkler, and that was for my dad’s garden!

Leon Sinks Geological Area - Wikipedia https://share.google/oHmtEJ8kiJdajNrfK

Big Dismal – 100 foot drop to the water which drops another 100 feet underwater with a cave entrance at 80 feet down.[5]

I only learned of the cave system in the 80s

in my tighty-whities!

Miserable. Fans just moved the hot air around. Lows often above 80, with highs 95-102. Ocean was fairly near, but rarely got there. Mostly did field work on the farm. About 5 miles to nearest paved road so we were fairly isolated. By the mid 1950s we got a paved road, indoor plumbing, TV, and finally a telephone.

"It's not the heat; it's the humidity." BS! Mold and bugs everywhere.

and I got whole house AC about 35 years ago. What a delight.

I'd take ice from the freezer, carry it up to my small attic room, and put it in the swamp cooler my parents gave me that was on my desk by the small open window.

The problem, on reflection, now that I know about thermodynamics, was the freezer/refrigerator was in the kitchen, that was directly under my room. The freezer put out heat of course, which I didn't know or recognize but I certainly remember thinking the swamp cooler didn't do all that much.

I may have gotten a small amount of cooling from the evaporation of the water, but I recognize now that it was extremely inefficient to be running the refrigerator below my room.

That room was always hot.

I drove by the house where I grew up a few years ago; the new owners extended it quite a bit and seem to have put in a central air system.

They needed it.

I was always covered in sweat in that room. Damn it was hot.

In my late adolescence, early teens, my parents bought an above ground swimming pool, one of those four feet jobs. For a few years I'd jump in it, but it got boring.

When I was old enough to drive; it was the beach. There were always available beaches on Long Island, and the question was North Shore or South Shore.

still very hot. We bought a room AC for my son.

When I was a boy, air conditioning was something the rich people had, not us.

many couldn't afford. Thank you NNadir.

There was a wall unit in the corner of the den of the little house we lived in until Dec. 1964. We moved into a house with central heat and air then, and us kids spent a lot of time in the basement, which was cooler than upstairs in the summer. Back in those days, I don't remember feeling near as hot when outside, as you would now.
Today, for example, it's 83 with an 88 heat index and 69% humidity. Too hot for me to do anything plus we had heavy rain last night, hence the high humidity.

night it did. We never had AC in the house. Lived there until I was in 9th grade.

... that had a sprinkler. To walk there on a hot summer day seemed to take forever.

My mother hated the beach, but a friend's mother loved it and would take us until we were old enough to go on our own. For the days we didn't go to the lake, there was the hose. When I was about 9, my parents bought a decently sized pool that my father took down in winter. It was about 3 feet deep and 8 feet wide so my friends and I swam in that often.

When I was in high school, my father joined the local Elks Club. It was in a beautiful district and a 10-minute bike ride from home. They had a great in-ground pool.

Creston pool was about a mile away, a hot ride on a bicycle but worth it.

My Mother had a different way to cool off. She was one of six children of a legally blind single mother, growing up in the middle of the Great Depression. Her Father was killed in 1922 in an industrial accident, a cave-in.

So the family had almost no resources, say to escape the heat. She found, though, that if she let cold water run from the faucet over her wrists for a minute or two, it had a cooling effect.

I have tried it, and she was right.

So much fun to run through it on a hot summer day. ☀️

slept on a hammock on the patio. During the day, a dip in the luke warm irrigation pond was as good as it got.