When I was growing up the last thing I took for granted was HVAC.
I grew up in a small house and yet when it came to air conditioning there were only two rooms that had it.
The master bedroom where my parents slept had a window air conditioner. The only other place in the house that had a window air conditioner was the living room. Thus, on hot summer days, me and my brother would hang out in the living room until the worst of the heat would pass and the evening would come to cool things down a bit. Don’t get me wrong we still played outside during these days. There is little that would deter us from having a lot of fun. However, there were some days when the most we could do was sprawl out on the living room floor as close to the air conditioner as possible and just bask in the coolness. You know how a really hot and humid summer day can take the energy right out of you? On some of the warmer summer nights, we would leave our bedroom door wide open so that the air conditioning in the adjacent living room could reach somewhat into our bedroom. These days, now that I have my own house I don’t have to live in such conditions. I have central air conditioning that reaches to every nook and cranny of my home. My wife thought it was funny how spoiled I felt with such “modern” air conditioning. She was used to such things, but I found it to be a treasure.