Northern Homes had no A/C
A furnace was a necessity.
I was born in the northeast and did not move to the southeast until I was about 8 years old. I am the youngest child of six siblings. We lived in a huge house up north, and we had not only a big house with five bedrooms, but we also had a swimming pool and we were located on a golf course. My mom and dad bought the house extra cheap because it had sat vacant for years and had been ransacked and needed a ton of work. By the time I came along, the house was lovely. One thing we did not have, though, was air conditioning. You would think with a house like that, there would be a/c, but there was not. It was not unusual, either. No houses that I knew of had air conditioning. In fact, I never even knew that because I was just a kid, and air conditioning was not something that I even knew about. It just wasn’t necessary or common up there. Everyone did have a furnace, though. A furnace was a necessity. I can remember drying my wet mittens on the radiator when I came in from playing in the snow. I’m sure that is not safe, but we were a braver lot back then. Anyway, the house probably has a/c now, but I never knew what it was until we moved to the south after my dad died and my mom could not afford to keep the house. Fuel oil furnaces were very costly, and it was too much for her.