Sunday, January 10, 1965
Sun. Jan. 10
We only had 5 in S.S. class. Bea came, Mrs. Hall still sitting with Sandra Beeker. Ray and Dady worked on pig pen A.M. Baited corn. Girls each racked a line. Went to Dady’s after Ray put out. Sandra Gary and family were there. All rode Destry. Freddie, Maude, Bobby came, also Bud and Christine. Another beautiful day. The hibiscus are so pretty on the lot. Didn’t even turn on electric blankets.
The house the family lived in had no air conditioning, heat or insulation.
According to a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the percentage of homes with air conditioning in the South (which includes Florida) was 21% in 1960. It certainly wasn’t common in rural Florida.
Peggy describes the construction of the house: “The house was just made up of boards nailed to the frame of the house. There was no strength to the walls and they didn’t dampen sound. The boards didn’t even go all the way to the ceiling! My sister and I would stand on our beds and shove things back and forth to one another.”
“The house was up off the ground and sometimes in the night you could hear the armadillos us under the house bumping around. One night Daddy got so annoyed by this that he got up and shot the armadillo under the house. No one was happy because then there was a dead armadillo under the house. Mama was always afraid he’d shoot the gas line and we’d all go boom!”
There were other challenges. Peggy explains, “the bathroom wasn’t in the main part of the house—we had to go out on the porch to get to it! In winter, it was too cold for us little girls to go out so mama would put a thunder jug in the inside hallway.”
While Florida doesn’t experience extremely cold temperatures, it does get cold enough to be extremely uncomfortable in a house with no heat.
