Feeling the Heat

I can’t claim to be as functional in funk as Aretha Franklin, who once stopped in the midst of singing at the Apollo Theater; said, “I feel air”; and walked off the stage. She was convinced that the faux breeze known as air-conditioning was bad for her pipes, and would have none of it.

Nor am I as summer hardy as William Faulkner, who refused to allow AC in his house in Oxford, Mississippi. The gripes: “There are no seasons at all any more, with interiors artificially contrived at sixty degrees in summer and ninety degrees in winter, so that moss-backed recidivists like me must go outside in summer to escape cold and in winter to escape heat.” (The day after Faulkner’s funeral, his wife had a window unit installed. Now that nobody lives there, the house has central air, for people who come on tours to get a feel for the man.)