My aging air-conditioning unit has been on my mind a lot lately. With two sons in their final year of college, the old savings account has been taking many hits, so a new unit is not in the budget. We almost feel the need to add votive candles to get it through this hot summer.

What’s also been on my mind is how spoiled we have become with creature comforts in the past half century. My generation was probably the last to go through school in buildings without air conditioning. Our middle school teachers would just open windows for air circulation and turn on a box fan if it was hot enough and the class was fortunate enough to have one.

But we didn’t know any difference. A constant, light sweat and the stink of middle school boys were just facts of life in Texas. That really hasn’t changed, even as average temperatures have risen some since those days in the 1970s.

But now we’ve become acclimated to the constant chill of air and we now seem to recoil any time we have to go outside between 10 a.m. and about 8 p.m. Christine and I like our morning coffee on the porch on weekends and the occasional nightcap out there. But hot coffee once the day warms up is just unpleasant outside, and we have to wait later and later for the temperature to drop to enjoy evening beverages.

Our ancestors likely suffered through the same, only they probably did it in long-sleeve shirts and wool suits. Their solace on porches was probably just a hand-held cardboard fan.

Hurricane Beryl and the lack of reliable electricity infrastructure really gave it to coastal residents a week ago. My friends at the Port Aransas paper cleverly headlined their main story as “Storm ‘Beryl’ly misses us.” Nice one.

But further east, Beryl made its mark and caused huge disruption. Our friends at newspapers in Galveston and in Brazoria counties lost power for a full week with the rest of the communities. The Galveston County Daily News had a generator but it’s not powerful enough to crank up a newspaper press. So they trucked it up to their sister paper in Lufkin to print, a fourhour drive each way. At The Facts newspaper in Brazoria County, they had a similar drive to their sister paper in New Braunfels to print.

And while papers were delivered back to them, delivery drivers were often hampered by blocked roads and empty houses after people had evacuated. Some of their delivery strategy for that week was offering free newspapers and cold bottles of water for their subscribers and customers. These organizations also dropped the paywalls on their websites so their readers could get the most up-to-date and accurate information about repair progress, continued outages or recurring bad weather.

Our hats off to all of them. Other businesses in those areas had to deal with no power and few customers. How does one run a business in the dark?

CenterPoint Energy is having its time in the hot seat for its lack of preparedness and what seems a total failure in its public relations department. When the storm hit, the utility posted “check back for frequent updates,” then posted nothing for the next three days as customers went without power. During the 2021 “Freezemageddon” throughout Texas, it became apparent the state’s utilities needed some upgrades, but we seem to regularly kick that can down the road, then our leaders act indignant when the power goes out.

Coastal residents are used to dealing with storms, but trying to sleep for five, six or seven nights in the muggy, hot nights proves a challenge after getting spoiled by decades of air conditioning.

Back out here in the Hill Country, it’s hot but we’re not dealing with power outages that a storm brings. But Christine and I are sipping our drinks on the porch and sending up a prayer for that aging A/C unit.

ken@fredericksburgstandard.com