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Fielder’s Choice
By Barry Burleson Worst time for no AC It was not the best of weekends. The forecasters called for temperatures in the upper 90s – a heat advisory for early June. We
did not have ball games. I was looking forward to a relaxing weekend at
home in the air conditioning – a few “honey-do” chores, a nap maybe
Saturday and Sunday, and watching some baseball – specifically the
Atlanta Braves and the Alabama Crimson Tide. Saturday morning, Pam cooked breakfast. Then we started some household chores, which for me including vacuuming and putting some boxes into the attic. Working inside, my clothes were suddenly wet with sweat. The
air conditioner was running but we noticed the house wasn’t getting
cooler. There was some cool air coming from the vents – but perhaps not
as cool as normal. We knew the temperatures
outside were the hottest of the year. We also knew we had operated the
stove, the dryer and vacuum cleaner and opened up the extremely hot
attic a few times. Maybe, just maybe, it was just taking the house a bit longer to cool back down. But things did not get any better. I’m no “fix-it” guy. Pam is better at those type things than yours truly. We tried a few things ourselves. Saturday afternoon, I decided to get out of the house and mow the backyard. It was much hotter outside. By Saturday evening, I was on the telephone seeking advice about the problem with the air conditioning. Nothing we tried worked. I
can’t recall the last time I used a box fan. Thank goodness, we bought
Emma one last year prior to church camp. She found it and brought it
upstairs and Pam and I made it through the night with a box fan beside
our bed. Downstairs, where the children slept, was OK. You could tell a big difference in the temperature about halfway up the stairs. Sunday,
good friend Ronnie Day, who has often come to our rescue when such
problems arise, brought Freon. But he also noticed rather quickly that
lack of Freon was not the problem. Something was stuck or locked or whatever. We couldn’t get it solved Sunday. Sunday night Pam and I wised up and slept downstairs ourselves. Even
our inside dog Josie was having trouble with the heat. We made sure she
had plenty of water and moved her downstairs for a period of time just
to cool her off. I’m writing this about mid-day
Monday. It appears we will get it all solved today – with a price tag
that I really did not need to pay right now. But when summer’s extreme
heat arrives a week early – you basically do whatever it takes to get
your air conditioning going. The Bible lesson Sunday morning was on trust. We
were talking about some of the things in our day-to-day activities that
we take for granted and trust will work – like the brakes on our cars. I thought I could trust that thermostat when I switched it to “on” too – which proves the point of the lesson. We can’t put our trust in material things – even AC.
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