Looks like things improved for you folks in the mid-fifties.
Same with us. I bought my mother a fan and you’d think I gave her a car,she was so pleased. She even called her sister to come over and see it. (These were not stupid women,they were just women that had little).
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Wow, does that bring back memories. My dad got the fan part from somewhere and made a window fan. Houses were made differently back then. A fan could be put in one window blowing out, and would pull in cool night air from another one. When I was in college, one building I had classes in was ac. My dad could fix anything. We had a fireplace in the 2nd farmhouse we lived in. He got a fan or that is what it looked like, made a motor for it, plugged it in and cut trees into logs. He did not need a chainsaw!