November 5, 2007 © Thomas J. Kollenborn. All Rights Reserved.
My mother and
I arrived in Apache Junction for the first time in May of 1948. We
lived on the desert southeast of the “Junction” in a small stone cabin.
The stone insulated the cabin quite well from the early morning and
evening heat from the desert. However, there was no insulation from the
old tin roof on the cabin. My father constructed a very primitive cooler
for us. He made it out of two “powder” boxes used for dynamite. He took
a small rotating fan and made it stationary, then anchored it in the
bottom of one of the powder boxes. Large rectangular holes were cut in
two sides and the bottom of the box by my dad. He then carefully
threaded copper tubing, that had holes drilled in it every two inches,
through some burlap material and then hung it around the box covering
the cutout rectangular holes. This allowed the fan to draw air through
the moistened burlap. As the air was pulled through the burlap it was
cooled. My father’s primitive cooler worked well enough for us to
survive a couple weeks until he returned to further improve our
primitive desert swamp cooler. My father was working at the mines in
Christmas, Arizona at the time. It was a long drive in those days over
very primitive roads.
Our cooler worked quite well I thought,
but my mother always claimed it wasn’t cool enough. We had a fifty
gallon barrel beside the house we kept full of water. The cooler
constantly recycled the water in the barrel. Eventually through
evaporation we would have to refill the barrel. Staying cool on the
Arizona desert in the late 1940s was no easy task. Most people today
living under refrigeration couldn’t have survived the summer heat in
those days. If the conditions still existed today Arizona would still be
a ghost town. Air conditioning made the desert habitable in the summer
months.
My father was constantly making
improvements on our cooler. Within a month he built a large cooler out
of four powder boxes and some metal lathe to form a stronger box. This
cooler was twice the size of our first one and twice as efficient. His
work resulted in a much cooler house. Even my mother noticed the
difference. Sometimes with summer temperatures reaching 119 degrees
these primitive desert swamp coolers really made a difference in our
lives. During the hottest part of the day my mother and I stayed indoors
and she read to me or had me read.
A friend of my mother’s came by one day
in the summer heat and she was amazed how cool our little cabin was. The
following summer metal water coolers were being produced. We bought our
first metal cooler in 1952 in Phoenix. During the 1950s there were a
lot of recycled swamp coolers on the desert. Few people spent the summer
on the desert in Apache Junction during the early 1950s. Even seasoned
veterans like Barney Barnard traveled to cooler climates once the summer
heat started.
We hauled all of our water in those
days. I don’t remember exactly when the well on Octotillo Street was
first in use, but I do know we picked up our water there in 1948. The
well was located just north of Pappy Russell’s garage. Eventually they
built a volunteer fire station, the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office and
the justice court at the site. The desert dwellers of the day also
carried “desert water bags” on the front of their cars. The old canvas
water bags had been around since the Model T Ford. The bags were soaked
in water then filled with water and hung on the front of the car. You
could always depend on a cool drink of water from these simple water
bags. Mother also kept an old Olla on the front porch wrapped in burlap
soaked with water. The Olla was a simple method to keep water cool
enough to drink. She always had a clean ladle available to dip the water
out of the Olla. The water container was always covered with a lid to
keep bees, wasps and flies out of it. The water was always cool after
being outside in the heat.
Our life in the Apache Junction desert
was bearable and we survived quite well. During the forties and early
fifties we traveled in the early mornings or late evenings to avoid the
heat of the day. We always had food, water and shelter. However our
living conditions were quite primitive compared to today’s modern living
with refrigeration. I would imagine Apache Junction and much of the
valley wouldn’t exist today if it hadn’t been for the invention of
refrigeration.
One of the most interesting things I
recall as a child was a “window swamp cooler” for an automobile. My Aunt
Nelllie lived in Chloride, Arizona in the 1940s. My Uncle Harvey was
the hoist operator at the mine. Each summer Aunt Nellie and Uncle Harvey
would come to Christmas for a visit.
Uncle
Harvey had a friend of his rig up a blower fan operated by airflow in a
tube with burlap around it. The burlap was kept moist and the blower,
while the car was moving, would produce cool air. Of course it was
mounted on Aunt Nellie’s side of the car. You might say Aunt Nellie in
1945, had one of the earliest passenger cooling devices in Arizona.