Another Remember When Thanks to James Bond

It’s funny how totally unconnected things can spiral a ‘remember when’ moment out of control.  We were watching the old chestnut, the 1962 James Bond adventure “Dr. No” on television last night.  It’s still one of my favorites despite some of the campy-silly moments and as one reviewer on the Rotten Tomatoes website said “that damned mango tree song.”

There’s one scene in the movie that had us going into a lengthy “remember when” moment.  I don’t know if you have seen the film or not.  James Bond, played by the ever-sexy Sean Connery, is lying in his hotel bed in Jamaica trying to sleep.  The bad guys, in a classic Batman-style move (ie, why kill the enemy outright when you can use some sort of outrageous gimmick?) place a tarantula in his room and it is crawling up his arm.  He managed to squash the tarantula and live to fight the evil Dr. No.

Here’s where the remember when moment kicked in. As we were watching the scene, I realized Bond was sweating. He was tossing and turning in a perspiration-soaked bed.  The room was HOT.

There was no air conditioning.

Now, can you imagine a hotel room, especially in a tropical climate like Jamaica, without air conditioning? Can you imagine your own home without air conditioning in the summer heat? Yet as children, no one we knew had air conditioning!

Late in May, usually around Memorial Day weekend, my mother would go up into the attic and remove three fans. There was a giant box fan that went on my sister Ann’s dresser and blew air between the bunk beds where I slept with my one sister and my oldest sister’s single bed. Mind you, the air never actually made it to any of us – it just sort of blew the hot air out through the window and kept us awake with its noisy clatter.

There were two ancient swivel fans for my brothers. Each of my brothers had these circa 1940 fans.  Only one of my brothers had a night table. The other brother put his fan on a chair next to his bed.

Our rooms were stiffing hot.  Our bedroom, the girls’ room, was next to the walk-in attic, and the heat would build up in the attic during the day and ooze into the bedroom by night. My poor brothers had a bedroom with a huge south-facing window and a slanted roof. The sun beat down all day on the roof and in through their windows until their room was like an oven.

My parents bought an air conditioner for their bedroom in the 1970’s. It was a big deal!  If we wanted to get cool, we had to drag our blankets and pillows downstairs and sleep on the floor of their room. Nope, not even a sleeping bag or an air mattress – we slept on the wooden floor!

Another option was the basement.  That was our playroom and where me and my sisters played during the hot summer days. It was always around 65 degrees down there, although clammy.  We could sleep on the couch or on blankets piled on the floor.

We had no air conditioning at school, either.   It would get so hot in June that you’d sit on the heavily varnished old fashioned desk seats and when you got up, your thighs would stick and peel away like band aids.  Sometimes a kind teacher would bring in a fan.  Most of the time, you just sweated.

The only places that had air conditioning were the public library and church.  My mother thought the AC in church was fantastic – my grandmother used to bring a sweater!

My husband and I compared notes and our childhoods were very similar.  As we watched that scene, we realized we were looking through a window back in time. That movie was made in 1962 and we bought grew up in the years soon after that.  Now can you even imagine a hotel room without AC?  A school?  Your house?

One film moment made us remember our childhoods.  So thank you, 007, for the absolutely weird connection we made between that movie scene and a ‘remember when’ moment!