The Fan

My Aunt and Uncle had lots of money compared to us, and my uncle drove a Cadillac. That was the sign of those times. I have a Cadillac today probably because my uncle had one. However, I loved these people and they were very lovely to me and my family.

In the mid 50’s, they had the Cadillac of big, honking window or floor fans, a mahogany Curtis Mathis Cooler. It was a real Texas classic (that’s where it was made). It had a wooden front grill with wooden fins and cost somewhere near $100 in the early 50’s!

I guess when they got air conditioners; they gave their fan to us. It was the pride of my parents, especially my father, to have this big, wooden fan, put up next to a window at night and it would allow the air to be drawn in our open windows and make us all cool. It had wooden legs so you did not have to install it, just move it around from day use (right on you) to night use by a window.

After my parents moved in 1967, they had air conditioning and somewhere later on the fan came to me. We had it in our house and it would not be a story because I had no idea where it went. However, in 1978 we moved to Michigan, into an air conditioned house and would have had no reason to move a large fan 500 miles.

As it turns out, much to my surprise, my old friend Alan Forman took the fan when he moved to New York. He says it worked for a couple of years for him and was tossed out somewhere in the early 80’s.

The legs had been removed by me at some point, and this fan had worked continuously (except for the winters) from the early 50’s when my uncle probably got it, to 1955 when we got it until 1980 when Alan got rid of it!

That fan worked for at least 30 years!