There are a lot of aspects of my upbringing that I miss dearly.
I remember drinking Kool-Aid in the summer heat and lighting sparklers during 4th of July barbecues and cookouts. We also had those popsicles that come in the plastic sleeves that you could buy at the grocery store for dirt cheap. Those were always a huge hit with my friends from down the street whenever they’d come over to my house to play street hockey out front. Unfortunately, at the time we lived in a small house in a rural area and couldn’t afford much else. We had a gas furnace in the basement with a small set of air ducts that ran the length of the floor from one end of the house to the other. Despite having central heat, we did not have central cooling. We had two window air conditioners, one in my parents’ bedroom and another in the living room. To move the cold air around our house, we used these old oscillating fans that you can set to stay stationary and blow in a single direction, or the other option would make the fan slowly revolve from side to side in a 180 degree angle. These little fans were extremely effective at moving cold air around the house for the air conditioner. Even though I have an efficient central air conditioner now, I still think of those fans fondly. When I saw a few on sale at a local retail store for an unbelievably cheap price, I went ahead and bought them anyway. If all they do is remind me of my childhood, they’re still worth the purchase.