The Deleted Scenes - Inside the Box (Fan)
I wrote recently at The Bulwark about box fans, how it’s very hard to find a good one today, and why I love using them. Everybody pretty much uses air conditioning now—and I like air conditioning! But there are many spring, fall, and late summer days, or at least evenings, when it would be much cheaper, and just as pleasant, to open the windows and circulate the air with a good old-fashioned box fan. I think I’ll be reading further about box fans and trying to figure out more about their evolution and decline. I like writing about devices—like here or here—and I might do something like that in a follow-up post. But what started this piece, actually, had nothing to do with fans, per se, but rather this observation my wife and I had visiting various open houses in Fairfax County, Virginia. From the Bulwark piece:
Growing up, we always used air conditioning, but on nice days we’d throw the windows open, and on cool nights I’d set up a box fan in my window, open other doors and windows, and get a serious cross-breeze going. My parents would put a fan, in the opposite direction of mine, in their window. I remember a certain excitement in that little routine. It was kind of like starting a fire. There’s something rewarding about working with your hands, doing something resourceful and practical, and seeing a result. It was something we did together. It’s adjacent to an anecdote that I’m now in danger of repeating too often:
A few readers thought I was tut-tutting them for using air conditioning, but no, not at all. I was just lamenting that the status of air conditioning as the go-to cooling technology makes it harder not to use it, even when it isn’t the best option. It’s just not worth making and selling big, heavy box fans, because the market just isn’t big enough anymore. Now the cheap ones you can still buy work well enough, but they’re louder and don’t move as much air. And they just look and feel…cheap. You can see this with pretty much every product on its way out, as it reaches obsolescence—tube TVs, typewriters, cassette players. One or two perfunctory models might still be made for years, but almost never with the same deliberate design and level of quality. In fact, I even made the point that it can be anachronistic, and even a consumerism of its own, to look back at things that were, in their time, the boring, standard, mass-produced products of their day:
Nonetheless, a sturdy fan—metal frame, metal blades, strong motor—really does something useful, and as far I have ever seen, no retail store still sells any fan like that. As a kid, my dad’s family had a General Electric steel-blade box fan that was electrically reversible—meaning you could blow air in or out with the turn of a knob. I’ve never even seen that feature on a consumer-grade fan. That was a very nice model, but it was from an ordinary retail store. And to this day my dad remembers how much air that thing could move. My grandmother gave it away years ago, because almost everybody did, if they didn’t just put them out on the curb. Today that fan would be worth a lot of money, as are many plainer models from that era. I’m a big garage sale/thrift store guy, and I have never, ever seen one of them. It’s almost shocking how something so ubiquitous could nearly disappear. It’s interesting how many of the replies and comments on this piece described strong feelings. It seemed like most people with a memory didn’t like fans—they wished they had AC, their room got the hot air instead of the cool outdoor air, they remembered sweating all night without AC, etc. People describing current habits mostly enjoyed how a fan helped them to take advantage of the cool outdoor air. I’m not sure that means anything, but it’s interesting. As noted above, I will probably be revisiting this topic. But in the meantime, read the whole piece! Related Reading: Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive: over 400 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this! You’re a free subscriber to The Deleted Scenes. For the full experience, become a paid subscriber. |
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