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Lula and Edward Arnold had a son,
Harold Henry Arnold (1896 - 1986). He married Nadine Hull whose
family's English roots in North America go back to the 17th century.
The family portrait in the yard at
the Monumental street house appears to the left. The picture is
undated, but must have been taken about 1910 when Harold Henry was about
14 years old.
Inside the Monumental Street
house was five rooms, a kitchen, dining area, two bed rooms and bath
room. I have a very vague recollection of the bath room in the
1930's when I was there with my parents who had business with the
tenant, It included the standard three fixtures draining
into a city sewer line. The toilet tank hung in an elevated
position on the wall near the ceiling. The user initiated the
flushing of the facility by pulling down on a chain hanging from the valve
on the tank. This was called, "pulling the chain" an expression
that persisted for another generation after the chain had disappeared from
the appliance.
There were no closets. Clothing, etc was kept in large
stand alone ceiling high wardrobe cabinets and smaller cedar chests.
The design included a high well ventilated roof with out insulation
meaning that the attic cooled rapidly after sunset. With the
screened windows open catching the night breeze the un-air conditioned bed
rooms were tolerable for night sleeping. There are no photos of the
bed rooms in the album.
Before the availability of home air
conditioning the absence of attic and wall installation was a great
advantage. Rooms cooled quickly after dark and if there were large
windows favorably situated with respect to the the prevailing breeze, bed
rooms were quite tolerable at nighttime. This was the situation in
the 1940's when I was in high school. By then we had small electric
fans in the window so window directional exposure was not so important.
In 1980 when I built my little house
in rural Guadalupe county my first intent was to go without air
conditioning. But I installed 6 inch fiber glass insulation in the
attic and 4 inch in the walls with screened double glass windows and a
hunter ceiling fan. It did not work! True the cooling breeze
blew over the bed. But a steady thrust of heat energy radiated
from the ceiling. It was as if a heater was in operation in the
ceiling over the bed. Of course this is exactly what was
happening;. During the day that fiber glass overhead absorbed heat
energy. After dark as it cooled, it slowly released the energy it had
stored. By the middle of April a modern heat pump for both cooling
and heating had been installed.
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