Night Air and Billowing Curtains
By: Robert Carlson
Tags: Curtains, Rain, Architecture, Short Story, Oakland

Night Air and Billowing Curtains

Vignettes of Growing up in Oakland

Customs, technology and architecture evolve over time. Sometime it is for the better and sometime the worse. Mostly the change is a mixed bag and each person must select what they want from what is available.

In the 1960s when I lived in the Schenley Farms area of Oakland the houses were “mature” in their repose. I can’t say they were old then as they are now. It was a 40-something year old dwelling made of brick, iron work below the windows and gray slate roof. It had a hearth in every room. The third floor level was a 2nd class design for live in employees and even they had cast iron potbelly stoves for winter heat.

Many houses built in those early decades of the 20thcentury were multi-generational in their design. Parents and children were accompanied by parents of the parents or a spinster aunt. Such was the custom. A custom which gave way to grandparents moving to enterprise housing (read: nursing or retirement home.) Americans also became more mobile than the generation or two before them. Ours was such a 3-generation home that included my maternal grandmother.

Technologies changed too. We went from coal burning basement monsters with tremendous cylindrical arms reaching to every corner of the dark cellar. When natural gas replaced the coal burners, so did electricity replace the gas jet sconces that provided dim illumination to the night air of the quiet evening.

We had no need for air-conditioning. This was especially convenient since A/C did not yet exist for the everyday residential dwelling. What we had were double hung window sashes and windows on two walls of most of the rooms. This was especially true for bedroom.

With A/C the windows remained shut. Never again would a family be out for the day as rain threatened to dampen the festivities and Mom or Dad queried, “it’s going to rain. Did you remember to close the windows?” Before the widespread application of air-conditioning, windows were left open and the rain did blow in making the curtains billow like you see in the B&W film thrillers, interspersed with flashes of lightening and peals of thunder.

There always was the smell of impending rain which telegraphed its arrival. On a hot summer’s night, the rumble of distant thunder might not precede rain. We had the night air to remind us we are part of the earth. Convection currents set up by the hotter air near the ceiling through properly positioned sashes drew in the cooler night air at the bottom. And the curtains billowed.

In a similar way the two windows on adjacent walls acted in concert as the night air blew passed the corner of the house creating a higher pressure at one window and a lower pressure at the other. This effect served to move the wind into the house where one window curtain billowed and the other was sucked up close to the glass or even out the opening. Waking to the impending change of the weather was surreal.

House designers have abandoned the architecture of early 20thcentury design. Homeowners today are more concerned with making their house airtight to keep the heat in and the cold out.

Depending on where exactly one lives, the night sounds were either welcome or something to curse. Back in those heady Oakland days of the ’60s firetrucks, ambulances and police car sirens were not an hourly event. In fact they were rare enough that one was left wondering about who was in peril, where and what the problem was. The 82 Lincoln plied the rails up and down Centre Avenue with a screech here and a clang there. Evenings became quiet interludes between sun down and sun up only occasionally punctuated by “A Fire in the Night.”

Life today is more a 24-hour cycle of activity fueled by gas and electricity, telecommunications and entertainment. We have gained much but so have we lost.