Another town, another alley.

The thing that caught my eye here was that air conditioner and the way it broke up the rhythm of the arched, boarded doors and windows.

Which reminded me of my childhood home. It was cooled by one of these kinds of units, which work by the cooling effects of air blowing across water. We called them evaporative coolers, or evap coolers; in New Mexico they are known as swamp coolers, for reasons that escape me since the state is relatively swamp-free and anyway, these things don’t work if it’s humid outside. (I’ll let Wikipedia explain it in a lot more detail.)

When these coolers first come on, for just a minute the air smells like the first drops of a rain shower. I remember that smell, and the white-noise effect of the fan, and the way my mom always opened the window in the front bedroom just a little bit to draw the cooled air through, and how I could sit on the porch and feel that air blowing through the window screens.

Amherst, Texas
photographed 5.24.2013