To Joan Goodbody:

This process is exactly how the old swamp coolers worked in the California
Central Valley and in Arizona, and probably in Florida too.  There were
portable swamp coolers for cars, too, in fact I recently sold one from our
family garage at a historical society auction. You added water to them just
like a radiator, fit them to your partly opened car window aided by struts
that fastened on the door, then as you drove the moving air passed over fins
that twirled over soaked membranes made of woven jute inside the reservoir
and moved the cooled outside air into your car through the partly opened
window (while water dripped all over your car door). Crude, but both my
husband and I remember as kids how nicely it cooled the car on those endless
trips. Haven't seen one in use since about 1951, except in Tucson where
swamp coolers were still in use through the 1970s (at least they were in
cash-poor student housing!). Now it sounds like an excellent environment for
Legionnaire's disease, but we're all still walking around.

Check with museums in Bakersfield and Tucson, surely their ephemera
collections contain manufacturers' instructions for operation of swamp
coolers. And weren't there desert bags that tied to the front of your car to
send cool air across the radiator?  They were made of jute also.

Micki Ryan
Curator
Highline Historical Society
Burien WA

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