Having grown up in Arizona, I look at those photos and feel the actual heat.
In those outdoor shots, where Nancy is kind of squinting in the direction of the camera - I know that light as a physical pressure on the skin. When they are indoors, looking wilted and exhausted, I know that feeling, too. No air conditioning in the Witter home means a specific kind of oppressive warmth that isn't there in the later photos - like those 1960s gatherings where my dad is wearing a trench coat by the fireplace.
We used to make fun of Grandma for keeping her thermostat at 65 all year, but I definitely get why she did that. It wasn't just a luxury for her - it was an escape from growing up in the unrelieved blast furnace of Arizona.
That's why I laugh so hard when Jason Lee shows up in the film Dogma playing a demon, and the first thing he does on Earth is crank down the thermostat:
I love how each of these photos seem so emblematic of their times.
Having grown up in Arizona, I look at those photos and feel the actual heat.
In those outdoor shots, where Nancy is kind of squinting in the direction of the camera - I know that light as a physical pressure on the skin. When they are indoors, looking wilted and exhausted, I know that feeling, too. No air conditioning in the Witter home means a specific kind of oppressive warmth that isn't there in the later photos - like those 1960s gatherings where my dad is wearing a trench coat by the fireplace.
We used to make fun of Grandma for keeping her thermostat at 65 all year, but I definitely get why she did that. It wasn't just a luxury for her - it was an escape from growing up in the unrelieved blast furnace of Arizona.
That's why I laugh so hard when Jason Lee shows up in the film Dogma playing a demon, and the first thing he does on Earth is crank down the thermostat:
https://youtu.be/CasGB8GahZw?si=rn-HX4kRBzxNKttu
"No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater ...than central air."