This air conditioning topic is a very good one, kudos for bringing it up.
What's interesting is whether cars that came through Mayberry had air
conditioning. They were available on full-sized Fords and Thunderbirds, as
well as Lincolns, as early as 1959, but it's likely the Mayberry squad car
didn't have air. Note the windows are almost always down. (There may be a
stage reason for that, though, lighting issues for instance, but go with me
on this.) Plus, air conditioning was optional in those days and considered a
luxury, and putting it on a government-owned car might have been
considered bad politics. And the squad car was usually the lowest trim level
anyway.
But the lady speeder drove up in a beautiful '61 Thunderbird with
noticeable power window switches, and if it had power windows then it surely
had
air. But she has the top down, so apparently the weather was pleasant enough
that day to drive that way. But what puzzles me is, when Malcolm Tucker
first drives up, the windows are down in his '63 Lincoln Continental. That
car *surely* had air conditioning, but the windows are down, and yet when
he gets out he seems to break into a sweat almost immediately, indicating he
had the air on. Could he have run the AC while the windows were down?
In any event the inference I get from all of this is, Mayberry's climate
was apparently fairly mild and pleasant, and high humidity days like we're
used to here in Alabama, or the one the day Malcolm Tucker drove into down
(in an episode, oddly enough, that aired in January) were rare. So perhaps
they hadn't yet decided AC was a necessity?
Dixon
P.S. I recently watched the hilarious first season of "Car 54, Where Are
You?" Notice on the dash of Toody's and Muldoon's Plymouth police cruiser,
there's a small fan. Wonder why they didn't have one of those in the
squad car in warmer-climated Mayberry?
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