Be Cool: A brief history of actual and metaphorical coolness

As a kid in the 1960s and ear­ly 70s, I remem­ber that “being cool” was being tuned in to what was going on; per­haps to some it meant being turned on by drugs. 

Although Kool men­thol cig­a­rettes were first intro­duced as a brand in 1933, it was about 1973 when I remem­ber notic­ing the brand. I bought a pack out of a cig­a­rette machine across the street from where I and oth­ers were rehears­ing the play Alice in Wonderland. Before fin­ish­ing the pack, I remem­ber think­ing that Kool wasn’t cool. 

I nev­er bought anoth­er pack of cig­a­rettes. Part of this deci­sion came from the fact that my sib­lings and I were hid­ing my dad’s box­es of cig­a­rettes because we felt it was uncool for dads to smoke any­thing at all—though admit­ted­ly we nev­er con­ceived of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he or mom ever smoked mar­i­jua­na; they just weren’t that cool. 

But also, dur­ing the 1960s car air con­di­tion­ing became more pop­u­lar than sim­ply leav­ing the win­dows open and call­ing that “air con­di­tion­ing.” Indeed, the phrase came to mean cool air, it meant keep­ing car occu­pants cool­er than the 90 degrees it was out­side — by a lot. According to a Washington Post arti­cle, September 21, 2023, that quotes the International Energy Agency “more than 90%” of homes in the United States have, as they term it, “arti­fi­cial cooling.” 

But it hasn’t always been that way, of course. In ear­li­er cen­turies heat meant the wealthy had tall-ceilinged hous­es that allowed heat to rise and cool air to stay down. Windows were tall and wide in those hous­es. Poorer peo­ple had win­dows that were placed on oppo­site sides of a house, or of a room, to allow air to move more freely and pos­si­bly cool rooms down. 

Nearly all fam­i­lies slept with open win­dows at night. During the day, fans were a help­ful inno­va­tion. At first the fans were hand­held instru­ments, often of light wood or card­board which when moved in front of the face in church or school — and some­times both on the same mid­week day — to keep a sin­gle per­son, some­times a few peo­ple, cool, if the fan was waved with appro­pri­ate vigor. 

With the com­ing of elec­tric­i­ty to homes and busi­ness­es, first came fans with fast spin­ning blades — no arm or hand move­ments nec­es­sary — and even­tu­al­ly air con­di­tion­ers with arti­fi­cial refrig­er­ants capa­ble of cool­ing whole busi­ness­es and lat­er col­lec­tions of whole busi­ness­es (i.e. shop­ping malls). 

By the 1980s in-car air con­di­tion­ing was pret­ty much stan­dard equipment. 

In 2009, accord­ing to one Urban Dictionary author (Knicks 2810) a cool per­son is always “them­selves” — some­one who doesn’t “care how oth­er peo­ple view what they say or do.” By this def­i­n­i­tion there are a lot of cool peo­ple in the Congress of the United States. 

But today there is a great deal of need for cool­ing sys­tems because as the envi­ron­ment heats up, as wild fires and inter­nal com­bus­tion engines heat up our atmos­phere and change our cli­mate, as more cities stop build­ing and main­tain­ing civic swim­ming pools, as brawls break out in the halls of pub­lic offi­cial­dom — from schools and school boards to library trustee meet­ings to state hous­es, pub­lic agen­cies, and Congress — to kids ball­games and National Football League sta­di­ums, stay­ing cool becomes hard­er and harder. 

Be cool. Stay cool. In this day and time, to stay cool: run your air con­di­tion­ing and, per­haps except to vote, stay away from hot­heads and the places they hang out.