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Hank Williams *September 17, 1923

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1948

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Hank Williams.

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YOU ONLY BUILD ME UP TO LET ME DOWN

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Hank Williams Sr, MGM publicity photo, c. 1948.

*Edited from my collection, of hoarded research stuff. Screenshot, probably from Blank Archive, though, Getty Images.

{ 7 of The 12 days of Christmas Challenge. }

Back in Hank’s time, traveling was tough, air conditioning was in its developmental stages. Instead, they had an early version, called a “car cooler” or “swamp cooler,” which was a sideways window-mounted cylinder; when the cooler was filled with water it’d evaporate cool air inside the vehicle, Hank was determined to have one. The problem is it worked well in dry climates, like deserts, not so much in humid climates, like a bayou.

You know, Hank has been elevated to being almost a mythical-like figure, that it’s hard to imagine him as a normal dude, I like this story for that.

“One summer day, the temperature rose higher and higher inside the car, and Hank kept pulling the gadget’s ‘saturation cord’ to get more water to evaporate. Finally, when the temperature climbed over the hundred mark, recalls Jerry Rivers, ‘he gave the cord a violent, desperate pull, and the entire two-gallon water supply discharged into the side of his head and onto the front seat,’ Hank proceeded to stomp the hell out of the cooler, and on the return trip, he left it on the door-step of the place where he bought it.”

Excerpt from ‘Sing a Sad Song: The Life of Hank Williams’ by Roger M. Williams.