When Alison Fullerton and her husband Jay lived in Europe for three years, it was gripped by a series of summer heatwaves. The couple ― who have since moved back to Tennessee ― bought a cute, portable air conditioner they called R2D2 because their house in Stuttgart, Germany, had no air conditioning.
“There was just an attitude that we all have to do our part to take care of mother earth,’’ Alison Fullerton said. “If we complained, they’d say, ‘It’s not bad. It’s only a couple weeks of the year.’ Americans want everything to be easy.”