I do enjoy being able to travel to Las Vegas from Orange County, Calif. in three-and-a-half hours in air-conditioned comfort--a far cry from our first trip there in 1961 in a 1958 Edsel Villager station wagon over two-lane roads, a trip that took about six hours.
Motorists in those days often drove through the desert at night to avoid the heat, as we did in August, 1963, when we left the LA area at around eight PM on a trip to Blythe, Calif., which we reached well after midnight.
We used window-mounted swamp coolers for long summer trips. They had a baffle inside that absorbed water from a tank in the bottom of the unit, then the incoming air would be cooled by the baffle. But the baffle would dry out from time to time, so there was a string you pulled to rotate the baffle back down into the water. The fun was that if you pulled the string hard and fast enough. the driver of the car, or the passenger if the unit was on the passenger window, would receive a tsunami of about a pint of water upside their head. Good times.
Yes, the open windows on vehicles w/o AC, One vacation the head scarf, only worn to keep the hair from my eyes and mouth, NOT for religious or faux religious reasons continually blowing off the mane and out the window. My dad almost gave me up for adoption after the countless times he had to stop the car, turn around and I got out to search for the blown scarf.
Also used to carry a flax canvas water bag hanging on the front bumper. Across the Mojave, had water cooled down to 90 degrees on those night trips.