above the door

 This a a reflection of the age of the house and not my age.  When I was eight years old my family moved from an almost new three bedroom house in New Haven to a 100 year old small, one story farm house on five acres. My mother had read a book called "Five Acres and Independence" and my parents were giving it a try.  They did keep their day jobs.  I was reminded earlier today of a nifty feature of that old house.  I was watching a Perry Mason rerun.  The fact that I enjoy these really is a reflection of my age.  In one scene, Perry climbed up on a chair in a hotel hallway, and peeked in the transom to see if anyone was in the room.  Do you remember transoms?  They are narrow rectangular windows mounted horizontally above doors.  The real reason for these wonderful little windows was ventilation.  We did not have air conditioning in our old house but we never missed it. With ten foot ceilings and all three (we had three exterior doors) transoms open there were always breezes circulating through the house.  I'm sure it helped that we lived in the country where the wind was almost always blowing, but still it was a very clever invention.  One thing we didn't have.  In another Perry Mason episode, Paul Drake, the handsome detective, used a boxy periscope to look out the transom window over another hotel room door, to see who was in the hallway.  I'm sure my brother and I would have loved to have one of those periscopes.