My dad was a real manly, macho type of chick.
She lived on a ranch, similar to the a single where she had been raised, & she did everything himself.
She had a large family, mostly to help out with chores, & both of us grew food, hunted, fished, maintained our own freshwater well, & managed our own farm equipment. If something broke, both of us had more than one possibilities — service it ourselves, or learn how to survive without it, because calling a service tech was out of the question. Our farm loft was too seasoned to have a/c, because when it was built A/C did not even exist. There is a large oil furnace down in the basement, along with a water boiler, so the winters were never a problem, but the summers were rough. The only form of cooling both of us had was a unquestionably seasoned & decrepit box-style a/c that both of us kept in storage for most of the year. When the Summer heat settled in, our dad would drag the seasoned a/c out of the barn & install it in the window of the home office. After breakfast, for an hour or more than one but no longer, both of us would turn on the A/C & sit together enjoying the brief respite from the heat & humidity. That was the only real cut both of us got, & the morning that machine stopped cooling was a concerned morning indeed. My dad told our siblings & I that if both of us wanted it to labor again, both of us needed to service the a/c ourselves, because there wasn’t money to service it.