30A vs 30C

There’s nothing like knocking a couple of bare wires together to discover that your entire apartment runs on a single 30-amp fuse in the basement of the corner variety store downstairs, which closes at 11:00, and that short of replacing that fuse with a penny or something, you’d be pushing your luck every time you turned on that air conditioner you were planning to buy, stuck in the dark by the tiniest window in the still stifling air with nothing to do but to suffer through a long summer day’s worth of heat seeping slowly through the flat, tar roof.

House At Dusk, 1935, Edward Hopper