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Wiring an outdoor ceiling fan to a heavy duty extension cord?

I am making my second attempt at wiring up a fan for an out door deck. There is no power on the existing deck, so I'm using a 12 gauge extension cord to get power to the fan. I tried before: I followed the directions and basically ran black to black (hot), white to white (neutral) and green to green (ground). The fan didn't work. Nothing. Nada. I used a tester and confirmed that I had power to the black (hot) wire. I tinkered with the fan for a while and finally took it back to Home Depot. I bought a different fan and I'm going to try again. Any suggestions. (besides "don't be crazy! you can't do that!) Thank you.

The little switch on the far is for changing the direction of rotation of the motor so the fan will blow down (Switch down) and up (in the up position). With the meter you can see whether the wiring at the outlet is right by connecting the meter between the small slot and the ground (round) hole on the 3 prong receptacle. You should read 115 or 120 (more or less). Then between the long slot and ground you should read nothing. Then to be sure, you should read between the small slot and the long slot and again you should read 115 to 120. Check the fans wires, you may have 4. Red, Black, White and green. Just twist the red and black together (red is for the light unit which you don't really need). You had the wiring correct before. Hang the fan without the blades and after making the connections, try it and make sure the slide switch is all the way up or all the way down. If the extension cord plug is pre- assembled the Black is hot, white is neutral and green is ground (same as the receptacle).Plug it in. The fan should work.
Last of all make sure all the connections are really tight. The pull chain will control the speed.