Posted on 01/02/2006 5:59:49 PM PST by Lorianne
Sometimes Stephanie Thomas will stroll into the evening cool, set one of the rocking chairs on her front porch in motion and, with her son Gabriel on her lap, watch planes flicker past.
Sometimes she'll watch Gabriel frolic in the nearby park from their porch, lulled into a trance by the rhythmic creak-creak of wood on wood. Or sometimes, after her newborn son, Zachary, falls fast asleep, Thomas, a 37-year-old attorney, will steal away to her upper porch and do, well, absolutely, positively nothing. Nothing, that is, save indulging in what John Buchino calls America's favorite pastime, something in which many Americans have engaged without necessarily knowing they were doing anything. Of course, doing nothing is the very heart of what folks have taken to calling "porching." It's a newly minted term for an old pastime, and Buchino, a professor of pediatrics and pathology at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, prescribes liberal doses of it. "Porching is a way to recharge your batteries," says Buchino, 57, who just happens to have written a book on the subject. It's called "Porching: A Humorous Look at America's Favorite Pastime." In it, by turns humorous and humorously serious, he makes the case for constructive lazing. "Most people in America move at a fast pace, and I don't think we take timeout enough. (Porching) may look like you're doing nothing, but actually you're taking time to relax, reflect and to be conscious of the world around you," he says. Of late, porching has enjoyed a renaissance, due in part to neo-traditional neighborhoods where porches are coming back strongly after falling from favor after World War II. Porching also is earning cheers in mature neighborhoods where people in their 30s are re-embracing a vestigial part of their youth. "Porches are very valuable to building community," Buchino says. "If you're out on your front porch sitting, you're seeing neighbors pass by. They say 'hello' to you and you say 'hi' to them, and over time you get to know them, rather than staying in your car, pushing a button and going into the garage, and never seeing each other." There was a time when Americans didn't tuck themselves away like hermits. Porching became a way of life as porches spread like kudzu across America by the late 19th and early 20th centuries. American porches, Michael Dolan explains in his book "The American Porch: An Informal History of an Informal Place," largely were influenced by the homes slaves built when they first arrived in America around 1620. These essentially African villages featured elevated homes with a roomlike elevated space fronting the outside of the structure. By the 1920s, porches had seen their architectural heyday. After World War II, the spread of air conditioning and cars, and a craving for privacy largely erased porches from America's blueprint, though porching lingered, particularly in small Southern towns. Nostalgia for a gentle, unscripted connection dovetailed with the New Urbanism movement. Neo-traditionalist architecture sprang up in the '80s. Sasha Hefler's affinity for porching runs deep. As a girl, she peddled lemonade from her Wisconsin porch, played rummy with her folks or visited with neighbors who happened by and were obliged to sit a spell and share stories over tall glasses of lemonade. It's a simple pleasure she longed to revisit — and share with her children. Many days, Hefler, a 37-year-old a real estate agent, sits and watches Lawson, 6, Aurora, 9, and Jade, 14, sketch chalk drawings on the sidewalk or chase after their dog. "My kids love to be out there." In "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Zora Neale Hurston wrote: "It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk." "People get together on our porches sharing stories," Hefler says. "We kind of swap porches — whoever has the food or something to drink. It's always impromptu, and it sort of becomes an extended family." That sense of extended family through porching captivated Thomas and her husband, Myron, 33. "Even when my house was being built," she says, "I met half of my neighbors because they were sitting on the porch." For many, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks helped focus the misty sense of connection, she believes. "People realized how little they know about their neighbors," she says. "People have an interest in going back to smaller communities, where people live, and fraternizing with the people around them. Part of that is the return of porches that encourage neighborliness." There's debate in porching circles about the merits of front porches versus back porches, porches versus decks, porticos versus stoops. Never mind that many people chat up passers-by from their garages. Which raises another question: Does "garaging" pass porching muster? As long as you're outdoors and communing, you can't go wrong, Buchino says.
I love my porch. I even have ceiling fans on the porch for those sultry, humid twilights and sunsets. Thanks for posting this wonderful article -- it's right: porchin' is a great way to recharge one's batteries. :)
When I was a kid 50 years ago, almost everyone in the neighborhood went out on the front porch from after supper to around 10 and 11 or later on weekends. The kids played around in the front yards. Some adults walked around and dropped in on various porches. No airconditioning, lousy TV. Everyone knew everyone. Lot of fun talking and listening.
Today, walk down the street and see almost no one outside and all the houses glowing with TV. Still mostly lousy.
It was unseasonably warm here in Eastern Kansas yesterday. My husband and I sat out on our deck with the chiminea going, me wrapped in a blanket and watched the stars come out and shared a bottle of wine. Very nice. I didn't know it had a new name.
I remember when I was a youngster in Texas in the 50s, no one had air conditioning, our neighbor was paralized from polio, so her husband would wheel her out into the front yard ( we couldn't afford porches, lol), several families in the neighborhood would come over and sit on blankets, catch fire flies, hope that the clouds building in the west would bring rain (they never seemed to). Good times.
"Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits"...shared with me by a friend.
Some of my best memories were on porches. Mostly it was our porch or the porches of relatives. A favorite aunt and I would swing together while she shelled peas, or some other similar chore, and she would talk to me like I was a grownup.
My mother would laugh at our (her children's) antics until she literally wet her pants while rocking or swinging on our porch. There would always be room for whoever dropped by, and the entertainment was free.
When I was growing up, all the neighbors would collect on someone's porch every evening and stay there until after dark and talk and talk. Porches were the centers of the neighborhood.
when i was a kid, whether on the porch or in the yard... EVERYBODY ran into the house when the skeeter-truck went by belching out it's DDT, followed by kids on bikes no less, then it was back out on the porch. the house i live in now didn't have a porch when i bought it... first modification i made to the house was to put a porch on. 8^)
Oh, yeah.
My grandparents lived on Meachem (sp?) Avenue in Battle Creek, Michigan. Their house had a dirt floor basement with a wringer wachine machine, a winding staircase up to a third floor 'secret room', and a nice porch with a porch swing on chains. It was heavenly in the 1950s.
Semper Fi,
Used to enjoy sitting on a front porch in Tucson, older neighborhood now totally destroyed by the medical school and University. But back in the 70's had an array of neat little stucco houses, most with a shady front porch, perfect for watching people walk by, storms roll in, and chatting with neighbors over a cold beer.
yes, indeed, kick the can, ollie ollie oxen free, and various other shouts resonated about the neighborhood. Your it:) I remember those days and wish our children could live them(Mine are grown, so too late for them). Everyone knew your folks were armend and didn't care or think anything about it. Free to go where ever you wanted, free to cut wood, or use your property however you saw fit and not fear that the government would take it for a Wal-Mart(or some other commercial enterprise). We have lost so much freedom, those of us who remember having it are afraid for the future of this country. We need to restore our rights and maybe once again porching will be something most Americans do.
We have a wrap-around porch. Those aren't too common in my area of Texas. I keep saying I'm going to paint the following saying on the ceiling of the porch right above the hammock. It's a lovely little Spanish saying my mom taught me: "Que bonito es no hacer nada, y después de no hacer nada, descansar."
It means, "How lovely it is to do nothing, and after doing nothing, to rest."
Remember the little horizontal-pump-can thingies that used to be kept on porches for shooing flies and mosquitoes away? I think they were full of DDT too. (It's like the one that Vito Corleone's grandson chases him with in The Godfather).
But, at least the flies and skeeters didn't bother us back then.
Hey to the porch.
Those 20 slaves, being from a hot climate, may have introduced the concept of an open porch.
If we stay in the house we're in long enough, we're thinking of reconfiguring the front of the house (It's a colonial now) to include a front porch. The front of the house faces due West and just BAKES in the summer. Having that bit of roofline will make it much cooler on the bottom floor of the front of the house.
I sit on my porch all the time. All four seasons. Sometimes its me and Raven the black Lab, sometimes its me and Tigger the 15 year old tomcat. My neighbors don't have a porch, they drag lawn chairs to the driveway and sit.
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