Posted on 01/02/2006 5:59:49 PM PST by Lorianne
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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