A memory from Vine Valley

Hi all,

This afternoon I received the following "porch memory" from a friend and former school buddy, a driving fiend to this day (how's that for a little foreshadowing):

Porches of My House

The house I grew up in had three porches, each with its own name and personality. They were The Screen Porch, The Cement Porch, and The Front Porch.

The Screen Porch was probably the most used of the three. Obviously, the screens made sitting there much more pleasant during the buggy times of the year. But it also was where many meals were eaten in the warmer months. Its location immediately outside a kitchen window made it handy for passing food and dishes back and forth and for conversations between the kitchen and the people sitting around the large sturdy table there. A warm summer afternoon eating homemade goulash and corn on the cob on the Screen Porch is about as good as meals get.

The Cement Porch was as basic as a porch could possibly be. It was as austere as the Screen Porch was homey. A foot thick slab of concrete, usually with a couple of lawn chairs on it, no roof, and bordered on two sides by the exterior of the house. But it’s northern exposure made it a cool place to sit on a hot day. And it was the usual landing spot of anyone coming up from Canandaigua Lake after a swim, since the clothesline was there, ready to receive wet towels. My parents would spend time there, cooling off after yard work – too sweaty to go in the house just yet, and too tired to head down to the beach for a quick swim. They’d sit here for a few minutes contemplating their next move.

The Front Porch wasn’t really the front porch anymore in the strict sense that the front of a house usually faces the road. Before 1940, the road past my house cut between the house and the lake on the edge of a very steep bank. The town moved the road to a more secure location about 50 yards back from the lake and on the other side of our house. So the Front Porch became, in effect, the back porch. But the name remained The Front Porch. It was here that my parents would sit on a rainy summer evening and watch a storm blow in from across the lake, and if the wind was light enough so the rain didn’t blow onto the porch, they’d stay out there and just watch the rain come down.

My use of the Front Porch was a little less, um, sedate. One Christmas, I received a beautiful red pedal car. After a few days of indoor driving, my mother noticed the long black marks on the living room tile floor – the result of my exuberant accelerations and turns – foreshadowing things to come. And so it was that I was relegated to the front porch for my automotive adventures. Luckily, the porch stretched across the front of the house and part way around two sides in a ‘u’ shape, giving me a long straightaway, two nice corners and two turn-around areas.

Most of the time, however, all three porches served the same purpose – a place to stop, sit, converse, contemplate, relax and refresh. I suppose, really, that’s what all porches are for.

Mike Smith
Vine Valley
Middlesex, NY

Thanks very much for the memory, Mike! I can definitely picture you in that hot little red car. :) We're waiting for the visuals . . .

Darlene

A note from Penn Yan

Tonight I received a nice email from a Penn Yan native who saw my magazine article. Elaine G. of Penn Yan says:

Darlene:

I too grew up in Penn Yan and still live there. I loved your article and photos of Front Porch Memories. I loved the fact that you captured two of my cousins in your photos as well as dear friends Paul and Joanne Dailey.

My house was on Walnut Street and the four of us kids would have neighborhood gatherings there any day of the week and any hour of the day. We ate snacks and talked and just had fun. I read for hours on that old front porch as well.

I have many pictures taken there with friends before proms, confimations and graduations. It was the porch my brother left from for the service and I went off to college from also. I know it is the porch that welcomed the two youngest siblings home from the hospital as newborns.

I loved that porch and all that it meant to our family. Thank you for helping me remember!

I now have a front porch in the country where I enjoy sitting with my 93-year-old mother-in-law and visiting!

Elaine in Penn Yan

Thanks very much for writing, Elaine, and for giving me permission to post your email! Bet you're enjoying that porch this weekend. :) Take care and so glad to hear my article touched a chord.

Welcome, Life in the Finger Lakes readers!

Yesterday's mail brought the beautiful new Summer issue of Life in the Finger Lakes magazine -- with my "Porches of Penn Yan" article! Forgive me for the exclamation point, but it's a milestone for me to have both text and photos published together. A snippet from the article appears below.

Welcome all you who saw the article and have logged on to share your own front porch memories as well as comments and photos. And if you found this blog through an Internet search, that's great too. Just click on Comments at the end of this posting and send your memories. What is the funniest thing that's ever happened to you on a porch? The most "memorable moment"? Did you launch your prom date from your family porch, or your wedding, or some other milestone? Share all the details here! I'm really looking forward to reading your stories!

All the best,
Darlene
www.DarleneBordwell.com

Introducing Front Porch Memories.

When I was a kid almost a half-century ago, growing up on a farm outside the Finger Lakes town of Penn Yan, New York, summertime meant being outdoors all day and into the evening. As my grandmother had before us, my mother, sister, and I sat on the porch to shell freshly picked peas into pots clenched between our knees. Scents of lilac, trellised roses, and lily of the valley reached us from the bushes and flower beds my grandmother tended long ago.

Photo: My uncle Bruce, grandparents, and dad on the front porch of our farmhouse; 1934. Photo taken by my aunt, Blanche Bordwell Wyman.

After a hard day of work in the fields, my father and uncle would stretch out along the porch steps, cold long-necked bottles of Genessee Cream Ale in hand, hay chaff adhering to the sweat on their sunburned necks, to talk over the day’s frustrations – the tractor that wouldn’t start, the weather that wouldn’t cooperate – and make decisions about tomorrow’s chores.

Evening on the porch was the most enchanted time. A hush descended, then slowly filled with the chirrups and croaks of night creatures. The stars were brighter then, it seems, sharply sparkling, joined by the mysterious, intermittent twinkling of lightning bugs. We kids would dash around the lawn attempting to catch them in our cupped hands. One especially cherished night, my mother and I sat close together in the stillness of our porch and watched flashes of the aurora borealis light up the sky.

Our pleasures seem antiquated today, but we had fun with our imaginative, video-free play and slept soundly after. To me and many others, the porch is an emblem of that simpler, more “connected” life, a tangible reminder that seasonal outdoor living can link us to a greater, richer world of nature and imagination.