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