Aug 26, 2003 4 min read

My grandmother loved to sit on her porch in the summertime. I wouldn’t say she was an outdoor person at heart. Just the opposite. She was a dyed-in-the-wool city dweller who thrived on the noise pools of people make with cars, speaking, a cacophony of lawnmower engines, etc.

I’m sure she enjoyed nature, but sitting on an open porch was just about as close to it as she wanted to get. I think she started sitting on the porch long before there was television, so, in a way, her sitting on the porch was a form of television. It was entertaining. And she liked to keep an eye on the neighborhood. Several times as a boy I washed down the walls on the porch and helped wrestle her wicker furniture out so she could make it comfy. And, every evening enveloped by pleasant weather she would sit on the porch, sometimes until dark, watching the goings-on in the street.

The house in which she lived had a real porch; not one of the tiny, standing-room-only things people began putting on homes in the 1950s and after. It seems only a real old-timer can appreciate the ambiance and benefit of a genuine porch, a structure that not only enlarges the house but also horizons. It provides a sense of community, but when I was a kid visiting grandma, that was the last thing on my mind.

The porch was a fort or a western plain where I could skulk about pretending that passersby were enemies of some sort. When I got older, it was a nice place from which to girl watch. For a boy raised in the country where most of the female creatures that passed by mooed and gave milk, grandma’s porch was a neat place.

However, it takes time to sit on a porch, and, as I got more involved in a variety of things, I found less of it to sit. It also seems that either an abundance of bugs, heat and humidity have plagued some of the more recent summers, making porch sitting perilous if you are prone to insect bites.

Unfortunately, the house my lovely wife and I now live in has no such edifice. It’s an error that likely will be corrected. But on the rear of the house rather than the front. No, we aren’t being anti-social. There is no room in the front for a porch.

In a detached way I have lately been enjoying other people’s porches on a nearby street where Ladybug, our house canine, and I have been taking our evening stroll. Our neighborhood is older and the homes date to the turn of and the early decades of the last century when every house had a huge porch affixed to it. This has been one of those hot, buggy summers, so, naturally, people haven’t been sitting out in droves. There is one house occupied by die-hard porch sitters and I always give or get a greeting when I pass by (or am pulled along by the dog). Ladybug and I recently expanded our route to include almost a whole street of porches, with just about every one of them fully fronting their house.

But I think somebody needs to enforce the porch rule. As Ladybug and I walked on one of our recent cool, comfortable evenings, not one human could be found sitting on any of those lovely porches. As we passed I could notice the tell-tale flicker of television sets and computer monitors glowing from behind pulled drapes. Many of the porches are pleasing to the eye, gently draped with awnings and dressed in their finest decorative furniture. Tempting. Very tempting.

So tempting I may just walk onto one and sit for a spell. Nah. I’d probably get arrested for trespassing. But if you should happen to see someone enjoying the comforts of your porch, a glass of ice tea would be nice. And a little water for the dog.

Have a good day.

E-mail Jim Pletcher: jpletcher@heraldstandard.com