THE LOST ART OF PORCH SITTING

Back in 1988 I wrote: “Finally, I have realized a long-time dream. We now have a screened porch with a swing and a rocking chair as well as other miscellaneous furniture.”

I remember as a child driving through the country and seeing people sitting on their front porches passing the time of day. Sometimes they would be shelling peas or snapping beans. Sometimes they would be rocking Some times they would be swinging. Sometimes they would be visiting. Sometimes they would be just sitting. Perhaps to younger people today, such activity or non-activity sounds pretty boring, but let me tell you about how it really was.

I grew up up in a home with a huge screened porch on the side of the house. In hot, humid Mississippi in the summer, the porch was an ideal place to spend you leisure time. Canned entertainment was at a minimum. With no television and a rare trip to the movies, what else was there to do. You could get all the local and world news you needed in a fifteen-minute radio broadcast each day along with going through the eight or ten page Meridian Star newspaper. The neighborhood news came through the front porch. In a day when walking was a necessity rather than a recreation for many people, you could sit on the front porch and see a good percentage of your neighbors in the course of a short time. I still remember seeing the same people pass almost every day.

We knew all the neighbors and usually knew just where they were headed. One neighbor drove an old T Model Ford Coupe by each day on his way to his little grocery store-service station up the road. A mother and daughter walked by on their way to visit relatives down the street. A gray headed lady came by going to see her sister next door to us. A black man went by behind a horse on a wagon filled with large bottles of spring water to sell in town. A mother and son about my age came by going to the grocery store. A horse-driven wagon came to deliver ice for our ice box and a truck or wagon with a big tank on the back came to deliver kerosene for our summer cook stove. A World War I vintage truck with solid rubber tires and chain-driven wheels came by on a trip for the East Mississippi State Hospital (known as the Asylum). An antique luxury car, driven by a chauffeur, taking two elderly ladies out for a drive, passed our house on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes as a special treat the fire engine rushed by and we always debated whether someone at the asylum had set his bed on fire.

Often neighbors would pause and give us the latest news from the neighborhood. Sometimes they would even come up and sit with us for awhile. When older children of the family came home from college or their homes elsewhere, we would gather on the porch and visit. The neighbors then knew when we had company and some would stop in and say “hi” to those they remembered and loved.

The screened porch was a dusty place. Clouds of red dust came from the graveled street when a car passed and settled on the house and us, but that didn't happen enough to bother us when I was very young. Later when the street was paved and the traffic increased, it was the noise that bothered us. The porch was not always cool on a hot day, but a little floor fan kept the air moving, along with the motion of the swing. And when the summer rain would come the aroma of the water hitting the dry ground was delightfully refreshing.

Porch-sitting is a lost art, I am afraid. Porches, if there are any, are usually built on the back of the houses now. We don't see our neighbors walking or driving by. We probably wouldn't know them if they did. There are no peas to shell or beans to snap. They come prepared that way from the store. Our neighbors don't stop by for a chat because they don't know us that well and they are closed in their own family rooms with their TV or in their dens with their computer. It's too hot or cold or windy to sit on porches these days anyway. It is much more comfortable to be inside the air-conditioned house. Our friends are those we know at work, at church; at the fitness center, or at recreational or social events or those we chat with on the internet. They may live miles away, so the cellphone and the internet becomes our porch for visiting.

By the way, I failed to reinstate porch-sitting as a fine art by installing a swing and a rocking chair. It just isn't the same or maybe arthritis keeps me from enjoying it as much, but it is still worth a try when possible.  It is good for the soul!