What Is a Porch?

What is a porch? A porch is a passageway between inside and outside; a kind of middle ground.

A porch can be a grand expanse of wooden planks or a small slab of concrete. It can be covered by a roof of shingles or tin or open to the skies. A porch might be screened in or open to allow the mosquito to buzz around your ear. 

A porch can be a place to seek solitude when a heart is breaking and tears steal down cheeks taking a bit of the pain with them. That pain can be left on the porch alongside umbrellas and muddy shoes.

A porch can be a place to seek company, the company of family and neighbors; a place to hear elders share memories; a place for children to make memories; a place to hear stories of the past while making memories of today and dreaming of tomorrow. 

A porch is just a structure between inside and outside; but a porch can be a passageway in the middle of the past and the present, the present and the future. A porch is a passageway in the middle of reality and magic.

Here are a few of my porch memories.

When I was a child, we spent much of our time outside when the weather permitted. We had no air conditioning so even in the high heat of summer, outside under a shade tree or under the porch roof where any breeze that might stir was better than being inside; especially when any cooking was going on, which it usually was!

I recall sitting on Grandpa and Grandma Smith’s porch in rural Kentucky. I recall feeling like such a big shot when I was given a string with a needle on it to make green bean necklaces with Grandma and Mom. Those necklaces would go up into the attic to dry and sometime later a mess of shuck beans could be enjoyed. Of course, we strung and broke many a wash pan full of beans to can too, but I loved making necklaces! 

I would often sit on the front porch with my grandpa who loved to whittle. He didn’t carve anything into his wood. He just took bigger sticks of cedar and shaved delicate curls away until he had little more than a toothpick. I reckon that he was just so used to doing something that even in his relaxing time his hands had to be busy. 

Grandma would often take her gallon jar filled with cream out on the front porch to sit. There, she would rock that jug over her knee and make magic...some folks call it butter! I reckon that she wasn’t used to idleness either because even in her relaxing time she would make butter or have a lapful of apples to pare or taters to peel.

Grandpa and Grandma’s porch had a tin roof and I loved nothing better than to sit under it during a cooling rain and listen to the music the rain played on the tin. It was after such a rain when mist was hanging over the hills in front of the house that Grandpa told me about his giant friend. He told me that his friend lived up in the hills and when I saw that mist, his giant friend was sitting on his front porch too smoking his pipe. I cannot see “smoke” in the mountains without remembering Grandpa and his giant.

Another porch that I loved to sit on was on the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio and it was on the home of my great-uncle and great-aunt who raised my mom and her youngest brother from when they were children. They were like grandparents to me. 

I recall breaking beans and making green bean necklaces on that porch too but there were other memories also, especially of summer. In the summer, I can recall sitting on that porch waiting for Granny, my great-grandmother who lived with my aunt and uncle, to slice into a big juicy watermelon. Everyone waited in anticipation as Granny’s big butcher knife plunged into that melon. She sliced off pieces handing them out to greedy, eager little hands. Those hands, arms, chins would soon be dripping with juice from the sweetest, tastiest melons I can remember eating! There were plenty of seeds in those melons and we might have a contest to see who could spit them the farthest.

I can also remember waiting in the high heat of summer on that porch for my uncle or some grown-up to return from the root-beer stand up the street with a gallon of cold, sweet root beer. We would all eagerly take our glass and savor each cold, sweet drop.

It was also on that porch while sitting in the porch swing that my cousin and I would argue about who Granny “belonged” to more. My cousin was ten years older than me and she had almost “adopted” me. She would walk a block to our house to pick me up and take me to my aunt and uncle’s house and to Granny all of the time.

Well, she told me that she was closer to Granny because Granny was her grandmother but she was my great-grandmother. I was having none of that. I told her that that must mean that she was just Granny’s granddaughter, but I was her GREAT granddaughter! Everyone knows that great is better than just the usual! 

Now, I don’t have a front porch but I have a back deck. There is a road behind our house and a row of homes across from it. There is also a home to the left of ours but we are at an intersection with a bit of common ground to either side of our house. Our back yard and the common areas are full of trees. In the summer, when the trees are full, I can sit at the table on the deck, look out and imagine that I am in the mountains. There I can hold my little granddaughter Jooniebug in my lap. I can tell her how lovely the sound of rain was on the tin roof of her great-great-grandparents’ home. I can tell her about Great-great-Grandpa’s giant that lives in the hills of Kentucky. I can tell her about waiting for her great-great-great granny to slice open a watermelon on a porch in Ohio. 

So, there are a few porch memories from porches in very different settings. One was in the middle of the country snuggled in hills with a dirt road that snaked a few hundred yards in front of it. You could rarely hear a car coming up that road and you couldn’t see your neighbors.

Another was on the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio where cars drove a few yards in front of you on a regular basis. You could see houses in every direction.

And my deck is on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee with houses and cars all around, but fortunately, the trees can let you imagine that you are in the mountains.

I reckon that the porches were different, but what made them the same is the folks that congregated on those porches. They were all simple mountain folks who surely knew how to enjoy the simple things in life; and above all, they knew how to love!