The Lost Art of Porch Sitting

I was raised on porches. I love a good porch.

Especially old ones. The haint blue ceilings. The swinging ferns. The skidmarks from when I rode my bike off the porch for a New Year’s Eve party.

I like it when neighbors walk by your porch and wave at you. I like it when feral cats creep up the steps to say hello. I like how the windchimes ring.

On my particular porch, there are a few elements I like best.

I like the chairs my wife got me for Christmas. They have thick cushions that allow me to spend hours sitting on my fat aspirations, writing long paragraphs that are wordy and bloated and yet make no actual contribution to the overall endeavor of the human race. Take, for example, this paragraph.

I like the elephant ears in the corner. I like the jute rug beneath my feet. The rocking chair which belonged to my wife’s great-grandfather. The ring-and-hook game which party goers sometimes play while I am busy riding my bike off the porch.

I also like the four fishing rods leaning against the wall from my most recent fishing trip.

“Get those stupid fishing poles off our porch!” my wife keeps saying.

I haven’t gotten around to it. Although I will because I’m very considerate. Whenever my wife tells me to do something, I always consider it.

I like the way young neighbors who are out for evening walks, pushing strollers, walking dogs, gather near my porch at sundown, and watch me play an old fiddle.

“We heard you playing from a few streets over,” they say.

And I’ll blush. “You did?” I’ll say.

“Yeah,” they reply. “We thought maybe a cat was stuck in someone’s chain link fence.”

I like the way the people who pass by my porch say things like: “You know, my grandparents used to sit on porches all the time. I wonder why old people did that?”

And I imagine these people go back home and watch Netflix.

Or maybe they don’t. Maybe these young people go home and rediscover porches of their own. Maybe there will be a whole movement of people migrating back to their porches.

After all, porches were valuable before the advent of A/C. There was a time when the porch was the most important room of the American household. American homelife only happened in two places: The kitchen and the porch. If you weren’t cooking, you were swinging.

The porch has been important in my life. It is where I had my first kiss, where I’ve written ten years of shoddy columns. The porch is where I learned to play musical instruments. The porch is where I asked my wife to marry me.

Today, only a tiny percentage of American houses constructed have front porches. We have fewer porches now than ever before in history.

I called a local contractor to ask why.

“Yeah, we haven’t built a porch in about six years,” he said. “Cost is a driving factor, a porch is unnecessary, unused space.

“People just don’t go outside, man. They watch TV, they sit in the A/C. Nobody sits on a porch anymore.”

I guess that makes me a nobody.