The Front Porch Thing Poem by Scarlett Treat
The Front Porch Thing
Did your family ever do
The Front Porch Thing,
To be glad when the day's work
Was done, and sit in the swing...
To see....
And be seen...
By the neighbors
Passing by?
Oh, the joys we shared,
The friendships which lasted..
A lifetime,
And sorrows shared
At someone's passing.
We would sit and remember them,
With kind words, and a laugh, or two.
Now, we have eliminated front porches,
And friends and neighbors as well, it seems! !
We just rush into our flat-faced boxes
Made of ticky-tacky...
They all look the same,
No porches to be seen....
As though we were shamed
To know them,
Or to speak,
Or to be seen.
We definately made one step forward,
With our cool homes, our televisions,
And stoves, washers and dryers, and
All those good, ease-making machines,
And with it all...
We have taken two steps back...
And lost the most important things,
Like love, and neighbors, and all
Those Front Porch Things.
(With love to fanniesson, who triggered this thought with his 'one step forward, two steps back! ! '/August 25,2007)
Oh no...the demise of the front porch thing...I can't even begin to believe such a thing! I thought it was not only(how even here we imagine it) part and parcel of the culture but a kind of living mythology. Lordy Lordy what's the South coming to at all when it can't even produce the front porch thing. Even though I never had the good fourtune to experience it(only in flims and imagination) I just thought ya know one day I will go there and I'll sit on the front porch and swing and...and...nothing. I mourn for what I never had but for what one day I hoped would come true...now alas...the dream is dead. And I can only sit here in the rain and keep hot and dry in my imagination. You shouldn't have told me and kept the dream alive but then I guess Id had to grow up someday. Sob! How could you be so cruell but then I guess someone had to tell me and it may as well be you! a much saddened Donall(frontporchless and even robbed of the dream)
A home is only a house without a front porch. In Ohio we had sleeping porches too for the hot muggy summers. I loved being young and dumb.
I haven't... because in England as you know it is permanently raining so the porch thing never really took off. But I know just what you mean (all rather idyllic Walton-ish) and it's a deeply interesting and better expressed thought. Were I in a position to make the exchange, I know which I'd go for (and I know which you'd go for) . Some things can never be bought, and some things which can be, are bought at a cost. A superb piece SSS, for which thank you. t x
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5/3/2024 5:49:05 AM # 1.0.0.1119
Delightful read and reminder of joyful times for me as a teenager. We played cards, chinese checkers and I worked my crossword puzzles and watched people walking home from work. Can you believe it some people rode the streetcar, then the bus to and from work. I especially liked the thunderstorms, feeling the changing fresh wet air. Thanks for the reminder.