A Southern front porch is the window to the universe if the one sitting on it has the proper wit and imagination, and we all know that most Southerners are abundantly equipped with both those characteristics. Folks around these parts don’t lack for the conversational skills and debative temperament necessary for the preservation of the history and customs of our homeland.

In other words, put a bunch of us on a front porch with a pitcher of lemonade and there‘s no issue that won’t be thoroughly discoursed.

There‘s just one small problem.

A shortage of front porches.

Sadly, most houses built in the past few decades don’t have them.

Instead, there are gazebos and decks and covered patios, all nice places to gather, but very few front porches.

After all, dogs can’t snooze and kids can’t play under gazebos.

Decks are usually sunny, and therefore, hot.

And covered patios are normally away from the house so you have to keep going back and forth to fill up the tea glasses or check on supper.

The front porch is right there, just outside the front door. Shady and inviting. Maybe partly screened in to keep the skeeters and gnats out but always airy and cooler than inside.

Grandma Julia, Daddy’s mama, had a great front porch. Her house sat on a hill overlooking the highway with a pasture in between. The porch was furnished with an assortment of unmatched rocking chairs and wingbacks and, of course, a porch swing. The front steps were huge, or at least it seemed so to me as a child.

The family spent many evenings gathered at Grandma’s with the kids, dozens of cousins, sitting on the porch steps telling spooky stories or playing far flung games of hide and seek or tag. The porch was always “base” where you couldn’t be tagged by whoever was “it”.

Daddy and several of his brothers and brothers-in-law sat on the porch talking about farming, hunting or politics. Mostly politics. Occasionally a few of them would walk out to somebody’s pick up truck where they would stand around for a few minutes. Back then I had no idea what they went to the truck for.

Now I do.

Every now and then one of the men would call out to one of us.

“ Don’t eat to many of those green apples. They’ll give you a bellyache,” or “ You tear a hole in them britches and your Mama’s gonna whup your butt.”

Mama and the aunts, and Grandma, were usually somewhere in the house talking about whatever women talk about, most likely the bunch of heathens sitting on the front porch. Every now and then one of them would stick their head out the screen door.

“ What are yall doing out here?”

“ Just sittin’ around.” Always the same answer.

Satisfied, the designated lady would return to the inner sanctum.

That’s just the way it worked.

At some point, when the ladies decided that it was getting time to go home, they would all gradually ease on out to the front porch themselves. But instead of leaving, they’d find a chair, join in the conversation, and a few more hours would pass.

I suspect that Grandma’s front porch was a comfortable respite from their day to day lives. There were times when it seemed to be the center of our family’s universe.

There’s no telling how many engagements and wedding dates and baby announcements and all other imaginable family news flashes were announced on that porch.

The kin were always reluctant to leave at the end of the night but when the time finally did arrive, after the men had re-fought The War and solved most of the world’s political difficulties, each mother would gather her brood and herd them to the car. Often, I’d have a new, previously predicted hole in the knee or seat of my jeans but Mama wouldn’t whup me cause she felt sorry for me since I’d been throwing up from eating too many green apples.

Back at home, she and Daddy would put us to bed, then slip out to our own front porch with it’s own porch swing to enjoy a few quiet moments alone.

To this day I can remember hearing the swings rusty chains squeak and their quiet voices as I dropped off to sleep.

You can’t put a price on recollections like those but I‘d spend my last dollar to hear them again.

So, when my house is completed in a few weeks, it will have porches, two of them.

And rocking chairs. And a swing. And memory making gatherings.

See you there.

Don Lively is a retired police officer and freelance writer. He lives in Shell Bluff. Email Don at Livelycolo@aol.com.