Momnesia

Patio Homes - Bah!

AUGUSTA, GA. - My husband and I have our sights set on buying a house. But there’s something missing from all of the homes that companies are building these days: a real front porch.

We don’t want the kind of tacked-on fencing that barely fits a rocking chair, bound by cement and topped by a two-by-four that doesn’t even keep off the rain.

I remember my mother sitting on the concrete creation that served as our front porch, on a cane-back bench, watching over the holly bushes as we played in the front yard. Those bushes always got the better of our whiffle ball tournaments.

But the real frustration came from the three feet of space that separated the outer wall of the house to the railing that ended the porch. You could read hardly a newspaper comfortably. Mama always wanted a big porch.

And from that experience, Scott and I know that we want one of the old Southern-style porches, verandah or not, that fits five rocking chairs, a swing and a lawnmower underneath. We want to look under the porch for lost balls and misplaced mittens. We want ceiling fans for the summer heat and room for running rugrats. We want a real front porch, not these tacked-on afterthoughts that people only use for salespeople and unwelcome company.

A real front porch gets practical. It’s an outside haven when the family inside gets too much. It’s also an inside haven when the outside weather gets to rough. It’s extra storage space, extra seating and extra protection for windows against the brutality of the Southern summer sun.

A real front porch gets used. You can look at the railing and see the sweat rings left by years of sweet tea glasses. If you bend down low, you’ll see crayon markings on the side of the house where the kids got a little creative. There’s always a book sitting beside one of the chairs.

I remember my little brother running Matchbox cars along the edges of an acquaintance’s vast wooden porch. It’s where the adults sent us when they wanted to talk about naughty stuff. Our cue to cut through the hallway to the front door was the phrase “little pitchers.” The front porch was actually the best place to hear these stories. We could still hear them; they just didn’t know that, so they spoke as loud as they pleased.

A real front porch gets dirty. Southerners leave their gardening shoes on the front porch (and on the back porch, sometimes you find their overalls) alongside the kids’ baseball bats and butterfly nets. The front porch is where snap beans get their snap. Mudrooms are for northerners and devotees of Martha Stewart. Southerners have porches and worship Paula Deen.

But it’s not just an issue of regional culture. Porches are practical.

I spent the majority of my childhood tromping through the woods with friends, chasing crawdads and poking each other with sticks; swinging into creek beds from heroic heights and discovering haunted places. Many a day my mother made us strip and hose off in the back yard. The back porch (concrete abomination that it was) kept her from having to tear out the living room carpet — and her hair.

A real front porch gets noisy. Wood planks creak at night, making sure that teenagers coming home too late don’t go undetected. Wind chimes alert residents to changes in the weather. Children pound across them to alert grandparents of an approaching attack. The rhythm of a porch seat swinging lets kids know where to find their parents at dusk. Yes, some people find the squeal of a porch swing irritating; but it can just about lull me to sleep.

Speaking of sleep, in the South B.A.C. (before air conditioning), many homes used to have what they called a “sleeping porch,” a covered section of the house on the side that got the least amount of direct sunlight. In torrid summer weather when the interior of their homes got too hot to breathe, families napped or slept entire nights without blankets n these screened-in wonders. At night, cool breezes dulled the humidity and allowed people to get comfortable at the end of a long day.

In fact, the whole deck phenomenon of the 90s and early 00s was just an extension of the inherent knowledge that a porch is the great connector between any family and the outside world. But the reason those wooden structures are falling out of favor is because the back yard simply isn’t the front. And the front is where all the action is. It invites both visitors and voyeurs, because a front porch is as perfect for watching people as it is for hosting them.