As we sat on our front porch night last week, visiting with our neighbors as the evening gathered, I reflected on the various homes we have had over the years.
Most of them were typical suburban homes—when you have children, the suburbs have undeniable advantages—and most of them presented a blank face to the street. About the only time spent in the front yard was in mowing the grass or tending flower beds.
OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES centered on a patio or screened porch at the back of the house. With the front drapes drawn, there was little way for a passerby to know whether anyone was home. It probably didn’t matter; most of the passersby on those suburban streets were in automobiles, usually with all of the windows closed.
Many of the houses of our youth, particularly those that were in town, had porches, and there were sidewalks, too, and people often strolled in the evening, stopping to chat with their neighbors or even to sit for a spell.
It was the advent of home air conditioning, I suspect, that rendered the front porch obsolescent, at least in the eyes of architects and developers. Visiting became a planned activity. Rarely did someone show up and ring the doorbell just to visit for a while.
I AM GLAD that our village is different, Every house has a porch, and people use them. The streets are not heavily traveled, and people stroll, some for exercise, some to walk their dogs, and some just to enjoy being out of doors. It invites neighbors to stop and talk for a while or to sit and have refreshments.
The evening was pleasantly cool, and as our visiting was winding down, the whippoorwill began its nightly calling. No one had to climb into an automobile and walk home; home was just a few paces away.
When Robert Frost wrote that “good fences make good neighbors,” he evoked a picture of farm country, where fences are important.
In National Village, I would suggest, it is good porches that make good neighbors.
Bill Brown is a retired newspaper editor whose newspapers won a Pulitzer Prize, National Headliners Award, Edgar Willis Scripps Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment and Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service and Freedom of Information Awards. He is the author of “Yellow Cat, Hendry & Me: Dispatches From Life’s Front Lines. He can be reached at bill@williamblakebrown.com
