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The Way it Was: Remembering when the front porch was the place to be

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by John Straka

The best way to go about visiting a friend or neighbor is to call first. A telephone conversation will determine the best time for your visit and both you and your friend will be prepared for it.

Your visit will probably take place in the family room or on the patio. Family rooms and patios are most often in the back of the house. Patios are screened or fenced or surrounded with shrubbery for privacy.

Many houses, especially older ones, have a feature of their construction that indicates that visiting friends was not only different years ago, but almost exactly opposite of the way it is now.

That feature is the front porch. When you see a house with a front porch, think back to the days when the house was new. Maybe 1920 to 1940.

It seems to me we did more visiting then than we do now. Visits were not always planned. There were few cars and very few people had telephones. Everyone walked to wherever they wanted to go.

A trip to the store for groceries would mean walking both ways and passing many houses. It would be rare to not see someone on their front porch along the way.

Since everyone knew everyone else in the neighborhood, you at least said "Hello" when you passed by. More often than not you would stop to chat and maybe come up on the porch to visit and rest before continuing your errand.

Front porches were definitely not designed for privacy. In fact, just the opposite. When you sat on your front porch you were very visible and that was an invitation for friends and neighbors to visit. If a visitor was taking up too much of your time, you simply said, "I've got to go in now," and that would end the visit.

Front porches were used for a lot more than visiting. That's where you waited for the mailman or the ice man or the milk man. That's where little kids waited for Daddy to come home from work, and where mommies waited for little kids to come home from school. Lots of home deliveries were made on the front porch.

Front porches were meeting places. When we planned to go to the picture show or for a walk or to play tennis, "Let's meet at my house" meant "on my front porch."

The front porch is where kids played in rainy weather. Card games, Monopoly, Touring, checkers, jacks and chess are some that come to mind (what was your favorite rainy-day front porch game?). A clothes prop or two across the porch railings, covered with a couple of old blankets made a dandy club house or doll house. Setting a radio in the open front bedroom window would allow fathers to relax with a glass of cold homemade rootbeer, read the afternoon edition of the newspaper, and listen to a broadcast of the ballgame all at the same time.

The front porch was used for embroidering, crocheting and other needlework. It was a good place for writing letters. We did our homework on the front porch. Best of all, the front porch is where you went when you had nothing to do. To just sit there and watch as people passed by would soon lead to something to do.

Some older homes still have a front porch swing. On some, the swing is gone but the hooks in the ceiling are still there. A swing made of wood slats would hold three or four people suspended by sturdy chains. Over winter, the chains would be shortened so the swing hung up next to the ceiling where it was protected from the weather and from being blown about by the wind.

Porch ceilings were usually varnished and would look like new for many years. That's probably because the ceiling was not exposed directly to the sun and rain.

If you didn't have a porch swing, then you would likely have a porch glider. Gliders were made of heavy steel and the cushions were waterproof, so the whole thing could be left on the porch all year if it was covered in winter. A rocking chair and one of those rag rugs on the floor added a nice touch. Rag rugs were made from strips of cloth sewn end to end and rolled into balls. For a nominal fee they would be woven into colorful and durable rugs.

Roses climbing a trellis provided a cozy scented comfortable setting for the creation of fond memories.