This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Everywhere along our valley, the front porch is an endangered species. The new suburban homes in the better developments rippling out across the countryside festoon themselves with postage stamp patios and multi-level decks, but never a front porch. In the older neighborhoods, one by one, the front porches are being remodeled into extra rooms or ripped off to be replaced by anemic front stoops.
The front porch was our mentor, our Walden Pond. It taught us our social graces and served as a spiritual harbor where we rested from our wanderings. Growing up with a front porch was a far more accurate predicter of a successful marriage than religion or ethnicity.
A proper Midwestern front porch ran the width of the house, roofed against the rain, and open except for support columns and a low railing. Families moved out to the front porch late in May as the peonies were budding. The porch swing was taken out of the garage and hung up. The wicker rocker and tables were hosed off and perhaps repainted, and the flower boxes filled with new petunias and asparagus ferns, and ivy, and geraniums that had wintered indoors.
All summer, the front porch was a stage and a box seat, from which one could be in a play and watch it at the same time. Widows and wives came out after breakfast to watch children play. Retired couples spent afternoons here watching the postman come down the street, knitting, crocheting, whittling, or reading the paper.
Evenings were for young children to swing and calm down before bed. Later, boys and girls sat here barely swinging and talking about the future, their chaperone-parents inside, but not too far away.
The front porch allowed us to be neighbors, to keep a proper distance. On the porch, we were neither hermits hiding inside our own houses, nor busybodies who stuck our nose in what was none of our business.
When the last front porch goes, the word neighbor will go with it.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
