The Front Porch

From housing a baby deer to providing a setting for many various photo opportunities, the front porch of this little white frame house served a multitude of purposes during the 14 years that I lived there.

Here Linda and I are bathed, neatly dressed and poised for our photo session seated on the glider.  Sounds cool, comfortable and relaxing, doesn't it?  The glider, with it's pristine white metal frame that boasted the triple row of diamond-shaped cutouts across the lower front section; the cushions for the seat and backrest, covered in all-weather fabric in a deep hue of hunter green, tufted with white plastic buttons that stood out in stark contrast.  All of this classic style placed in the comfort of the screened front porch; enjoying the calm, coolness without being bothered by pesky insects.


In reality, if you could see what is just out of view to the right of the photo, you would see where the window unit air conditioner stuck out of the living room window.  The near inferno blast of dry, scorching air that bellowed out of that grate-covered metal box made it impossible to catch your breath if you happened to be seated on the glider while the air conditioner was running.  Summer after summer of those constant, blazing blasts across that all-weather "fabric", gave those seat cushions a texture similar to fine grit sandpaper. So why position the glider in the most uncomfortable spot on the little 8-foot-by-15-foot porch?  Because that's where it looked the nicest.  And then there was the view.

Seated in the glider, one could look across the pasture and see the horse barn where Daddy spent many of his days raising, breeding and training horses.  It was a view that had to be enjoyed in quick glimpses, however, because in the line of sight was Highway 70... the main highway connecting Memphis and Little Rock.  Today, that highway runs parallel with Interstate-40, one of the most heavily-travelled sections of interstate in the entire country.  But back before the days of non-stop 18-wheeler traffic and "super highways" as we called them back in those days, there was considerably less traffic on Highway 70.


There was always one time each year when this view just wasn't available.  It was sometime in late spring when the Cottonwood trees were in bloom.  That's when the screens that enclosed 3 sides of our front porch were transformed into solid white sheets of a thin layer of fluffy cotton.  We had our fair share of Cottonwood trees.  As a matter of fact, my paternal grandmother, known to all of her grandchildren as "MaMaw" once told me that our farmland and the land on which our homes were built was known as "Cottonwood Plantation" because of the abundance of Cottonwood trees on the property.  I don't know if that was the case or not, because MaMaw was known for her creativity in embellishing and creating stories.  As a matter of fact, I think I can also remember her telling me that our land was called "Silverleaf Plantation" because of all the Silverleaf Maple trees we had.  Either way, it always sounded fascinating to me... the thought that we lived on a plantation... kind of like the O'Haras!  The "cotton" from the Cottonwood trees would float through the air in a manner that was almost ghost-like, looking like living spiderwebs that flew from the trees and chose our front porch screen as their landing pad and final home.  At the end of the flowering season for the Cottonwood trees, Mother would drag the water hose through the screen door and blast the sheets of white off the screen, allowing us to once again enjoy the surrounding views and the cool breezes.

Finally came the day when the glider went on to bigger and better things, and we graduated to the easier-to-move-about-folding-lawn chairs.  But the original location of the old glider seemed to hold some sort of attachment for Mother, because she continued to place us in that same spot to pose for photos for years to come.

Any snacks that could prove to be too messy for the house would be eaten on the front porch.  Mother was, and still is, ever the neat freak.  Why clean up a mess when it can be prevented for the most part?  Popsicles were simply too drippy and too sticky for indoor consumption.  So all Popsicle eating was confined to the front porch.  And as illustrated in the photo to the right, as long as Linda and I were small enough to fit into a plastic tub, the entire snack took place there.  When the Popsicles were finished, we were simply stripped down, washed with a wet cloth, dried with a towel and allowed to return indoors.

The front porch, being completely enclosed, provided protection for several pets at various times in our young lives.  Most of these pets were the result of my sister Linda's explorations.  She was always the more adventurous of the two of us, and she has always loved animals.  Before she was old enough to start to elementary school, she had caught a baby rabbit with her bare hands and brought it back home to beg for permission to keep it.

Many litters of kittens were born on the front porch, helping the mother cat protect her babies from the raccoons and the opossums that posed a threat to the little ones.  Unfortunately, a good number of these kittens ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time when Mother would back our car out of the carport as we would embark on one of our trips "to town."

We had at least one pet turtle.  I can't remember where it came from.  Mother may have let us buy it at the 5-and-10-cents store, but more than likely it was another one of Linda's "captures."  We made a home for it by cutting a gallon plastic milk carton in half lengthwise and filling it with dirt, a few rocks and the lid of a Miracle Whip jar that was turned upside down and filled with water to serve as a "turtle swimming pool."  Our turtle lived happily for several weeks in his little turtle home that sat beside the front steps on the front porch.  One day Linda and I realized that the turtle shell was still in the turtle house, but the actual turtle was nowhere to be found.  We were never really told what happened, but I think Mother learned that our chihuahua, Brownie, could not be left on the front porch unattended with pet turtles. 

There was the baby deer that stayed only a couple of nights on our front porch.  I don't remember the story behind the baby deer. I was always the "fraidy-cat" and didn't really want anything to do with wild animals, so I probably did all of my coming and going out of the back door while the deer was on the front porch.  If I didn't want to be around the animal, I guess I wouldn't have been interested in why it was there, or how it got there... only relieved when it was gone, as it was in a matter of days.  My guess is that one of Daddy's friends who happened to be a deer hunter may have accidentally killed Bambi's mother and Daddy volunteered to serve as a foster parent.  After only a couple of days, Daddy must have realized that raising this wild baby wasn't going to be something we were equipped to do.  Whether he came to this realization on his own, or with the help of Mother, I'm just not certain.

The front porch also came into play around Christmas.  It was where we got to ignite our Christmas sparklers.  My great-uncle, Johnny Faulk, owned Faulk's Grocery at Blackfish Lake, just about 5 or 6 miles east of our house.  I have many wonderful memories of that old country store, and all the fascinating things that Uncle Johnny had for sale in that store.  But one of my most vivid memories is of Christmas Eves when MaMaw, who was Uncle Johnny's sister, would take us to Uncle Johnny's store to buy Christmas fireworks.

Daddy's side of the family would get together every Christmas Eve at MaMaw's to have Christmas Dinner and open gifts.  When the meal and the exchanging of gifts was all done, MaMaw would take me, Linda, and our first-cousins Kim and Kenneth Todd to Uncle Johnny's store and buy us fireworks.  We called them fireworks, but looking back on it, they were really pretty calm.  Kim and Kenneth would be a little more adventurous and would get Roman Rockets and Firecrackers that made very loud "pop"s.  Linda and I, at least in the early years, were restricted on our purchases to Sparklers only.  Still, it was all very exciting!

We would gather together beneath the floodlight in MaMaw's driveway and wave our Sparklers in the air in figure-eights and other fancy patterns, watching the silvery streaks that were left behind, as Kim and Kenneth fired off their more daring and dangerous explosives... often threatening to throw a firecracker at our feet and "blow our toes off!"  Linda and I would always save a few of our Sparklers (or convince MaMaw to buy us more in the days to come) and take them home to sparkle there. 


Mother would only allow us to sparkle our Sparklers on the front porch, under Daddy's supervision.  I recall one Christmas in particular that the temperatures must have dropped pretty low, because it was too cold for Daddy to want to sit outside on the front porch.  Having already promised us that we could "sparkle" that night, he let us light our Sparklers in the living room.  When Mother came rushing in, exclaiming that we were going to "set the carpet on fire" with some of those embers dropping from our Sparklers, Daddy assured her in his always-laid-back manner that "it ain't gonna hurt nothin."  I'm guessing Daddy was never asked to supervise our firework activities again.