So long as baby boomers continue building McMansions with humongous clerestory windows to protect them from wildlife, landscape and the neighbors, they’re going to need a concierge to meet me. My town, like the world, would be a better place if we were living in houses with porches and verandas.
Porches speak to home, hospitality and community. They create family traditions, define neighborhoods and shape communities. They have been important since man first stood on a slab in front of the cave to cook, chip arrowheads and scan the horizon for danger.
When people began driving instead of walking and became addicted to TV instead of visiting, we retreated into air-conditioned houses and walled backyards. On the one hand, we were protected from bats, nosy neighbors, pet poop and questionable yard art. On the other, we lost touch with the world: The paperboy who sounds reveille by hitting the door with The Daily Disappointment; the UPS guy who leaves fruitcakes from Aunt Bernice; or the kids, dogs and crazies with whom we share our lives, grouse about taxes and die.
Porches are where we stash bikes and recycling bins, accommodate hornets and hummingbirds, display Christmas lights and Halloween pumpkins. They’re where the Easter Bunny leaves baskets and moths dance, mistaking the porch light for the moon. The dark beneath is where the cat has kittens and the old Lab goes to die.
Porches warehouse our memories: milk and cookies after school, Mom curled up with a whodunit, Dad cleaning fish and Granny throwing back just one more highball. It’s where you watch for the ice cream truck, receive your first kiss and find quarters hiding under faded canvas cushions on old and aluminum chairs.
Up at Dry Lake, the Walker family waved at passersby, swatted flies and sipped Dr Pepper on their little front porch for 100 years before the buckling floorboards threatened to catapult Aunt Agnes, her rocker and the flagpole into the surrounding junipers. That’s when Old Man Walker decided to replace the 9-by-12-foot porch on the front of his modest frame house on Seventh Street. He set to work without so much as a “by your leave” from the National Association of Home Builders or the Local Building Bureaucracy until town compliance and enforcement gurus went nuts. They ordered him to cease and desist, hung yellow tags on the front door and threatened to revoke his citizenship if he hammered one more nail.
Seems as how you just can’t get up one Saturday morning and decide to fix the front porch, not without assuring that the project is energy efficient, cost effective and accessible to the disabled. Not without swearing to comply with codes governing engineering, design, fire, property maintenance, wetland and urban interface. Not without guaranteeing the safety and health of the construction crew, even if it only consists of a second cousin and your drinking buddies. Not without complying with regulations for displaying the flag, so clearly outlined on the Betsy Ross Homepage website.
Come to find out, bureaucrats are intensely interested in porch floorboards and flagpoles because their jobs and the quality of life in America depend on the enforcement of fees and taxes, plan reviews and inspections, permits and assurance. It was incumbent upon Old Man Walker to convince them the porch was environmentally safe, aesthetically pleasing and compatible with standards set by associations of planners and architects, homebuilders and the lady across the street. Without these guarantees, they warned, our town (population 2,817) will turn into Houston.
Planning councils, civic commissions, historical associations and water-treatment departments agonized over how to control such scofflaws. They designed PowerPoint presentations on the importance of inspections, soils tests, setbacks and codes. They created hotlines, inspectors and bicycle patrols to report threats to our “quality of life,” and they arranged a “summit” to underline the importance of a “sense of community” to our Western heritage, tradition and legacy.
Down at the Corral Club, the Boys at the Bar said they were in total and complete agreement. They were fully and absolutely aware of the importance of preserving community. So, after a couple or three beers and under cover of night, they hauled their tool boxes down to Seventh Street and finished rebuilding the Walkers’ little front porch.
Sureva Towler writes from Steamboat Springs, where she can be reached at sureva@surevatowler.com.
