Front Porch Philosophy

"No front porches. My uncle says there used to be front porches, & people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking & not talking when they didn't want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over. My uncle says the architects got rid of front porches because they didn't look well...They didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much & they had too much time to think. So they ran off with the porches." --Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Many a philosophical conversation has taken place on a front or back porch, when the sun is setting, the crickets and frogs and cicadas are singing, and the fireflies light up the skies like flickering Christmas lights. Perhaps something hanging in the heady humid air of summertime in the south makes for a good breeding ground of deep thoughts like raising children, growing crops, corruption in politics, religious views, etc., particularly because it's too hot to move and revving up your mind doesn't involve physical exertion. My happiest childhood memories involve nights like these, where I listened to the grown-ups solving all the worlds' problems, usually while snapping beans, shelling peas or shucking corn.

Now that I'm the grown-up, which by the way ain't all it's cracked up to be, I carry on this southern tradition with family, friends, neighbors, and sometimes alone. No place on Earth, at least that I've been to, sounds quite like rural North Carolina in the summertime at night. The world is still full of troubles I can't solve, but that doesn't deter me from imagining all the things it could be, we could be, I could be, if exacting change was as simple as people lazily front porch sittin' and working all our "junk" out, while being seranaded by the laughter of playing children squeezing out the last vestiges of daylight, and Mother Nature's little choir of buggy critters.

*Image from etsy.com.

---