Front Porch Views

Remember when houses that we're built came with a front porch?  Usually front porches came with a couple of folding lawn chairs and if you upgraded you had rocking chairs.  But that was it.  No piped music, small refrigerator, fire-bowl, matching table and chairs, flat screen TV, electric awning, hot tub...just a couple of chairs.

People said you could sit on your front porch and watch the world go by.  Well at least the neighbors would go by.  You'd say "hi" to each other and maybe they'd walk up the sidewalk and visit for a bit.  Conversation would be about local events, the high school football team, gardens, flowers, and just general gossip.  People would drive by in their cars and honk and wave.  If it was a quiet evening you listened to the birds singing, the neighborhood kids laughing and playing, and an occasional bark from a dog.  Adults would sip from a cup of coffee and kids, well if you were lucky, some pop.  Hey the front porch WAS the original NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH program.

That in a nutshell was life on the front porch.  Except if you lived in northern Iowa.  Then there were many months of the year it was just too cold and too much snow to sit on any porch.  Maybe that's what drove up the value of the front porch.  You really looked forward to being out on it when Spring arrived.

But then something tragic happened to the front porch.  House developers thought it would be a good idea to move the porch to the back of the house and build a "privacy fence" around us.  The privacy fence would offer seclusion from all other life forms.  We could have our privacy!  Thanks goodness no pressure to have to talk to anyone, get to know our neighbors, and watch the world.  Did you know that if you go just 2 houses any direction from where you live there's a good chance you don't know your neighbors?  That is sad.
And when did we start talking about the "office" in our home??  Really? (I'll save that for another time).

I hear people on average a couple of times a week asking what is going on in this world?  Why are people they way they are?  Why can't we get along?  I'll tell you why.  No front porch!  We don't 'talk' to each other any more.  We 'text', we 'e-mail', we 'Twitter' but we DON'T talk to each other.  All the other is superficial.   Useful...yes...but when we lose human contact folks, we're all in trouble.