It’s mid-September in North Alabama so that means it’s the perfect weather to sit on my front porch.
I love front porches.
The house I grew up in was a two-story antebellum with massive front and back porches. An angry tornado destroyed it in 1974 along with much of the area I called home but I still remember the front porch. The time I spent sitting in a rocking chair playing the game you used to amuse yourself with when you lived on a forty-acre farm far from your friends but in front of Hwy 72, you counted cars. The rules are simple, you pick a color and the other person picks a color then you start counting how many cars pass by that are your color.
Sidebar; this game is much better if it’s male vs male or female vs female. The reason is most guys can only name about 8 colors so it’s pretty simple to determine if a car is your color. While ladies know about colors like seafoam or periwinkle. Which causes more time spent debating what color a car was than actually counting cars.
But that’s another story for another day.
That house might be where my fascination with front porches began but I developed the love of them when we lived in Tuscaloosa. Our house had a huge wrap-around front porch with a swing. I got to spend some good time in that swing with my daughters and my wife talking about life, laughing and just hanging out. I have lots of good memories from that front porch.
I also learned that a front porch is a great place to think when we lived in that house. Especially when you’ve got trouble. Dark nights and a front porch are a great combination to help a guy figure out what went wrong and if it can be fixed.
It’s also a great place to make decisions. I’ve spent dozens of hours sitting and thinking on a front porch. Sometimes doing what John Wayne said he was doing in one of my favorite movies “McLintock”, some “thinking drinking”. Pondering what to do next or figuring out what not to do. Which is really the most important decision. Most mistakes I’ve made are because I ignored the little voice inside me that said, “let it go”.
But a front porch might find its highest value to me as a confessional. A place where I’ve talked to God, yelled at God, begged for God’s forgiveness and cried as I tried to comprehend the depth of His love for me.
I’ve started most mornings on my front porch reading scripture and pondering what it means to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus. Some days I get closer to that goal than others but every day that starts like that is infinitely better than the days that don’t.
Front porches can be found all over the world. From big houses on the banks of a river to stoops on a brownstone in New York City, but I like to think we southerners have elevated the activity of sitting on front porches to an art form. I know my best days are when I can begin and end them on a front porch.
Turns out, it’s also a great place to write stories like this.