Research Paper:  The Porch Society

Carol E. Briney   April 3, 2008

My rearing began in 1947 and took place predominately in the panhandle of Texas, where everything seems to spread out. The landscape is so flat that lights from feed lots can be seen from the 27th floor of downtown buildings some 35 miles away. As a result I grew up accustomed to having my own living space. Beyond the very early years of my youth, I have no recall as to who my neighbors were unless our lives overlapped in some out of the ordinary event. And even then, the acquaintanceship seemed to always be transitional and did not endure. Kids played with kids from school or church. We rode bikes on the school parking lot, skated on the sidewalks, and built forts in the vacant lots. Other than one snapshot memory of running and playing and giggling on a porch that seemed to wrap around the house, I have no recall of big country porches on any of the many houses we occupied during my childhood, or even teen years. I remember small concrete step porches being functional as a means of entering and exiting a house. The gateway into the guarded and territorial lives of neighbors, and I grew up with the opinion that my family life was to be kept private and not shared with the judgment and values of the families who lived around my house. I was never aware of any neighborhood support systems and the word community was another word for county. Even the wintry act of getting a car jump-started would usually entail calling a professional mechanic in lieu of bothering a neighbor. Though borrowing a cup of sugar or an egg was still tolerated, it came with its own label of need, so was frowned upon and discouraged. Not having transportation to the grocery store or hospital meant walking, bussing, or paying a taxi. Infringing on a neighbor to this degree was just not done in my lower-middle-class neighborhood. In fact, it was debated as to whether a family member would be phoned and infringed upon for personal family needs.

The preceding paragraph may seem harsh to those who have experienced the northern centurion neighborhoods where not only sidewalks are standard, but so are big sprawling front porches. Multi-storied houses are built within spitting range of each other, with lawns so small that mowing can almost be accomplished with a pair of kitchen scissors. Wooden homes that have sheltered families for over a century, built so close together that the un-insulated walls carry the neighboring conversations and reverberate them off of the outside high-rising walls, broadcasting them to nearby ears.

So, at this point, I must tell the story that began in December 2006 when I sold my rambling New Mexico ranch home, packed up my two teenaged granddaughters and moved to Canton, Ohio. My plan was to move to the centurion neighborhood, otherwise known as the Hood, where I could buy and rent about a dozen homes, in order to build up the financial nest egg that would help to support our non-profit organization that actively strives to make a difference in the lives of America’s prisoners and their families. After many conversations with local authority figures, I picked out a house for my girls and myself to move into. It appeared to be in an area of the Hood that the city was concentrating efforts to “turn it around” from the negative forces of prostitution and drugs. Just four houses down from ours was a four million dollar elementary school in its first year of occupation. The school principal had a doctorate in special education and was very present and active in his school district as a whole, and in the lives of his individual students. Behind the school, the city had recently demolished 14 centurion houses and sold the reallocated lots to contractors who had agreed to build new, single-family replacement homes. The were divided to have more square footage and the house specifications stated that they had to be multi-storied with a garage for off-street parking and have a large front porch. In addition, a new police substation had been located four blocks away, and the federal Weed and Seed program had been awarded to the area. The signs seemed to support my choice of location. Seemed to.

Ours was a common, big boxy, two-story white house with a newly rebuilt front porch spanning across the front of it. Since we were located on a corner, we had the prestige of more “breathing” and “viewing” room. And as the winter began to melt and people began to venture outside of their homes like ground hogs awakening from hibernation, they began to assess the exterior of their living space; picking up trash that had been buried under snow, checking out shrubbery, sweeping off porches, noticing who had moved in or out since winter blanketed the neighborhood. Unaware that we, too, were part of this awakening, the girls and I quickly recognized that the steps of our front porch naturally made for good seats from which to observe our new neighborhood; not realizing that it would be the neighbors, not the layout of the neighborhood, that would envelope our lives. At the same time, unbeknownst to us, many of the people were wondering why on earth a white grandmother would move her family from New Mexico to the Hood of Canton, Ohio. It turned out that they had as many questions of us as we had of them. But their first question was that of trust: Why were we really there and what did we want from them?

Innocent to the depth of our surroundings, we three set about settling in and planning for the spring. We’d need some porch furniture and a grill. Our porch was plenty big for that and it just felt good to sit outside. Lots of grass and trees and wildlife to observe. Of course, at that point, we didn’t realize the extent of wildlife in the Hood.

Back in December, we had arrived with U-haul’s largest size truck, towing our station wagon, and a super-cab Ford pulling a 5×8 U-haul trailer, all filled to capacity with our stuff. And a crew showed up for unloading. This is not an uncommon move-in strategy, except in the Hood where personal belongings are often abandoned in hurried moves from house to house. I look back on that fanfare and think about all the conversations that must have gone on around our arrival. Because the weather had allowed milling of people that winter’s day, we had, in effect, met a few neighbors as we moved in. So, as the sunshine appeared, these same individuals came over to check on us. I’d be out on the porch sipping morning coffee, and neighbors would amble over and converse with me, always seeking the answer to why we were “there.” We knew more of our neighbors the first month of spring than I had ever known in any neighborhood I’d lived in. There were kids galore on bikes, skateboards, and just playing in the street or on the school parking lot. They seemed to be everywhere, and very verbal and busy about life. Inquisitive. They were curious about us and not shy about engaging in conversation with us. It wasn’t long before the man two doors down had aired up the girls’ tires and they were circling the blocks with a half dozen or more other kids. All excited and on adventures of the day. Spring had arrived, and with it the neighborhood that slept quietly beneath the snow, had emerged into a bustle of activity and noise. The sound of which would often not subside until the wee hours of the next morning.

As the season heated up, it became easily obvious that the discomfort of the sultry heat far outweighed the psychological need to have all the doors and windows securely locked at all times. The only way to sleep at night was with a cross-breeze through large, open windows. Because the house was old wood, it had its own vocabulary when anyone, including the cat, would walk in it. So, leaving lower level windows open at night was left to the security of two tiny Chihuahuas and one fair-sized coyote-sheltie named Sophie. To our advantage was the fact that most occupants of the Hood fear dogs of any size. I did not realize at first that the theft of guns or drugs would be the only motivation to break into a house in the Hood, and it was easy to know that we had neither. We were never in any harm and felt that early on. Well, I should add that were it commonly known that I moved in with 250 bottles of homemade wine, I probably would have had my basement broken into.

One of the first meaningful exchanges that I recall with neighboring kids was the early Sunday morning I stepped out onto the front porch with two dozen petunia seedlings in a cardboard flat in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. I sat the flowers and the coffee down on the steps and returned to the house to get a big spoon to dig the holes for planting. I had not seen one other person outside and was actually looking forward to playing in the dirt by myself. My girls were in the house arguing over TV. I’d hand-picked the petunias in three colors so I could make a nice design in the small six foot by two foot plot by the steps. No sooner had I turned my back to the street, bent over, and began to scoop out the dirt for the first hole, than a child I’d never before seen popped up beside me and asked what I was doing. I jumped and replied, “I’m planting these pretty petunias in this little flower bed so when I sit on my porch step I can enjoy them.” The child asked if she could help, and I, of course, said sure. I went back into the house to retrieve another spoon for digging. When I returned, there were three other kids, none of which had I ever seen. Could they help too? I quickly determined that the plot wouldn’t hold our five bodies at one time, so I would organize us into shifts and I would be the instructor of how to plant this plot exactly as I saw it in my mind. I stuck a tree twig in the ground to mark the spots where a plant would be. I explained which colors would go where, and told the first two kids to dig their holes. I signaled to the others to get quiet and wait their turns. As we sat on the steps watching the spoons, I came to realize that these kids didn’t know how to dig in the dirt. They were scrapping the soil, but not digging. Kids, that didn’t know how to play in the dirt! I felt it throughout my body. And, since I was the only one stepping up to correct the action, I knew that none of the others watching saw it as problematic. I had to teach all four of them how to dig a hole in the dirt with a spoon. Following that lesson, was the explanation of how fragile the life of the little plant was, and how the roots had to be securely planted and gently watered at first in order to survive. I’m not sure how to really describe to you the frenzy that soon developed, or the order of human spirit that drove it, but it became very clear to me that the call of the dirt to these children of the Hood was so compelling that they were fighting over being in the dirt and holding the plants with the utmost gentleness at the same time. My plan to control where each plant would be was soon cast aside in lieu of just letting the kids experience the process and the plants all survive at the same time. After all were planted, the children, seeking to draw out the experience, quickly focused on the water faucet nearby. A cup at a time, they carried water and fed their plants, until the spot was flooded and I noted it was enough. We all sat tightly on the porch steps and admired nature. Smiling. Accomplished. I knew right then, to the depths of my soul, just how important community gardens are. I’d spoken many times of how healing dirt is to people who have not had enough nurturing, but this was a front-row seat.

For weeks, these kids would bring friends by to check on the plants and, perhaps, carry a cup or two of water to them. I never attached a hose to the faucet, but left the watering to the collective cups of water. As a result, my sitting on the steps to drink a cup of coffee always generated new friends. I guess the gathering of kids around my steps brought the curiosity of the adults. It must of at least created the feeling of safety. Maybe the air of nurturing. I can only speculate. But, it wasn’t long before adults were coming and introducing themselves to me, or greeting me as they passed. There were always a lot of people walking by. Walking because they had no other means to travel, or because they were only going within the borders of the neighborhood, or they were transacting various business deals that were better left to foot traffic. Hence, I began to examine the tradition of walking right down the middle of the street as opposed to walking on the sidewalks. Where I came from, streets are for cars. Sidewalks, if there are any, are for people. Walking in the street can get you run over. But, here, in the Hood, rarely did people use sidewalks. Cars and people jointly choreographed the movement on the asphalt. Why? So, I studied the physicality of the sidewalks. They were narrow, uneven and broken with tree roots and decades of use. The law is that the property owners are responsible for the condition of the sidewalks, so the huge maple tree roots break the squares, the snow and salt decay the concrete, and just like most everything else in the Hood, no effort is made to fix it. So, walking on the sidewalks would mean walking while looking down to keep from stumbling. This is not conducive to having conversation with someone you are walking with. Then I studied the people walking by. The sidewalks were within ten feet of the porch steps of homes. This was the Hood. Territorial. Things happen in the Hood that can cost you your life if you are not being observant and quick to react. Walking on the sidewalk would mean looking down instead of up and around your vicinity. In addition, it would put you very close to any activity the people who lived in the houses might generate. I don’t think that the tradition of walking down the center of the street is done for mere exhibition, as many white people had told me. I believe it is rooted in survival. That conclusion can be drawn before examining the additional fact that few people walk by themselves, and walking single-file on narrow, broken sidewalks does not allow for the exchange of conversation.

Late one night, early on in the spring, I was sitting on the front porch drinking a glass of wine, hoping to see the raccoon appear from the gutter drain and climb up to the top balcony of the duplex across the street, in yet another attempt to go through the window and get food. From the darkened porch across the street and down one, came a deep male voice greeting me and laughing. With beer in hand, he walked out of the shadow and into view, and on over to welcome me to the Hood. I offered him a step and we laughed and watched the nocturnal animals appear. A man of the night, he knew right where to look to see raccoons, opossums, and bats. We giggled and laughed with each showing. That man, we’ll call him Don, became a good friend. It helped that he was alcoholic and I had a cellar of home made wine. Before long we were making ten o’clock the hour to show up with glass in hand, a cork screw, a bottle of wine to share, and one for Don to carry home afterwards. We trusted each other and so our exchange became more insightful. He’d manage his many cell phone calls, at the same time pointing out to me the various activities going on around me. A man half my age, he delighted in my naivety about the Hood, while at the same time casting a safety net around me and mine. Soon, our laughter and wine glasses became an attraction for others to join us, all guarding the source of free alcohol and safe conversation. I rarely got through two glasses of wine myself, but sometimes we had three-bottle nights. I don’t remember ever laughing as much or as deeply as I did that summer on the porch in the Hood. I was more than willing to exchange wine for the stories of life and times in the Hood. The raw sincerity of the tellers never failed to amaze me. Conversations about every phase of life would be intertwined and personal information that I would have never shared was right out there reverberating off of the centurion home walls and being laughed at by the victims. Lack and illness. Crime and punishment. What was even more foreign to me was that the people who lacked the most were willing to share what little they had. There was real community surrounding my porch, though transitional in its nature. More than once I retrieved a bowl of stew or a sandwich from my kitchen. In fact, it became a way of meal planning. It became an honor to be able to provide a meal on the porch, or to drive someone to an appointment or the grocery store the next morning.

I remember Don coming over and telling me about a prostitute who had gotten badly beaten up and he had her upstairs recovering in his apartment. He wouldn’t get his back pain killer prescription filled before the next day and he had nothing strong enough to cut the pain. She wasn’t eating. He was known to be the haven for tired, hurt, hungry hookers and underwent a lot of criticism for his taking them in. I called him Father Teresa, which always made him laugh and say it must be true cause he was living the life of a “None.” I asked to meet the girl and was led up the dark stairs to the tiny room where she lay. I’d never been inside Don’s building, yet it was no different than I had envisioned it.

There on a small bed was a middle-aged black woman, curled up in need. Don softly touched her and introduced us. She was startled and unsure. I told her who I was and asked her when she had last eaten. Three days ago. She heard my accent and commented that her people were from the south. I asked if she liked hominy and pork, and she perked up and told me about her grandmother cooking it for her. I described a New Mexican dish called passole and she promised to eat if I would cook it for her. And she did. In fact, the entire duplex ate from that big pot.. They all needed nurturing. I felt honor that I had been invited into that room as a part of community.

When we first arrived in Ohio, one of the main goals listed on my 11 year old’s IEP was to learn to socialize, attract and retain friends. She had been in exclusive special ed classes since age 3 and this was the first year for her to be in main stream. Because abnormal behavior is the norm for special ed classes, Britt had come up deficient and very frustrated that she didn’t have a bunch of friends like her older sister. It had become critical to her development and well-being. Rarely did she feel included on the playground, and rarely did we have a friend over to our house in New Mexico. So, when the children of the Hood mounted their bikes and asked her to come along, she was in heaven. Pure heaven! The first couple of months, however, Britt was repeating things she shouldn’t and being confrontational in ways that would have gotten her banned or hurt if she hadn’t had her older sister to mediate. It was a long and stressful process, but never was there a day that we didn’t have groups of children coming and going from our porch. The unspoken rule of the Hood was that kids stay on the porch and don’t go inside anyone’s house where they might be out of sight or accused of theft. My personal rule was that my girls were never to be alone. Never. I had to know where they were and where their friends lived. I wanted to look in the boys’ eyes, asked them where they lived, and call them by name. The girls were more transparent. It wasn’t too long before my rules were known and respected and no one would let my girls walk alone. I would try to keep other girls from walking alone, but they didn’t see the danger nor were they used to the concern. I worried about them.

The summer of 2007 was the summer that both my girls will refer to when they talk of childhood memories. Britt learned to have friends and be part of the group. She learned to be aware of her environment and the laws of cause and effect. Falicia learned that change can be fun and life has many dimensions. I learned to sit on the porch and listen.

I remember one hot night last summer, nearly every family stayed outside on the porch in search of any breeze. I finally went upstairs and crawled into bed, with all windows wide open. About four houses down the street, a party had been going on for several hours. It was now early morning and I became aware that no fights had arisen from the drinking and partaking. The group had continued to grow with the night, and now there were men who were singing and laughing. I could not see them from my bedroom window, but knew the house. It was an old stone centurion home that had been converted to a fourplex. It had a tall cement porch with columns across the front of it and this porch had morphed into a stage on this evening. Men began to recite poetry that spoke of prison, of hardships, of being black in America. For hours, even until the sun came up, these many men sang, delivered poetry, chanted old slavery lyrics, and played virtual prison instruments using the slapping of their bodies and mouth sounds to perform lengthy concerts of improv song. As the performance became freer and more uninhibited, spanning beyond the now and into the annals of history, I realized that most all of these men were playing from the heart and soul of the lament of their prison time. Dark night of the soul times. I felt so insufficient that I had no way to record or film this phenomena that rang throughout the Hood that night. That one night last summer. No one fought. The melodical laughter of deep-voiced men was a gift to all who listened. It was quite common to hear black women laughing and talking in the Hood, any time of day or night. But, that night, I remember thinking that I had no recall of hearing the laughter of grown men echoing through the Hood. The men were generally soft spoken and quiet unless under the influence of the bottle, in which case their loudness didn’t take on the form of laughter. It would have made such an extraordinary documentary. Such a window into the depth of manhood. They all came together with the muses and they let us watch and hear. It shall never leave me, yet I have no way to play it for anyone absent that summer night in the Hood.

When we packed up and left New Mexico headed north to Ohio, Falicia was 14 and in her last year of middle school. She had left a preppy school that had valley girl conversations with no depth of reality. She was maturing into a woman and had no concept of how serious life could be. Life was a facade without struggle. We’d been in New Mexico where Latinos were the majority, and now we were in the Hood where African-Americans were the majority, and Latinos weren’t from Mexico. Anyone Hispanic or Latino in Ohio came with a lot of negative stigma. Being very upset with the up-rooting, Falicia was not all smiles nor did she know how to respond to her new surroundings. The fact that she is Irish/Indian with green eyes, dark auburn hair to her waist, and the beauty of a tall top-model was proving itself to be as much a liability as an asset in her new school. The kids thought she was Goth and from Mexico. She kept her mouth closed and her arms crossed. The fact that all the males began asking her out the first day, and surrounding her in attempts to engage in conversation, turned out to be a good thing. She chose the quarter-back and for the next seven months he guarded her and educated her in the life of the Hood. Under his tough-guy attitude was an abusive family life that created a callous that covered up the naivety of who he really was. But, as long as she was his girl, no one messed with her. Now, one year later, she is the most popular girl in high school. She is greatly loved and respected, and guarded by all, and is no one’s girlfriend per se. She has embraced the role of counselor and offers safe haven to other teens who just need breathing room, and some rest.

Prior to our Ohio experience, I had always wondered how black people seemed to always know all about each other’s lives and family members. Now I know. It’s called community. In this Hood, I was able to lie in bed with windows open and listen to the various scenarios of family playing-out on the porches, in the streets, or inside houses with opened windows.. My ears would move from one house to the other. I knew about the lives of families I’d never actually met. I knew names, habits, jobs, finances, etc. On many occasions I lay there thinking how quickly I would have dialed 911 in the past, but realizing now that most things don’t merit putting people in prison, nor further tearing families apart by trying to intervene in situations that would work themselves out on their own stages. Unless a life or child is in danger, let humanity work it out in the context of their own community.

We moved from the Hood to church row, almost a year to the day that we moved into it. We are still in walking distance, but we are definitely not in the Hood. We have nuns and churches for neighbors. We still live on a corner. Our house is a big beautiful brick English Tudor surrounded by huge hovering pine trees. Though we live at a major intersection of four lane traffic, we seldom can hear the “outside” through our insulated, brick walls. We watch it through the lens of a ten foot picture window that faces the direction of the neighborhood we left behind. Each of us still strain for identifying characteristics of the many people who come walking down the long road between there and here and secretly hope they are old friends walking to see us. As often they are. They bring us tales of neighboring kids still congregating on the porch of the vacant house we once occupied. I hear them tell my kids they miss us, and my kids sincerely tell them how much they miss the old neighborhood. I know this void will increase as summer unfolds here. With all the comfort, quiet, and safety of this home, my kids long to be back on the porch where the bustle is. Where life is transparent and real. Where tears and laughter are given equal time in the community. Where survival replaces judgment. Where a village is busy raising children. We seem to have everything here but a porch. We have a huge, landscaped front lawn, a three-car garage with an automatic opener and a large loft, nearly three times the living space, a garden spot, a large cement patio hidden by huge pine trees where many summer barbeques will be staged, a fireplace, and a laundry shoot, . But no porch.

In my lifetime, America has gone full circle with the recognition of the importance of porches in our society. There are articles tying the lack of porches and community into the growth of crime. In The Future of Probation, Reintroducing the Spiritual Dimension into Correction Practice, Whitehead and Braswell give the reader a historical overview of the many faces that justice and corrections have embraced over a half century in America (Criminal Justice Concepts and Issues, Chris W. Eskridge, p. 278). In the section on Restorative and Community Justice they state “ it is unrealistic for advocates of community justice to expect atomized individuals to step forward to serve communities that do not exist. Sheriff Andy Taylor [the Andy Griffith Show] lived in a community where people interacted and knew and cared for one another. Today many of us live in suburban developments (or, worse, gated communities) where we do not even know our neighbors’ names let alone care or demonstrate any concern for them. We build ‘privacy’ fences around backyard decks and patios to keep our neighbors out rather than open front porches to invite them in.”

In The Architectural and Social Space of the American Front Porch, The Porch Connecting Home, Community, and Student (Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, High School Student Curriculum Unit 05.03.01, http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/ units/2005/3/05.03.01.x.html#b.) Joan A. Malerba-Foran states “The front porch is iconic America and is shared by any age, gender, and class. Most importantly for my students [in her proposed curriculum] will be the fact that the porch is a ‘place’ and ‘space’ where kinship and oral performance allow the transmission of cultural values; also, it is a place where outside forces, such as technology or social sanctions, act upon those values.” Malerba-Foran designed this curriculum for her tenth grade Ethno-literature class that was nearly 100% African-American. She describes the focus of her student curriculum as follows. “The purpose of this unit is to first, recognize the significance of the front porch as both an architectural (material) place and a social (immaterial) space, and its essential function in allowing people to interact in a neutral (liminal) area. Second, it is to create a positive, conscious connection between oral cultural roots and the front porch. We will do this by recognizing the importance of storytelling in transmitting values by tapping into the students’ already existing experiences with front porch culture. We will look specifically at how family is defined within the semi-private (liminal) front-porch-space by using Frost’s poem ‘The Death of the Hired Man,’ and how identity and community are expressed through the use of the front porch in Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ (1). Students will write interviews with people in their family, school, or community with this common architectural feature (in time, we will look at how prejudice and power is played out around this structure). I will present models of front porch experiences in literature, poetry, and film. My goal is to have students produce a written and/or auditory work that they perform on a mock front porch set up at the back of our classroom. Their performance must demonstrate an understanding of the concepts of the unit, i.e. gesture, orality, performance, culture, liminal, space/place, and kinship.”

In his March 1988 Atlantic Online article A Good Place to Live (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96sep/kunstler/langdon.htm), Philip Langdon prefaces his writing with “Today’s designers of residential areas are increasingly influenced by the grid plans, narrow streets, intimate scale, and convenient shopping of

nineteenth-century American towns.” His article goes on to document the ideas and aims of particular development criteria utilized in the design and construction of the Seaside community in the Florida panhandle. “Seaside adopted a requirement that each house have a front porch, because Davis [the designer] had concluded that front porches encourage neighborly chatting and cooperation. Unlike the strictly ornamental porches tacked on to some new suburban houses, a front porch at Seaside must be at least eight feet deep–spacious enough that people can use it–and must extend at least half the length of the house’s front wall.” According to Langdon, the social successes that are obvious at Seaside have been the topic of many discussions across academic disciplines.

Patrick Overton, the president of the Front Porch Institute and author of Re-building the Front Porch of America: Essays on the Art of Community Making (http://www.patrickoverton.com,) is a consultant currently working on major community projects in the upper Midwest. In his essay entitled Metaphor – The Final Freedom, Patrick’s concern is that “communities are crumbling, and that we — as a society — are losing our ability to create and comprehend metaphor. Without it, we are imprisoned in the literal.”

In her July 3, 2006, prose The Front Porch vs the Back Deck,

(http://simplywait.blogspot.com/2006/07/front-porch-vs-back-deck.html)

Patry Francis reflects back to the large front porch of her childhood and longingly compares it to her back deck some years later. “And yet, in eighteen years, I’ve never come to know my neighbors the way I did in the house with the front porch. The only times I see them in front of their houses is when they climb into their cars to go to work. Otherwise, they, too, are cosseted inside or on their own back decks. We wave to one another from our vehicles or over the roar of the lawn mower.

“Maybe this is just me and my neighborhood, but I don’t think so. In many ways to our detriment, we have become a ‘back deck’ society. An article I read in the Sunday paper said that Americans are now lonelier and more isolated than ever. Though scientists tell us that the number of friends we have is an indicator of how long we will live, many of us have increasingly few.

“And yet, I think the human spirit has a way of getting what it needs. Through the web, I’ve shared my days and my thoughts with passersby from all parts of the globe; and I’ve come to care deeply about people I’ve never seen. Maybe this, the virtual community we create for ourselves, is the new front porch.”

However we choose to frame it, it appears to me that we human beings seem to function better as a whole when we have a neutral stage built into our society upon which the child in each of us can reach out and interact with one another in such a way as to bond through interactions that nurture us and compassionately carry us through our daily lives. Simply stated, perhaps it is in fact community that we all ultimately and foremost seek out, and something as simple as the latent function of sprawling front porches can fulfill that social need.