The house I grew up in sat on the corner of a residential street and a divided thru-street. It wasn’t until I was in junior high that the city planted trees in the median. Until then, the road was broken by a narrow strip of St. Augustine grass cut short like the rough of a golf course. Most of the front yards matched that aesthetic, broken only by a few Texas live oaks, cottonwoods, or crepe myrtles.
Our house had two live oak trees out front when I was young, before lightning split the first along the trunk. The second was hit—by lightning, again—years later when I was in high-school, and only saved through an elaborate system of wires and bolts. We added holly bushes along the front of the house, just under the windows, with fresh pansies planted beneath throughout the spring and summer.
As a kid, I spent many summer hours sitting on the front porch, a small 3×3 portico providing just enough space to escape from the rain or sun, depending on the weather. We would sit on the single step underneath the roof’s overhang, where we could keep a watch on the comings and goings of the neighborhood.
That’s where my best friend and I played countless card games of war and where we collected roly polies and earth worms. It’s where we watched the cars speed by coming from the country or neighboring cities, through our neighborhood, and on to the shopping mall. It’s where we patched up scraped knees after riding bikes and skateboards and where we ate ice cream cones and popsicles to cool down.
That front porch was a meeting place before football and baseball games played up the street, bike rides to the convenience store for 2-cent candy, and hiking trips through the woods behind the school in the next neighborhood over.
It was also where I traded away a few pages of my Mark McGwire baseball cards for a handful of Jose Cansecos, and where I learned how to bet the spread on football games.
In high school, I traded my front porch for other front porches—my best friend’s that was next to his driveway, where we tinkered around with his ’65 Mustang. My girlfriend’s with the swing, where I checked my watch repeatedly, waiting until the exact last moment before I needed to leave to beat, or at least arrive close to, my curfew.
In college, we sat on the front porch of the dormitory well into the night because that was the only time the air was cool enough to enjoy being outside. And later, we sat on the front porch of our apartment, drinking coffee or beer, talking about politics, music, and relationships with equal fervor and trepidation, learning how to become adults.
Our front porch isn’t used much these days, perhaps because none of us, even the kids, have much time where we’re just sitting around the house. But as the Texas summer stretches out in front of me, I am reminded of that front porch from years ago and all the ones that followed because, for me, the front porch is home that you share with others.