We moved to the small town of Eclectic when I was seven years old. I thought we were on vacation for the first two weeks and was more than a little shocked to learn, when I asked to go home, that we had moved permanently to the country. For a city girl, that is no small thing, especially when your favorite playmates seem far, far away.
The house did not fit our family, with its two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, dining room and one bathroom. Very soon, Daddy found himself adding two bedrooms and large den to accommodate everyone. You see, we not only had them and me, there were also Granny K, my older brother and a younger sister. The one place all of us fell in love with was the screened-in side porch.
From that porch, we saw anyone going up and down the road. Mama could check on most things her kids were into and folks could see if we were home so they could stop in for a visit.
That was the spot I watched Daddy, previously a city boy, try his hand at plowing with a plow and mule for the first time. I laughed so hard at that mule zigzagging all over the garden area that I fell over and cracked my head on the cement floor for my troubles. The porch was not that big, but we could squeeze at least five or six adults into it and there was room on the steps for us kids. But who wanted to sit on steps when we could find a mouse nest or frogs and build dirt cave houses for the hapless creatures?
Who wanted to listen to adults talk about silly adult stuff, when we could hunt down field rats? Or pack down some of the hay that was on the site originally and make playhouses our folks could not see? There was even a swing in the feed house. Okay, it was not a real swing. It was a wide platform, held high off the floor by wires on each corner to protect feed for the animals…we did not yet have. So, a swing it became and stayed until Daddy brought in pigs and a cow and, years later, my sister’s horse.
That porch came in real handy when the garden Daddy worked on so hard finally had loads of vegetables to pick, shell, husk and freeze or can. That is my best memory of our Eclectic porch.
Watching Mama shell peas, I knew without a doubt there was no way my shelling competed. She zipped through each shell and with a brisk pull of her thumb; she emptied the peas into a big bowl she always used. No matter how hard I tried, my efforts resembled the race between the Tortoise and the Hare with me being the tortoise and losing, in this case.
We got loads of peaches and dumped them into washtubs of scalding water on that porch. The peels came off with little effort and soon Mama was freezing bags of them for peach pie later in the year or canning spiced peaches I dearly loved.
Cornhusks covered that porch floor with us kids helping, while butter beans filled wash tubs to be thrown out to the animals when full. The best part did not come from our garden, but from our neighbors, Uncle Tom and Aunt Annie and the Warrens. They grew the sweetest red- and yellow-meated watermelons I have ever tasted. And Uncle Tom grew muscadines and huge pears. The muscadines were sweeter than any grape when the tough skin popped and the insides slid into our mouths.
I moved far away from home at the age of 18. My brother went with me because he knew Mama would not allow me to go alone. She was certain I would climb down off the bus and immediately be mugged. The excitement of that trip dimmed when I looked out the window one last time and saw Mama, Granny and Vickie, our little sister, standing in front of that porch waving good-bye. I knew the tears running down my face mirrored theirs and, for just a moment, I wanted to turn back.
Suddenly, the excitement of going eight hundred miles from home hit me again, the tears dried and determined to have the adventure of a lifetime, I pulled my eyes from the family, the porch and our home.
A few years later, that house and its porch of memories suffered so much damage from a tornado that the place had to be torn down. The brick structure built in its place never felt like home because it never held the memories of its predecessor.
My brother eventually moved back home while I married a wonderful man and had two beautiful children of my own. We had a patio in one house, a lanai in another, but never did we have a simple porch until two years ago. By that time, my husband passed away, our son married and moved away and our daughter, who was born with Down’s syndrome, moved with me back to Eclectic, back to a new home, back to a new porch that waits to be filled with memories.
Our new Eclectic porch and the calming view of woods. Not wanting to leave our pups to roam too free, but also unwilling to shut off the view, we had a four-foot fence installed. Later, my brother moved in with us and added the beauty of flowers and a few vegetable plants. Slowly, the memories are building to pass along to my own children one day.