I don’t often see houses being built with porches these days. In my younger days, many if not most houses had porches -front porches and back porches. One of the signs of our times seems to be that houses don’t have porches anymore.
Our old house on the farm had long porches, front and back. The front porch was an open porch, extending nearly the full length of the front of the house. It wasn’t really wide, probably only about seven feet, but it was wide enough for lawn chairs and a porch swing. When my brother Ben and I were really young, the front porch was our trike track. Like many houses from the late 1800s, our house had two front doors which could be entered from the front porch. The south door opened to the living room, and the north door entered a bedroom. We kept that north door locked much of the time. I remember once trying to get my Mom to let me in from the front porch by that north door. I was yelling and banging and kicking on the door facing. I got a good spanking, and never did get in that door. I also got a clear explanation about how to ask properly to be let in the door.
Our back porch also extended nearly the full length of the house. It wasa screened-in porch. That was where Mom’s washing machine was kept and where we stored our hams and bacon and pork shoulders. In the middle of it was the door which lifted up to let us go down the steps into the cellar below, where the shelves of canned beans and peaches and other good stuff was kept. The back porch was where we got ready to go out for almost everything we did, putting on our work shoes to go to the hay field, putting on a jacket to go milk the cows, pulling off our muddy boots before entering the house.
My grandparents’ old house on the next farm north of ours had two front porches. It was a two-story house, later owned by Lois Day, and still later by Charles and Valentina Day. The lower front porch was much like ours, open to the air, with a nice porch swing at the east end, and lots of chair space for sitting out. The upper porch, immediately above, was a screened-in porch. The main idea of it was that it was a sleeping porch for summertime. When the house washot, you could just make a bed on the sleeping porch.
The house we live in now on Patton Street in Pea Ridge has a sort of a porch, but not really. It is mainly a step, just big enough to open the front door and go out and down the front steps. I noticed a few houses about town this morning as I took a short drive on an errand.
The old Bill Woods’ house on Davis Street at Watie has a full-width front porch with an interesting stone outline.
The Times office, in the Finis Wood house, has a nice front porch, as does the W.T. Patterson house across from the funeral home. Many of the houses with nice front porches date from before 1930.
We don’t have a back porch where we are, but we do have an enclosed sun room, which is a little like having a back porch. Some new houses at least have a patio at back. It’s not a great old back porch, but at least it is something.
House styles changed with changing technology and changing life styles. Before home electricity and home fans and air conditioners, people did what they could to make a house cool and comfortable. Room ceilings were made high, sometimes like 12 feet high, so the hot air rose up above you. Many houses had transoms which opened over the inside doorsto help circulate air through the house. People had big trees close to the house to shade it. That was natural air conditioning, and almost free. Then there was the front porch to sit on when the house was just too hot. It helped if you had some big shade trees shading the front porch, too.
These days we live in refrigerated boxes with no front porches. In the old days, the car was banished to the side or rear of the house in a separated garage. At the W.T. Patterson house and the Finis Wood house, the garages are still there, away from the house. In today’s new houses, the car lives in the front room and we live in the back. In many houses, the garage is the biggest room in the house. In many of our houses, we could probably not stay in the house if the electricity went off for more than a day or so. Ok, I like progress, for the most part. It is just that when we get away from front porches and back porches, it may not be real progress.
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Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@centurytel.
net, or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 08/04/2010