When I was a boy living in NewCumberland, we knew what a porch was for - cooling off, talking and seeing the neighbors. Everybody was on their porch in the Summer, or walking down the sidewalk between porches. You had to have a swing, and libations to fit in with this crowd. For christmas when we had a few extra dollars we put a christmas tree with lights on the porch.
I'm not sure in NewCumberland now a days if they still do this, but I like porches, so I built four of them. The front one doesn't have a swing, and that may have been a mistake, but not having any neighbors as it sits in the middle of 60 acres kind of eliminates that opportunity anyway here in Lower Paxton.
Since the fruit does not fall far from the tree, we put a tree on the porch, grown in our christmas tree patch, and we put a bunch of other decorations as well. But we've found some other things to do.
Carving pumpkins is my favorite. Find a beautiful Fall day, some pumpkins, some kids, some sharp knives and you can have a good time. It also makes a good backstop for every "First Day of School" picture, though I have yet to put them all side by side because I'm afraid it would be scarey to see diapers becoming trousers, boys becoming men, and a bit of apprehension become "can't wait to see my buds".
In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy writes: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Maybe using your porch improves your ability to have a happy family, or at least looking back you can remember the happy times you had on a porch.
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