Is your house even a Southern home if you don’t have a front porch?

Front porches are an important part of Southern culture.

On a suffocatingly hot summer day like today, the shade of the front porch brings respite from the oppressive heat. If there is even the slightest breeze, the fronds from the requisite baskets of ferns will wave gently your way as you sit in a wicker chair, drinking tea or lemonade. These are the required beverages for front porch “settin'”.

A rocking chair is best, harkening back to the porches of my youth in Alabama. Wood against wood creaked as the elders sat and watched the world go by, and me in the yard, playing. The big live oak had a circle of crumbling bricks around it, and I’d pry them apart to find the roly polys I’d play with while we waited for supper. Gramma Dahlia made tea so sweet your teeth would hurt, and her nana puddin’ was made with love, from scratch, every Sunday. Even on the hottest, most humid days, her meringue was curled to perfection.

Mama talks about times from her youth, when the yards were swept, butter was churned, and beans were snapped on the front porch. The house was too stifling – the slap of the screen door was the only warning you got that Mama was checking on you butter or bean progress.

Nowadays, the A/C keeps me inside for most of the summer, safe from the noseeums that love to bite my legs.

At least once a day, though, I go sit on the front porch. I remember my childhood and my grandparents, fleeting visits made between moves as an Air Force Brat.

I also fondly recall settin’ on the deck, watching fireflies at my in-laws farm. These Kentucky home memories are treasured for the quiet reflections of the beauty of those acres, and the love of family around me. Mom and I would talk about the variety of birds visiting the feeder, and the kids would run the fields, riding the three wheeler, laughing, until they wore themselves out. The somber cry of coyotes at dusk would bring these city kids right back to the house to join us on the deck or inclosed patio.

Back home on my porch in the early evening, I smell the intoxicating perfume of gardenias at night, and never cease to be in awe of the huge glowing magnolia blossoms.

I do declare a front porch is what makes a southern house a home.