Sitting on the Front Porch

 

Yes, that is Mark Twain sitting on his porch. No, he is not a relative, but definitely a favorite author of mine. You often see on Facebook and other sites about how it would be nice to go back to simpler times. I started thinking about that and made me wonder if it was all that simple. Our country has been through so much from the very beginning to this very day. But I wasn’t thinking so much about the major issues of our current times or earlier days. There isn't anything simple about that!

I was thinking more in terms of how today you can literally never leave your home and buy your clothes, food, appliances, and even a car. You don’t even have to hold a print book in your hands to read. Just click on a link on your I-pad or phone, the book is there in seconds, and your fingers flip each page, or you can let someone read it to you. You can tell Alexa to turn on your lights or heat up/cool down your home. And I won't even get into how much entertainment is available, again at your fingertips or remote.

Now I know you know, even if you didn’t live through the olden days, how there were only three TV channels, you had to get up and walk over to the TV to change the channel, so there was no such thing as channel surfing. You had to actually watch the commercials (or go get a snack). The milk was delivered to your door, and skim milk looked more like blue milk! The bakery man came to the house every Saturday. The insurance man also came to the house when a policy needed updated or renewing, and I can assure you he did not look like Jake from State Farm.

So it would seem as if today is much simpler than decades ago. But it really isn't, is it? We are overwhelmed with information, sometimes I think too much of it. I miss reading the funnies in the Sunday morning newspaper. I miss that bakery man. I miss my brother yelling at me to change the channel on the TV. Well—maybe I don’t miss that so much. What I miss the most is sitting on the front porch at my grandma’s house. In the summer, after dinner and the dishes washed and put away, by hand, not a dishwasher, we would go out to the front porch with my grandpa and my Aunt Vera. Most of today’s homes don’t even have a front porch. Most have decks or patios in the backyard. I miss the front porch, because there you could watch the traffic go by, wave to your neighbors, maybe even chat for a few minutes.

I suppose it all depends on how you define simple. Life was simpler back then, but it was also harder. Today, things are not so simple, but life is easier. I'm not talking about the stresses of life. Of course, there are over-the-top stresses in today’s world, especially with 2020! 

Maybe it’s just a matter of getting back to that front porch.

As always, thanks for stopping by. Keep reading, keep writing, and take some time to enjoy your day.

The Big Picture

 

In my post of almost a year ago to the day, August 17, I shared with you a family project about a picture history book I made for myself, my brother, and my sister. I won't go into the details again here, but as you can probably tell, I love journaling and documenting my family history. I have more than one project I'm working on with saving pictures and captioning them, sometimes telling a short story about a particular picture here and there. Putting them into a personalized 3-ring binder, like the one you see from the post mentioned above, has worked well in that they should last for a very long time—at least that is the plan.

The one thing I have found missing is the fact I have very few pictures of the insides of the homes from my childhood. There are a few of family gatherings, one of my mother’s kitchen after a remodel, but no pictures of all the kitchens, the living rooms where my family gathered, especially at my maternal grandparents’ place where we would watch Lawrence Welk and Mitch Miller on a Saturday night, with tea and cookies promptly at 9 p.m.

I would love to even have photographs of the bedrooms in these homes. I remember the wallpaper in my grandparents’ bedroom that was white with huge yellow roses, at least I think they were roses. Without an actual picture, I'm not entirely certain. My aunt’s bedroom was very tiny, and there was a moon with stairs leading up to a star that hung above her bed, a set my carpenter grandfather made for her. I don’t remember much at all of my paternal grandparents’ home, in fact, don’t recall ever having gone upstairs.

There are no pictures of the bedroom I shared with my sister until she married. When she left, my brother took over her room, and I got the small bedroom on the first floor. My mom let me hang Beetle cards all over the walls, and once I took them down, the whole wall was left with staining from the tape that held those cards, and she had to have the room repainted. And the day my brother left for the Army, I don’t think he was gone 10 minutes when I took over that room upstairs, Mom even letting me get new curtains for the windows, probably something she couldn’t afford, but she found a way.

I do have outside pictures of all the houses from my family, even the one they lived in before I was born. I also have pictures of the house I shared with my husband in Ohio, some before and after pictures when we had 6 weeks to redo almost every room in the house before he left for Idaho. I stayed behind to sell the house. And I'm happy to have pictures of our home in Idaho.

 

 This is one of the guest bedrooms. We called it “Barb’s Room” because my sister and her girlfriend were our first visitors when we moved out West.  In looking through these photos, I realized I don’t have the other bedroom that we called “Dee’s Room,” and sure wish I did now!

My point in sharing this with you is that I think it would be a wonderful idea to take photos of your home. It can include people or pets or just the room. It may not seem important now, perhaps even silly, but some day it might be something you would treasure seeing again. I would like to think that the future generations of my family will get a kick out of seeing places I lived, even my style or other family’s style of decorating.

A family history has so many aspects to it. The people themselves. The family get-togethers. The games played at the dining room table, (I wish I even had pictures of those old games we played with my aunt for hours on end). The long discussions over politics or whatever happened to that aunt who ran off to Chicago and never heard from again. What people did for a living or how they came to this country or town. The list is too long to include here, but you get where I'm going with this. Documenting your family through journaling and pictures can add up to so much more than a picture of a bed. Take the time now. It’s time well spent and something you might treasure for years to come for yourself and the many generations in the future.

Thanks for stopping by today. Keep reading, keep writing (and picture taking!), and stay safe and healthy.