Out on the Porch [antikvár]

THE LOST ROOM hy Reynolds Price T he front porch thrived in American architecture from the early eighteenth century right into the 1930s and forties for one main reason— throughout the young agrarian country, largely settled by families in search of a sovereign independence, the front porch served far more purposes than an obvious escape from hot interiors, stoked by the weather and kitchen fires. In the slave-owning South and the Puritan-private north, it served for instance as a vital transition between the uncontrollable out-of-doors and the cherished interior of the home. The masters farm business, the mistress's selections of goods and produce, the home craftsman's sales, and sundry emotional negotiations of the cooler sort (with the hired man, the foreman, the slave or house servant, the distressed or disgruntled neighbor, even with the unpredictable stranger from the muddy road) could all be conducted in the civil atmosphere offered by the shade of a prominent porch, apart from the sleeping and feeding quarters and without serious risk to the family's physical and psychic core. Yet the average literate American—especially one who's well-read in American fiction—is likely, at the mention of porches, to think first and last of a rangy white house, south of Baltimore, banked with old trees and dark green shrubs, and fronted or ringed by a broad shady porch with rocking chairs and a hanging swing that will seat at least two peaceful adults or (better yet) one drowsy adult and a much-loved child, stroked by the merest trace of a breeze and engaged in a soft-voiced dialogue of no great moment as to subject or theme, though deeply rewarding to heart and mind through a whole life's memory.