Front porches turn people into better neighbours

Poet Robert Frost coined the phrase, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

Carl Sandberg, a colleague of Frost said, “Love your neighbour as yourself, but don’t take down the fences.”

When I was a teenager, my parents built a cabin on a lake 25 miles from our house. I remember a discussion regarding the neighbours: that my parents liked and inter-acted with all of them, but maintained a respectful distance. Everyone was friendly and there were lots of parties but there was great respect for privacy among the residents.

We have great neighbours on our street. We adhere to the code I learned as a teen, where privacy is observed, but we still have great relationships and I like that very much.

Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird, laments that “People don’t use the front door much anymore.”

He was speaking about how he thought Southern hospitality was changing and he didn’t like it. The front porch, or veranda, used to be a focal point for neighbours to conduct interchanges, but those have pretty much gone the way of the Ogopogo.

Country singer Allan Jackson had a song called “Where I Come From,” in which he describes “front porch pickin’.”

Tracy Lawrence had a song called “If the World Had a Front Porch.” In it, he sang, “We’d still have our problems, but we’d all be friends.”

A few years ago, Carol and I rented a house in a golf community in Arizona. The neighbour across the street complained to me that he never sees anyone. You weren’t allowed to park on the street so everybody drove up to their garage, went into the house and were rarely seen. He was right. That’s exactly how it worked there. You could meet folks on the golf course, but the streets always looked like a ghost town. It was a new development, too.

In my real life, I am a builder. Of the 47 properties I have developed over the years, I would say 90 per cent of them have a front porch. So, I’m doing my part. I like front porches and verandas — a throwback to my Maritime upbringing I guess.

A parting smile for this week from Readers Digest: A Grade 2 teacher, who had lost track of the time, asked the little girl she was working with if she had a watch on. The little girl answered: “What’s a watchon?”

‘Have a great week.