I’ve always been in love with porches, and there have been many throughout my life.
The front porch on McClellan Street, where I lived from the age of two till ten years, was wide and had a wooden banister around it. The home was a two-family dwelling that my parent’s owned, so often we shared the porch with the upstairs neighbor. The street was a main thoroughfare not far from Schenectady, New York’s St. Clare’s Hospital and Central Park, so traffic was constant. Because of a walking disability from birth, I wasn’t able to ride bikes, jump rope or roller skate as other children did. But from my porch I watched others having fun during the summer vacation from school.
It was on that porch I began to write. I knew that if I was to ever make a friend, I would need a hook to get them to put down their bikes and join me on the porch. I began to write plays, making puppets out of paper dolls or socks, and putting on my productions from the porch. Soon, children were coming from all over the neighborhood to watch. My mom served cool aid, chocolate chip cookies and chocolate cream filled cupcakes (my dad worked for Freihofers Baking Company at the time so we had an abundance of sweets in our home.) It wasn’t long before the spectators wanted a piece of the action, and so they joined in at making puppets and having a part in the play . . . all written by me.
I loved my grandparent’s patio porch on Nora Avenue. There hung a large porch swing and I would sit for hours upon it refreshing my mouth with root beer flavored popsicles and listening to my Aunt Peg play Elvis Presley records on her Hi Fi record player.
Another wonderful porch was the one at my family’s camp in Caroga Lake, New York. The large front enclosed terrace saw kids and adults playing card and board games on summer nights. On the back porch we sat at a huge picnic table . . . cousins, aunts and uncles, eating cold chicken legs, potato salad and lemonade before taking a stroll to Sherman’s Amusement Park and riding the carrousel.
When I was eleven we moved to Eastholm Road. That bungalow had both a front and back enclosed porch. It was on the front porch I colored in my Barbie coloring book and devoured, cover to cover, Cherry Ames Student Nurse on stormy summer afternoons, thunder rumbling in the distance.
When I was fourteen the front porch on Lucy Road was where I wrote letters to pen pals. Later, as a young woman, letters to many Viet Nam soldiers needing news from home, and poems to a sailor who captured my heart.
From the back deck of my Lucy Road home (loved the street so much growing up as a kid, I bought a home down the street after I wed . . . not to the sailor but to a marine), I read romance novels while watching my own children as they played on the swings and enjoyed the pool.
Now, while watching my grandchildren play, I sit upon the same deck porch with my lap top and once again craft characters and plots for my novels . . . creating a make-believe world, just as I did on that first porch when I was a kid. Recently I’ve even purchased the entire Cherry Ames series from my book club to read again. It’s true . . . history repeats itself.
So come on in . . . settle yourself down on my porch, 'swing a little, kick off your shoes and browse through the site. ENJOY!
