Disappearance of the Porch Public

It is that time of year once again when Buddy and I take up our annual post on the front porch. We settle into our accustomed stations like a pair of aging lighthouse keepers, watching over a sea of asphalt and lawns instead of waves. Buddy handles security, which mostly consists of sleeping with one eye open, while I concern myself with observing humanity and forming opinions about it that nobody requested.

In years past, this arrangement provided a steady stream of entertainment. People walked by at all hours. Some waved. Some stopped to chat.

Some lingered long enough to tell me things I had no particular need to know, which is one of the great traditions of neighborhood life. A man could learn about sore knees, troublesome grandchildren, leaking water heaters, and the weather forecast all in the span of fifteen minutes.

Nowadays, however, the front porch resembles a fishing dock after the fish have migrated elsewhere. The people are fewer. The walkers are scarcer. The conversations have become so rare that when somebody actually says hello, I am tempted to check whether I have accidentally wandered into a different neighborhood.

I do not know precisely when this change occurred. It crept in gradually, the way old age does. One day, you notice your barber trimming your eyebrows with greater enthusiasm than your hair, and another day, you realize that half the people who pass your house are staring into a telephone rather than looking at the world around them.

The modern citizen appears to move through life in a state of determined isolation. He walks down the sidewalk wearing headphones, studying a screen, and avoiding eye contact with the intensity of a man carrying state secrets. If he encounters another human being, he reacts as though an unexpected conversation might require legal representation.

I am old enough to remember when people spoke to strangers simply because they happened to be standing in the same vicinity. There was no agenda. There was no strategic objective. There was merely a shared understanding that talking was cheaper than therapy and considerably more entertaining than staring at a glowing rectangle.

Now, when a passerby approaches, I sometimes prepare myself for a friendly exchange. I straighten up in my chair. Buddy lifts his head. We both assume our professional positions. Then the person glides past without so much as a nod, as though we are decorative lawn ornaments purchased from a clearance rack.

Buddy seems less troubled by this development than I am. He measures success by the number of crows he observes and the likelihood of receiving a biscuit. Human interaction holds a distant second place for him. In this regard, he is wiser than I am.

The other day, a woman walked by and actually waved. I nearly fell out of my chair. Buddy stood up. For a brief moment, we both thought civilization had begun to recover. The event was so unexpected that I recorded the date in my journal for future historians.

Of course, there may be another explanation for the decline in neighborhood conversation. It is entirely possible that the problem is not society but me.

A man reaches a certain age and gradually becomes indistinguishable from local folklore. Children point him out to passing cars. New residents hear stories about him but are uncertain whether he is real.

Perhaps the walkers see me sitting there with Buddy and think, “There is that old fellow again. If we stop to chat, he may tell us about the weather in 1978, and we shall never escape.”

This concern would not be entirely unreasonable, since I am perfectly capable of turning a simple greeting into a forty-minute discussion involving radio stations, fishing trips, and three people who have been dead since the Reagan administration.

Still, I miss the old front porch public. It was an informal institution, requiring neither membership dues nor government oversight. Its citizens exchanged greetings, traded stories, borrowed tools, and occasionally settled the world’s problems before supper. The solutions rarely worked, but that was never the point.

So Buddy and I continue our vigil. We sit on the porch and watch our little corner of the world roll by.

Now and then, someone waves, and every once in a great while, someone stops to talk. When that happens, I am reminded that the old republic has not vanished entirely.

It has merely become an endangered species, like common sense, affordable bacon, and politicians who answer a question without first consulting a committee. Until it disappears completely, Buddy and I intend to keep the porch open and the chairs occupied, just in case somebody passing by remembers how to say hello.