In the dystopian world of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, front porches as we know them are a distant memory: “My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn’t look well,” he writes. “But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn’t want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong KIND of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches.”
Thankfully, no one has yet run off with all the porches in the real world, and while some have bemoaned the fading American tradition of “porch sitting,” I think the vitality of the pastime all depends upon your definition of porch. While the space in front of your house might not necessarily be grand and covered by a roof, it’s still a place to find community.
In my personal experience, the culture of the porch is still alive and well — at least in the cities I’ve lived in. And summer nights are when all such frontal projections, no matter their relative grandeur, truly come into their own.
from WordPress https://jonathanwilhoite.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/the-enduring-tradition-of-porch-sitting-the-front-porch/
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