A Perch on the Porch

I spent last weekend building a set of gates for our front porch. Or I tried to. For an untrained amateur with a barnful of cheap tools and a propensity for biting off more than he can chew, the challenge of closing the eight-foot gap between the porch’s central pillars, while also matching railings built by a considerably better carpenter a century ago, has revealed various deficiencies in my handicraft skillset. But there is a reward: for the first time in twenty years we’ll be able to sit on this porch without first needing to kick animal bones out of the way. The goal is to exclude our three dogs, who regard the porch the perfect observation post upon which to lurk until the Amazon delivery man shows up to give meaning to their lives. When he does, they explode down the steps and surround the van bristling, barking, and snorting, while the poor delivery man sits inside trying to decide whether they really mean it. The regular guy knows that this rigmarole is all smoke and mirrors, and dispenses pats on his way to leave packages on the steps. But we can tell when a new driver has been because that package is usually lying in the front yard after having been thrown out of the window. I feel bad about this but assume that for delivery people, dealing with melodramatic dogs is a hazard of the profession. 

The goal is to exclude our three dogs, who regard the porch the perfect observation post upon which to lurk until the Amazon delivery man shows up to give meaning to their lives. When he does, they explode down the steps and surround the van bristling, barking, and snorting, while the poor delivery man sits inside trying to decide whether they really mean it.

Our dogs take their sentry duties seriously, which I suppose is a good thing since we live in the exact middle of nowhere. If you’re wondering what kind of heartless dog-hater would want to exclude his staunch defenders from the front porch in the first place, know that our dogs are, usually, revolting. Being country dogs, they divide their summer days between sleeping in dust baths under the house, wallowing in ponds; and making life nasty, brutish, and short for squirrels, chipmunks, possums, raccoons, moles, and any other hapless varmint unfortunate enough to draw their attention. Winter adds mud and deer parts salvaged from the woods behind a nearby hunting camp to this evil-smelling equation. And at the end of the day, can you guess where our dogs most like to retreat to, to relish their conquests and perhaps gnaw on a possum jawbone or something? That’s right: the front porch. Some days we come home and it looks like a cheap slasher film out there. Nothing says “Welcome to our home” like a front porch littered with animal carcasses. It certainly detracts from first impressions of the lovely garden that my wife has labored to create around it. Perhaps it’s a good thing the Amazon delivery man is occasionally frightened to get out of his van. 

[Read another of James Fox-Smith's "Reflections," about the experience of internet withdrawals, here.]

Were it not for the dogs, this porch could be a lovely place to while away a summer evening. According to my wife’s Aunt Frances, who grew up here with her grandparents, parents, and two sisters during the ‘40s and ‘50s, for decades the front porch was screened—same as the back porch is today. When she was a child, Frances remembers that on long, hot, pre-airconditioned summer nights, the doors at either end of the house’s central dogtrot hallway were thrown open to the porches. Then the whole family would gather on the front porch to share news, tell stories, play cards, or just sit and rock, while the old house ticked, settled, and cooled behind them, and the cold stars blazed overhead. 

...the whole family would gather on the front porch to share news, tell stories, play cards, or just sit and rock, while the old house ticked, settled, and cooled behind them, and the cold stars blazed overhead. 

There’s something about sitting on a raised porch—with an unobstructed view before you and a sturdy house at your back—that feels right and good. No surprise, then, that there’s an architectural theory to explain what’s going on. Prospect and Refuge Theory holds that some environments simply make us humans feel secure. Chief among these is any place that provides us with an opportunity to observe goings-on (the “prospect” part), without actually being seen ourselves (“refuge”). So it stands to reason that when we’re perched in the deep shade of a porch, surveying our domain and secure in the knowledge that shelter is only a step away, everything seems right with the world. I suppose the dogs have had the right idea all along.