I built houses once upon a time back when I was younger living in West Palm Beach . Helped build I suppose I should say as I was nineteen and barely knew how to swing a hammer . I did more toting and fetching than driving nails . The one time they did let me use the nail gun I nailed two fingers together so back to toting and fetching . They let me have a tool belt though which is all I really wanted anyway 'cause the hammer made that cool clacking sound when I walked . Yeah . I'm a carpenter .
The company I worked for was called Amazing Builders out of West Palm Beach . Amazing ? I guess the fact they let me work with 'em for a year or so was amazing but we never got to see a finished house so I don't know how they knew . They were a framing crew who just did the form work , stud walls , roof trusses and deck . And poof like a puff of smoke we were gone and on to the next one so we , or at least I , never got to see what it looked like when it was complete . And boy would I have loved that . They were mansions built on the beach in Palm Beach , fifteen or twenty thousand square feet affairs with maybe not streets of gold but driveways anyway . Gold plumbing for sure . Does water taste better out of one of those ? I'll never know this side of heaven . Wait . Jesus said I'll thirst no more . Scratch that .
I never wanted to live in a mansion - too much to clean and who changes the light bulbs in a 20 foot ceiling ? I always wanted to live in a log cabin in the woods on the side of a mountain . A little two room affair with a fireplace and a front porch with two rockers and a hound dog under it . I wanted to plant a garden . I'd have chickens pecking the ground around the front steps , a goat tied to a post , pigs in a pen and a cow in the barn . I wanted to cut down a tree and chop wood and stack it on the side of the house under a lean to , hoping it would be enough to last through a snowy winter . My wife would cook chili and chicken n dumplings and such in a cast iron pot hanging from a hook over the fire and come out and stand on the porch and holler ''Come and get it'' while banging a triangle hanging from a rope next to a porch post . After dinner my bride and me would sit in those rockers on the front porch and I'd blow a mellow tune on the harmonica while she sewed up the holes in my socks and dungarees .We'd sleep in a feather bed under a under a homemade quilt made from fabric she got for a real good price at the general store down the holler and I would wake up of a morning to the smell of coffee and biscuits and bacon from the pig we used to have . Perfect .
Perfect until government revenue men came with their pick axes and hammers and laid waste to my still and set fire to my grow house behind the barn . You didn't think this picturesque setting came for free did ya ? Lawmen . They carted off the animals and the bank took the house on account of I couldn't pay the note and here Mabel and me set behind bars on a hay bed 'cause somebody , probably that preacher man , called john law . sigh . It was nice while it lasted . I made some good hooch I'll tell ya .
I was thinkin' about this last night . Not the moonshine but the porch . We went to the picture show last night and there was a scene where a little girl walked onto an old wooden porch , weather worn and peeling . The porch , not the girl . The boards creaked as she stepped over and sat in the swing and stared off at the field where the wildflowers swayed in the wind . Inside the house her alcoholic father lay in bed with a sickness , blood seeping from his nose as he was passing from this life to beyond . They never said what he was dying from but die he did and as he did so she sat there in that porch swing and seemed to take comfort of some sort feeling the sun , the breeze and the sweet smell of roses . I wept .
I've always fantasized about a porch and it's therapeutic value . It's because some of my best moments , moments I was so close to God it felt like He was in the rocking chair next to me , came while I sat on some wooden porch . It's like , for me , inside the house is the harshness of life or maybe just life in general . It's marriage and money . It's kids and jobs and cars . Sickness and old age and the heart break of losing someone you love . But the porch . The porch . It's where I go to meet God . My Dad . I rock and I talk and I listen . He tells me He loves me and He holds my hand . And as I get up to go He stands and kisses me on the forehead and says come on back any time . He'll keep my chair warm .
In 2014 , I look to find myself on the porch more . I hope you'll join me .
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