This old porch has sheltered families for 93 years. When you think of the changes that have occurred since 1920, when the builders put it all together, with hand tools, since there was no electricity for power tools, out this far in the country, first tearing down the old antebellum house that had stood on this site for another hundred years or so.
I have always had a fascination with historic homes, wondering at the lives and times that the buildings represent.
The site for our old farm house was a natural for a residence. Sitting on a rise, above a flowing spring and Deshea Creek, it had the elements that early settlers were looking for. The fresh water from the Spring, with it's rock walled construction, and rock steps built to go down into it to draw water, was essential for the first one to build the old antebellum house that sat here for so many years. I have been unable to trace the history of that house, but I know it would have been here during the civil war that swept through all of this country.
Our old farm house was built just after World War One, and prior to the Great Depression, the road running in front was just a dirt road, still with more horses and wagons, than motorized vehicles, electric power was years away, as was telephones and indoor plumbing. It survived the Great Depression, The horror of World War Two, then the Victory, and boys and girls coming home to Sumner County, after trips to South Sea Islands and European forests that were blasted and torn apart, making it almost certain not to be a pleasure trip.
That period of time, between World War One and World War Two, when this old house was being built, was a time of change that our country had never seen the like of. Twenty Six years after it was built, the horses and buggies were gone forever, the road was paved, REA had brought Electricity to the rural areas, water was piped into the house, indoor plumbing! But, one part of the old house kept it's original intent...the front porch continued to be the gathering place, the social spot, the place where the old folks would come to sit and say, "Yessir, the times are sure a'changin' alright...why, I remember when....", and another story would be told, another piece of history remembered.
Yes, you might say, it's just an old house, it doesn't really have a soul, not a memory...but, I have always felt the presence of the memory of this old porch. When I sit here, coffee in hand, Old Buck The Collie at my feet, I know that this old building does contain the echo of past children laughing, of a Mother, sitting here where I am sitting now, with a letter from Iwo Jima, where her son is fighting a war that was supposed to end all wars, I can feel the tears, when the news is bad, or the relief when the news is good, I can feel the presence of an old man, standing on the porch in his bib overalls, looking out at a dry land from the drouth, in the 1950's, wondering how he was going to hold it all together til the rains come again, I see the gathering of the family at Christmas, when snow is gently falling and the light from the coal oil lamps cast a yellow glow into the night. Yeah, you are right, it's just an old house...but where do house memories go, after all, are the lives that once lived and loved here just gone like a puff of smoke? No, not for me it isn't. You just have to sit, open your mind, on the old front porch, and let the house memories have a moment to reflect, to share and to say, "Oh, what times we had....why I remember.....". An old man, and an old porch have a moment. Stan
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