Love And Imagination Build An Enduring Home

I grew up in the ‘50s, in a small Victorian home in a working-class suburb of Chicago.

Our house lacked the romantic images magazines give of life in a Victorian. I found little charm in going to our bedrooms through the enclosed, unheated porch off the kitchen. But I loved the east-facing, front porch which ran the width of the house.

As babies, my mother tells me, we would sleep in a buggy on the porch with her at our side reading a book or sipping coffee with a neighbor.

Later, on hot summer evenings, the shaded porch was a cool place to relax with lemonade and popcorn after a hard day’s play.

Imaginations ran wild there. In our chenille bathrobes, we were kings and queens on our royal balcony. With my older sister Sue playing teacher, it became our school.

My dad made a bazooka out of a cardboard tube and enabled my little brother Tom to protect our fort.

Sometimes the porch was a circus tent or a theater, and we all starred.

At Halloween we traditionally staged a haunted house under the porch. For a nickel each neighborhood kids could stick their hands in a bowl of grape eyeballs and other unearthly delights.

Some mischief went on under the porch, and an occasional accident. (“But, Mom, we were having too much fun and by the time I realized I had to go …”)

That porch was the scene of first kisses and last goodbyes with various boyfriends. When one boyfriend chased me off the porch with a big June bug I ran screaming down the block, then, on the long walk back, had to reassure neighbors who thought I was being attacked.

When my husband Ron and I moved to Spokane in 1982, we bought the second house we looked at, a two-story Victorian with an east-facing porch. For four years we enjoyed the porch as a gathering place for neighbors, a reading spot and a play space for our toddler.

Ron’s mother died in 1986 and we inherited her ‘50s rancher in Coeur d’Alene. We moved there and added a deck right away but it isn’t the same as those marvelous railings.

We now rent the Spokane Victorian to a former neighbor, but maybe we’ll rock away our old age on that front porch - or figure out a way to add a front porch and railing to our rancher.

MEMO: Your Turn is a feature of the Wednesday and Saturday Opinion page. To submit a column for consideration, call Rebecca Nappi/459-5496, or Doug Floyd/459-5466.