Porch Talk
Stories of Decency, Common Sense, and Other Endangered Species
Chapter One
Porch Talk
Several years back, I was visiting an elderly woman in my Quaker meeting. She was reminiscing about her childhood. I asked her what she missed the most. She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking back, then said, "Porch talk. I miss the porch talk."
Social scientists and preachers offer a number of reasons for the decline of civil society: broken homes, poverty, disease, television, and increasing secularism, to name a few. I believe all that is wrong with our world can be attributed to the shortage of front porches and the talks we had on them. Somewhere around 1950, builders left off the front porch to save money, and we've had nothing but problems ever since.
I place the blame squarely at the feet of William and Alfred Levitt, who built the first modern subdivision of 17,477 homes in a Long Island potato field in 1947. The Levitt brothers have since passed away and can't argue back. I often blame deadpeople for that very reason.
Prior to the subdivision, wh ... read full excerpt from: Porch Talk ebook
