icebox and a series of Xs that held brooms and mops and a dustpan and an ash scoop, and all kinds of household tools. And there was this huge meter box that the meter reader came to read once a month.
And he was a strange character, wearing a cap with a big green celluloid visor. He never said anything. If you said, “Hey, Mr. Meter Man!” he wouldn’t look to left or right. He would just march up onto the back porch and read that meter.
If you had green peas or the first butter beans, you often shelled them on the front porch. But peeling shrimp, or cutting the tips off okra, or husking corn for corn pudding was messy. That was done on the back porch. And then some days my grandmother would just stay in her wrapper till time to dress for lunch. She didn’t want to sit on the front porch. Hot August. She’d have her hair all pulled straight back with eighteen thousand hairpins so not one hair was touching her neck. She had this loose garment of dotted blue swiss that she’d just float around in during really hot weather. With her slop-slop slippers.
One of the moments I can recollect so clearly is reading Little Nemo, the comic strip, out of the Sunday Register to my grandmother and Rebecca as they sat in these rocking chairs on the back porch, shelling the peas or snapping the beans or husking the corn. I had to describe the action of each frame as well as do the dialogue.
So now Little Nemo is on the deck and he says to Captain Flip, “Well, Cap’n, how long is it going to take to cross this channel?” And Captain says, “Why don’t you climb the riggin’s and see?” Then Little Nemo climbs to the top of the riggings with his telescope and carefully eases back down, and Captain Flip says, “Can you see land?” And Little Nemo says, “I can see land.”
Whenever I read, they used to roar with laughter, and I was always rewarded. That was considered a job.
Then suddenly there might be a silent presence on the back porch. The boboshillies. These were old Indian women from the backwoods. They never knocked. They never cried out. Always dressed in white. They had their hair under a white turban, almost like a nurse or a nun. And sometimes a colored apron with these big pockets that they carried all kinds of things in, like gumbo filé powder, bay laurel leaves, sassafras root. They had all kinds of strange things from the swamps, like powdered this and powdered that. They sold medical, medicinal herbs to black people, things for childbirth, fever, and all that, but I don’t think they sold those to white people. And I was scared of one very old lady who was a boboshilly. I don’t think I ever heard her utter a sound, and she moved like a shadow, completely silent and seemingly weightless. For me, silence was everything frightening. I couldn’t care less about darkness, but silence… My grandmother was fascinated by them. I think she bought gumbo filé, ground sassafras leaves to put in the gumbo. But the boboshillies would never sit and never stay.
*
When the cathedral bells rang eleven o’clock, there was a shuffle of feet, of chairs being pushed back. Everyone on all downtown front porches said in civic unison, “Gettin’ hot, time to go inside.” But during that morning hour, the front porch was the universal agora, the outdoor parlor, the message post, the echoing chamber for countless unofficial town criers, the first act of an opéra bouffe, endless source of gorgeous and useless information for a child.
Porch life turned neighborhoods into augmented families or familial groups. It was a formal relationship—you never intruded—but the important events of birth, death, illness, engagements, weddings, and birthdays were absolutely known. You knew them before being told, just from seeing what was happening on the other front porches. If you were outside on the front porch, you saw what was being delivered. Or not being delivered. You knew who got groceries and who didn’t get groceries. You
And he was a strange character, wearing a cap with a big green celluloid visor. He never said anything. If you said, “Hey, Mr. Meter Man!” he wouldn’t look to left or right. He would just march up onto the back porch and read that meter.
If you had green peas or the first butter beans, you often shelled them on the front porch. But peeling shrimp, or cutting the tips off okra, or husking corn for corn pudding was messy. That was done on the back porch. And then some days my grandmother would just stay in her wrapper till time to dress for lunch. She didn’t want to sit on the front porch. Hot August. She’d have her hair all pulled straight back with eighteen thousand hairpins so not one hair was touching her neck. She had this loose garment of dotted blue swiss that she’d just float around in during really hot weather. With her slop-slop slippers.
One of the moments I can recollect so clearly is reading Little Nemo, the comic strip, out of the Sunday Register to my grandmother and Rebecca as they sat in these rocking chairs on the back porch, shelling the peas or snapping the beans or husking the corn. I had to describe the action of each frame as well as do the dialogue.
So now Little Nemo is on the deck and he says to Captain Flip, “Well, Cap’n, how long is it going to take to cross this channel?” And Captain says, “Why don’t you climb the riggin’s and see?” Then Little Nemo climbs to the top of the riggings with his telescope and carefully eases back down, and Captain Flip says, “Can you see land?” And Little Nemo says, “I can see land.”
Whenever I read, they used to roar with laughter, and I was always rewarded. That was considered a job.
Then suddenly there might be a silent presence on the back porch. The boboshillies. These were old Indian women from the backwoods. They never knocked. They never cried out. Always dressed in white. They had their hair under a white turban, almost like a nurse or a nun. And sometimes a colored apron with these big pockets that they carried all kinds of things in, like gumbo filé powder, bay laurel leaves, sassafras root. They had all kinds of strange things from the swamps, like powdered this and powdered that. They sold medical, medicinal herbs to black people, things for childbirth, fever, and all that, but I don’t think they sold those to white people. And I was scared of one very old lady who was a boboshilly. I don’t think I ever heard her utter a sound, and she moved like a shadow, completely silent and seemingly weightless. For me, silence was everything frightening. I couldn’t care less about darkness, but silence… My grandmother was fascinated by them. I think she bought gumbo filé, ground sassafras leaves to put in the gumbo. But the boboshillies would never sit and never stay.
*
When the cathedral bells rang eleven o’clock, there was a shuffle of feet, of chairs being pushed back. Everyone on all downtown front porches said in civic unison, “Gettin’ hot, time to go inside.” But during that morning hour, the front porch was the universal agora, the outdoor parlor, the message post, the echoing chamber for countless unofficial town criers, the first act of an opéra bouffe, endless source of gorgeous and useless information for a child.
Porch life turned neighborhoods into augmented families or familial groups. It was a formal relationship—you never intruded—but the important events of birth, death, illness, engagements, weddings, and birthdays were absolutely known. You knew them before being told, just from seeing what was happening on the other front porches. If you were outside on the front porch, you saw what was being delivered. Or not being delivered. You knew who got groceries and who didn’t get groceries. You
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