saw the druggist’s boy come up on his bicycle bringing medicines, and you knew that Mrs. Allen was not so well over there or had had one of her attacks. If you saw the doctor come, and saw everybody wringing their hands, you knew someone was gravely ill. Everybody helped everybody else, and everybody shared. You couldn’t watch the life taking place on someone else’s front porch and not be a part of it. And if you needed this, that, or the other, all you had to do was ask two of your neighbors, and one of them would have it.
That is the good aspect of gossip. If you are in trouble, serious trouble, friends sort of happen to pass by often, happen to telephone, or put in a good word behind the scenes. In the South, gossip is a full-time occupation. That’s why our roads are in bad condition, the bridges that were due ten years ago aren’t built yet, the mail doesn’t work. People are too busy tracking down versions of the story. “I heard she went to New Orleans alone.” “Oh, no, her husband followed her.” “Oh, no.” “Oh, yes.” But there is a humane dimension to gossip. In New York, you know, you could drop dead and the next-door neighbor wouldn’t know it for ten years. Here, if the cat cries at the back door longer than two hours and it’s not let in, someone will check.
If there was a death, everybody stayed home to do whatever had to be done, because funerals were at home. The neighbors always gathered—even if you loathed some of your neighbors and had been battling and feuding for years—all neighbors got together. It was that old-fashioned thing. Someone would always get the widow or widower out of the house while the undertakers were clobbering the corpse in the bedroom, doing the embalming, cleaning up afterward. The ghastly smell of formaldehyde and whatever in the house.
Porch life made everybody cousins. You may not like all your cousins, but you helped out anyway, because they were family. And that is something we have almost totally lost, along with porch life itself.
*
Everybody came home for midday dinner in those days. Then there was always a fuss to see what my grandfather might bring home in the middle of the day. You never knew what might turn up from one of those boats. Once my grandfather brought home this bunch of plantains, and we found a baby spider monkey in it. The midday meal was a serious occasion, the dining table a sacred altar where everybody worshiped at noon. There was always a cold consommé or a cold cream soup to start. No ghastly globby dressings on raw salad to insult our innards at the beginning of the meal. My grandfather never allowed water on the table; there was always wine, which he made himself and stored under the house. There were always two meats or one meat and one seafood. Little lamb chops and then ham. Or broiled fish and then pork chops. Always at least two starches. Rice and potatoes and barley. There were always hot breads. My grandmother made wonderful crunchy-crust bread, or little muffins, or cornbread, or fresh biscuits. Then usually it was salad and cheese and fruit. Beautiful cheeses; I don’t know where my grandfather got some of those cheeses. He loved Limburger. We called that “dirty socks cheese.” Afterward some small sweet thing like a pickled peach, and there was always some splendid dessert. My grandmother made these wonderful aniseed cookies. They had to age for a week. I’d come home from running around the neighborhood and I could smell them in the house. She would have hidden them in a different place every day. The minute I came in I’d start that room-by-room search. I often found them. And I learned to take one and rearrange the others. Or there might be some glorious bit of chocolate from George’s Chocolate Shop. Or a sherbet made of Karo syrup and blackberries. All glorious foods. But you see, everybody was active. By the time I had climbed the pecan tree and gone under the house and skipped around the block and
That is the good aspect of gossip. If you are in trouble, serious trouble, friends sort of happen to pass by often, happen to telephone, or put in a good word behind the scenes. In the South, gossip is a full-time occupation. That’s why our roads are in bad condition, the bridges that were due ten years ago aren’t built yet, the mail doesn’t work. People are too busy tracking down versions of the story. “I heard she went to New Orleans alone.” “Oh, no, her husband followed her.” “Oh, no.” “Oh, yes.” But there is a humane dimension to gossip. In New York, you know, you could drop dead and the next-door neighbor wouldn’t know it for ten years. Here, if the cat cries at the back door longer than two hours and it’s not let in, someone will check.
If there was a death, everybody stayed home to do whatever had to be done, because funerals were at home. The neighbors always gathered—even if you loathed some of your neighbors and had been battling and feuding for years—all neighbors got together. It was that old-fashioned thing. Someone would always get the widow or widower out of the house while the undertakers were clobbering the corpse in the bedroom, doing the embalming, cleaning up afterward. The ghastly smell of formaldehyde and whatever in the house.
Porch life made everybody cousins. You may not like all your cousins, but you helped out anyway, because they were family. And that is something we have almost totally lost, along with porch life itself.
*
Everybody came home for midday dinner in those days. Then there was always a fuss to see what my grandfather might bring home in the middle of the day. You never knew what might turn up from one of those boats. Once my grandfather brought home this bunch of plantains, and we found a baby spider monkey in it. The midday meal was a serious occasion, the dining table a sacred altar where everybody worshiped at noon. There was always a cold consommé or a cold cream soup to start. No ghastly globby dressings on raw salad to insult our innards at the beginning of the meal. My grandfather never allowed water on the table; there was always wine, which he made himself and stored under the house. There were always two meats or one meat and one seafood. Little lamb chops and then ham. Or broiled fish and then pork chops. Always at least two starches. Rice and potatoes and barley. There were always hot breads. My grandmother made wonderful crunchy-crust bread, or little muffins, or cornbread, or fresh biscuits. Then usually it was salad and cheese and fruit. Beautiful cheeses; I don’t know where my grandfather got some of those cheeses. He loved Limburger. We called that “dirty socks cheese.” Afterward some small sweet thing like a pickled peach, and there was always some splendid dessert. My grandmother made these wonderful aniseed cookies. They had to age for a week. I’d come home from running around the neighborhood and I could smell them in the house. She would have hidden them in a different place every day. The minute I came in I’d start that room-by-room search. I often found them. And I learned to take one and rearrange the others. Or there might be some glorious bit of chocolate from George’s Chocolate Shop. Or a sherbet made of Karo syrup and blackberries. All glorious foods. But you see, everybody was active. By the time I had climbed the pecan tree and gone under the house and skipped around the block and
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