The Weathered Porch

Why is it so hard to choose a name for our new business? Because we make it hard. I want something that people will remember, a name that relates to the business. Yet I am a sentimental kind of person, overly so. For weeks I have brainstormed different ideas only to be shot down. A quick google search would tell me someone already had the perfect name I had chosen. After all this torment, I finally have it! It was stupid simple and just sort of smacked me in the head.

The Home Behind The Name

The Weathered Porch; perfecto! And now the story behind it. When I was a child, we lived in an old farm-style house. This house was the first home my parents ever owned. It was surrounded by 100 year old oak trees that were spectacular. There was a garden out back that my Father after working all day would come home in the evening and tend to. I can’t remember ever buying vegetables from the grocery. From the time I was in the 4th grade until I left home, this house was the only home I ever knew. I rode my bicycle all over that property, trying to keep up with my older brother and his friends. There was a swing set in the back yard where I had removed the swings. I would pretend I was an olympic gymnast doing flips over the top and win the gold. A well worn path led to my best friends house which was in eye sight of ours. I became a pretty good basketball player on the goal that was held up by one of those oak trees. If you want to become great at dribbling and ball control; learn on a gravel driveway. The house didn’t have modern day heating and air. And that is where I learned the art of stacking wood and keeping a fire going in the Ashley wood stove. I can remember the excitement of  Christmastime like it was yesterday. My Mama wasn’t a big decorator for the holidays because we didn’t have the money for such things. But each of us kids always had new toys under that “Charlie Brown” tree as I like to call it. When I was around 13, I opened a black and white 13 inch TV. You would have thought we had won the lottery! I finally had my own TV that I could watch in my room. To this day my Mama says that was the biggest mistake she made…letting us have TV’s in our rooms. She said she never saw us again. When warmer weather would come around again; our little world would come alive with the help of the spring showers. I used to love to sit in the swing on the weathered porch and listen to the raindrops on the roof. There was a smell of earth and newness in the air that I still remember to this day. I would sit there for hours watching the world go by in our little town.

And Then It Was Gone

It was inevitable, progress would come. As bad as we hated it, fought it and shed many tears over it; the little town grew around us. Big development came and began buying up land. The ones they couldn’t buy from, they bullied into thinking they would take it by something called eminent domain. Which was a term my young mind had never heard of. Eventually I suppose all came to an agreement. I was a young mother myself by the time this happened. Our family went in one last time in January 2010. I took a ton of photos and two boards from my bedroom floor to have a cross made from. Just a few weeks later I would drive by on a sunny snowy winters morning on my way to work. There was a certain beauty in that old house sitting there empty that drew me up the driveway to photograph it one last time. It would be the last photograph and memory I would ever have of my childhood home while it was still standing. On my way back through town that afternoon it had been bulldozed down to a pile of rubble. Years have passed more quickly than I want them to. But the memories of that old house are burned into my soul. I wish it was still there, but a supermarket and strip mall have taken its place. But as I drive by in my mind I can still feel the summer breeze on my face and see myself as a child riding my bike while the sun is setting. And the oak trees are whispering a song while the swing is swaying in the wind on the old weathered porch.