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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY Porch used to be seat of society By HANK HENRY The time: summer, about 75 years ago. The place: anywhere in the South or in the Atlantic coast states, where the humidity can run as high as the temperature. The scene: the front porch of an ordinary house in ranch country. This porch is not three-steps up to a four-by-eight slab of concrete, such as most houses have today. This porch measures about 10 feet deep and extends the full width of the house. The furniture: No self-respecting front porch was complete without at least one porch swing. Six feet in length, held up by chains, it could easily seat three people. There were also rocking chairs -- from two to half a dozen. Window boxes filled with flowers were mounted at the side of the railing where the sun visited at least part of the day. In the South it was popular to have honeysuckle vines climbing strings at the ends of the porch. The characters: On a weekend, almost anybody might show up. "Think I'll mosey down to Bill's and sit a while," a man might say. "I'll come along," his wife would say. "I'll take the rug I finished and show it to Mary." Nobody would stop by for just a hello-and-goodbye. Being sociable meant a visitor had to invest at least half an hour in the swing or on a rocker. "Looks like cotton's gonna be good this year," somebody says. "At least that's what I heard down at the gin." "You goin' to the fair this year?" a woman asks. "I've got a lot of canning I could enter." "My back has been giving me fits all year," the other woman replies. "Canning calls for standing around a lot, and I'm not sure my back can take it." "Do what you think is right," the first woman says. "No amount of blue ribbons are worth a hurt back." "But I sure will hate to miss it." County fairs are still big deals where there are lots of front porches. You don't need a porch to be a winner at the fair, but the sense of community, of being where you are wanted and loved, seems to be even greater where it has been nurtured for hours on a front porch. Front porches were not exclusively found in the old South. A hundred years or more ago, they were common on houses of all sizes throughout the country. They were really needed in many places in the South and where muggy weather is common in the summer. These days, the problems of high humidity and heat have been solved by dehumidifiers and air conditioning. Front porches are not used as early in the evening now as they were in the old days. On hot days, it is better to remain inside until about dusk when the heat begins to go down. Many people now use city and county parks the way their grandparents used porches. Go to any local park in the summer and you'll probably meet a neighbor looking for heat relief and good companionship. Back in the early part of this century, you could easily tell the phonies from the genuine articles on the front porches in the West. The rancher who owned the property designed the railing on the front porch to be low, probably four feet or less. That made it easy for the cowboys and visitors to pull up rocking chairs, plop down, and put their feet on the railing. The biggest change in Western dress came after World War I was over, when movie theaters were in every small town. Movie moguls designed cowboy costumes to be good looking, but not very practical. One of the biggest of the cowboy stars of the '20s was Tom Mix, a fellow who had actually worked cattle. He protested when the wardrobe department designed a uniform of a spotless white hat with a very wide brim, a vest that looked like an outfit a circus ringmaster would wear, and shiny boots. Hollywood's influence of was so strong that real cowboys actually bought those outfits for trips to town, but they returned to their grubby pants, shirts and hats when they got back to the ranch. Sitting in a line on a Western front porch, boots up on the railing, it was easy to tell the fake cowboys from the real ones. All of the real ones had hats stained with dirt and sweat from working in the sun, and their boots were scarred and worn. When a new man showed up on the porch in the Hollywood uniform, the old timers would whisper to each other, "All hat, no cattle.'' (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA