WELCOME TO

Call me foolish. Call me sentimental. Or, perhaps you could call me both, but some things are worth sacrificing your reputation as a strong, well adjusted person. That’s what it was with the porch swing; worth sacrificing for. But, this was not just a porch swing. No, sir, it was much more than what one would think of when one mentioned a porch swing.

Today, there are many imitations sold at home improvement stores and such. Most are a ganglings of metal and striped canvas awnings above. I suppose they might be okay, but they lack something; namely character. They do not contain the memories of many times painted, scraped and sanded and repainted once more, rusty chains replaced every few years.

Real porch swings hung suspended from big hooks screwed into wooden porch ceilings; wood of hard pine, carved with lines and put up tongue and groove style, much as hardwood flooring would be laid on a floor. Most often, these swings adorned large front porches, with rails of ornamental posts and rails painted white, above a battleship gray painted floor.

The porch swing, in the days without air conditioning, offered a cooler, shaded place to sit in the evening and greet neighbors passing by, or talk about the day’s happenings, or read the daily newspaper. The porch swing also provided many a young lady with a place to be courted by a boy, who said he couldn’t live without her, most often spied upon by daddy, standing behind the lace curtain at a large front window.

It was a place for Joe, or Jim, or Charles from up the street to sit with dad, his pipe or cigar smoke relegated to the outside, and discuss politics. The porch swing was often where dad sat listening to a sales pitch by an insurance salesman, or mom listening to a salesman selling everything from sewing needs to household goods such as blankets towels, silverware, dishes and the list goes on.

And, of course, mom’s parent’s porch swing was often the place where dad proposed and was accepted as a husband to be or, sadly, turned down as a life-long mate. Time would find him on someone else’s porch swing, proposing to another. And, I suppose the romance of the porch swing is what I think of most when I look at the "God only knows how old" porch swing stored in my utility shed in the rear yard.

It was at auction, where I spotted the old, weathered thing that no one seemed to want. There is something so sad about seeing a relic of another day destroyed or left to eventually rot away and disappear. This was a farm auction and everything one could imagine was being sold off. Through how many life times, how many generations had some of the items been gathered together?

The auctioneer walked slowly through rows of everything from fine china, to daily china, to old, antique buckets, to the very old hand pump from a water well; a pump stored somewhere in the barn, when the advent of rural electrification made the hand pump no longer necessary, replaced by a pipe or two ran into the old two story farm house and pressurized by an electric pump and small pressure tank.

Of course, there are always antique dealers at these type auctions, looking at everything with an eye to how much they could profit from each item upon which they bid. Me? I was always on the lookout for something interesting or nostalgic; something that brought back memories of my childhood or reminded me of how things were in what I truly believe to have been a much more innocent era. That’s how it was with the porch swing.

It lay behind all the rows of what most people would think of as "the valuable stuff." It was but a hulk of old weather oak boards arranged in the semblance of a porch swing. Many years before, the screws holding the boards together had begun to rust and disappear. The hook eyes in the arms of the swing were heavily rusted, but looked stout enough still to hold a young lady and her suitor. The rusty old chains were still intact, thrown in a haphazard atop the pile of oaken family history. But a few places on a few boards gave clue to the white paint once covering the bare wood.

I’m not sure how long I stood staring at the ancient pile of junk before I realized the auction had passed me by. I had been to a number of these estate sales or farm auctions, which were usually preceded by the death of a last living member of a family. While others wandered around doing their pre-auction investigation of possible bargains to come, I wandered around wondering about the previous owners or inhabitants of the old two story house, most in bad need of repair. I thought about the old gentleman or lady who likely was the last inhabitant. Was he or she just too old to care anymore about upkeep? Or, was he or she not financially able to maintain what was once likely a very pretty house and home to a young and growing family?

Always somewhat of a dreamer, many times I tried to picture what the family might have been like? Was there great happiness remembered only by the ghosts of those gone? Was there the tragedy of losing family members to untreatable diseases or plagues? Wandering through these old houses, I could close my eyes and hear the laughter of children, the discussions of how badly they needed rain, or how too much rain was going to make for a late planting. I could hear the young daughter quietly confiding in her mother her feelings for the boy down the road.

The smell of the old abandoned houses is unique. When one moves from the cellar to the topmost room, the smells change. The cellar always smells of earth, while the topmost room smells of sunshine on old, faded lace curtains, somewhat like something you have scorched with an iron. In between, the smells vary from the smell of ages of grease which has penetrated everything in the kitchen to the smell of old carpet in the foyer and living room or parlor. But, the smell of old wood remains most dominant.

I continued staring at the ignored, forgotten old porch swing, as the thoughts of the people who might have used it raced through my mind. How could I abandon it? How could I allow it to be hauled away and buried in a landfill or, worse, be burned here on the farm with the wreckage of the house, which was to be bulldozed, along with all its memories. It’s a sad thing for me to contemplate and I go in search of the auctioneer.

Luke Gaul was about the best auctioneer around this part of the country and usually got top dollar for everything he sold. He knew how to woo the folks into trying to outbid one another with snippets like, "Hey, Joe, you gonna let that old goon steal this fine tractor right before your very eyes?" Well, of course Joe wasn’t going to allow that sort of thing to occur! Luke also always had the horse watering tank filled with ice and beer for those so inclined. At the larger sales, with much more commission at stake, he usually had a picnic lunch type buffet set up. Half way through the auction, which sometimes lasted all day, he took a break and everyone enjoyed lunch on him.

It was about time for that lunch break, so I waited to talk to Luke about the old porch swing. When he had bellied up to the tables set up and filled a plastic pate with lunch goodies and found a spot to sit in the porch of the old sentenced-to-die house, I sat down beside him with a sandwich and a soda. Luke and I had become almost friends over several years, and I think it was because he knew I wasn’t looking to buy for profit, but was very selective about bidding on items. They were always items not for sale by me, but rather to be placed in my house or yard or just saved from destruction.

He asked, "What the hell you want with that old swing?"

Of course, he had seen me looking at it. Luke didn’t miss anything at one of his auctions. "I don’t know, quite frankly. Hell, you know me, Luke. Sentimental old fool. Can’t help but think about the people who used that swing and how heart breaking it would be if they knew it was just going to be burned with the rest of the house."

Luke slapped me on the knee and said, "Well, when you’re ready to leave, back your truck up over there and load it up. No one would bid on it anyway."

"I don’t mind paying you something for it."

"Nuthin’ but kindlin’ wood, my friend. Just take it."

So, that’s how I became the proud owner of part of one family’s history. Of course, my wife thought I had picked up a load of kindling wood somewhere for the fireplace when she saw me back up to the garage door with my prize. But, the next day I began the tedious job of returning this pile of kindling wood to its original glory, knowing I really had no place to hang it.

The first job was to disassemble the piece still attached to one another and place them in a neat pile. Then I began sanding each part by hand. I have all the modern electric sanders I would use if this were a new project from new wood, but this was a work of love and, when this swing was originally made, there were no electric sanders. Craftsman labored with the crudest of tools to build it, so I felt an obligation to their labors to use their antiquated methods.

It took two weeks of working on the swing in my spare time to get the major portions sanded to a respectable cleanliness. The topboard, as it was aptly named was another week of work in itself. This was the highlight of the old porch swings. A pretty floral pattern was delicately hand carved in this topboard, so required a lot of precision sanding to avoid changing any delicate edges of the design. As I sanded it, I again thought about the people who originally ordered from a catalogue or bought it at the local hardware or farm supply store. I imagined how proud they were, as the man of the house asked the lady of the house to help him hang it on the hooks screwed into that board ceiling. I wanted to be just as proud of my work in restoring it.

I suppose it was a couple of months later, when I had it the boards individually primed and painted bright white. Now, it was time to repaint the delicate flowers on the topboard. This was my favorite part f the project and took great care in trying to imagine the original colors and carefully mixing paints to achieve what they must have been. The great thing about the oak from which the swing was constructed was that it retained its strength for decade upon decade. The eye bolts running through the arms and to which the chains were attached and, the chains themselves, I took to a place where they do sand blasting. They weathered this treatment and came out shiny as new. Hanging them from the garage ceiling, I first sprayed them with silver paint, then sprayed an overcoat of varnish with a bit of dark brown universal colorant in it. This dulled the silver down to look more like the original galvanized coating.

Now, the reassembly began and this was my favorite part of the job. I made one concession and used stainless steel screws for assembly. When hung, the screws would not show, anyway. It took two days to completely reassemble and hang from my garage ceiling. Now, I sat on a workbench and admired the old porch swing for some time, again visualizing all the people who might have enjoyed it over the years.

Some might think I am overly nostalgic about something as mundane as a porch swing, but there is a special story connected to one porch swing on a former neighbor’s porch. Every day, when the weather was nice, I saw this very old couple sitting on the sing, slowly moving back and forth. I don’t believe I ever saw them talking, unless it was to someone walking by, but they sat holding hands, and many times smiling at some memory of their younger days.

I came home one day and only the old gentleman sat on the swing. Somehow, I knew he had lost his wife. He sat with his head hanging down and the swing was motionless, his feet planted solidly on the porch floor and his hands gripping the edge of the front board of the swing. A great sadness swept over me at the sight of him alone. When I parked my car and got out, my next door neighbor was in his front yard. We often chatted and I walked over to see if he knew about the old man in the swing. He did. His wife had, indeed died a few days earlier and had been buried that morning.

It hit me as if it had been one of my own who died, and I slowly walked up the street and onto his porch. When he looked up at me, tears changed the color of his sunken old cheeks. The faded gray eyes looked without seeing, it seemed. I crouched in front of him and told him I heard about his wife and I was so sorry.

He sat to one end of the swing and asked, "Would you like to sit down," and motioned me toward the other end of the swing.

I sat, placed my hand over his and again told him how sorry I was that he lost his wife.

"Seventy years. Seventy years, we were married. Margie and I have been married seventy years." As he spoke, he raised his head and stared across the street without seeing. He was seeing his Margie at sometime in their lives. It is terribly hard to know what to say to someone that has lost a loved one that won’t seem trite. I kept my hand on his without speaking and listened as he spoke of Margie, how they met, how much he loved her when he first set eyes on her, how they had never had children and never knew why, even though they wanted children. How they had for many years cared for foster children and how much Margie loved each and every one of them.

It must have been an hour when he finally chuckled slightly and said, "My goodness, I’m so sorry. I know you have better things to do than listen to an old man with a broken heart."

I assured him I didn’t mind at all, but that my wife would be wondering what became of me. He told me to drop by any time I wanted and had time to listen to an old man’s yakking, then thanked me for coming.

I did intend to go back and visit him, but after but a week, he wasn’t out front for several days. I knocked on his door without an answer, then knocked on my neighbor’s door to see if he knew if the old man had moved to a nursing home or something. No, he hadn’t moved at all, but died of a broken heart two weeks after his wife died. After that, I always slowed and looked at he empty porch swing every day as I drove by, hoping that he and Marge were once more sitting and swinging on a golden porch swing somewhere. One day, I saw a new family moving into the house and I wondered if they might ever be able to appreciate the significance of that porch swing or know of the love that was shared on it so many years.

I suppose that is why I had to rescue this porch swing hanging from the ceiling joists in my shed. I’m sure the love that could be found on this porch swing might have been as abundant as that found on the old man’s swing. Call me a dreamer, a nostalgic fool. I suppose I am a bit of both.