Ahh, The Delights of A Screen Porch..

Today my wife and I went to visit "Aunt Gwen" and "Uncle Frank," at their little beach house at Shell Point, FL. Gwen and Frank aren't blood relatives, but they
have been friends and neighbors with my family since..oh, about 1958 or so. Aunt Gwen and Mom used to swap kids for the day..so they really are like an aunt and uncle to me.

Their beach house has a screen porch across the front, complete with lawn and rocking chairs and a view of the road into the settlement (since there's not really any business there to speak of.) We spent the better part of four hours there on the porch, catching up with family news, swapping stories and the like. The wind was blowing pretty hard, and it was a little chilly, but nevertheless we spent the bulk of our time there.

Something about the overall frantic, frenzied pace of our society today bothers me. I have memories of spending a week, or sometimes two weeks, with my grandparents and great-grandparents while I was growing up. My great-grandparents had cows, and pastures, and an old barn, corn crib, and a house with a dog-trot in between the main house and the kitchen. No computers, video games and such..just the quiet summer days of farm life. I don't remember once ever being bored. There was land to explore; the grand cattle round-up the day Grandpa Nelson forgot to close a gate; bottled chocolate drinks; and a lot of love.

With the exception of GG in the nursing home, whom I wrote about on Wednesday of this week, my grandparents have all passed away. Those memories are all that's left. The dog-trot house burned down a number of years ago and Grandpa Nelson's daughter and family eventually built a new house on the old home site.

Aunt Gwen and Uncle Frank's screen porch brought back the good memories of
those times. I kind of miss those days...and who has time to visit anymore without the screech of the TV blaring away in the background?

My birthday's coming up..I'll take a screen porch with a slice of laid-back country life, if there's any left to be found.