Front Porch "Moments"

The front porch of this old house on Layton, 2012.

The front porch of this old house has seen its share of family "moments."

Five generations have opened the door, slammed the door, let the cat in, let the dog out, posed for graduation photos, carried suitcases and boxes off to college, squeezed  wedding gowns through the portal, bundled in  new babies,  and heard,  "Don't stand there with the door open! You're letting the flies in!"

Yes, the door on this old porch has witnessed its share of comings and goings.

Take that day back in 1940 when my mother stood there waving goodbye to her sweetheart with no certainty of his sure return. The sweetheart, who would one day be my dad, came to the house for one last kiss as he shipped out to destinations unknown. All hell was set to break loose around the world, not just in my mother's heart. Dad would spend the Big War in fox holes throughout North Africa, Sicily, and Italy for five years. Imagine the reunion on this old porch in 1945 when that handsome soldier marched up the steps and took his wartime sweetie in his arms.

Then there was the time in the late 1930s when cousin Ida Mae Reid took her first look at the world outside from this old porch. Aunt Millie came to stay with her sister, Nana Evans, here in the house on Layton while her husband, Uncle Cliff, built a home for them right next door. Aunt Millie was eight months pregnant. In those days many infant deliveries occurred at home, and that's what happened. Aunt Millie gave birth in the room off the kitchen which I now use as my dining room. (If you ever come to eat in my home, I hope your appetite won't be hampered by dining in a birthing room.) The little girl, born a bit small, was bundled up by her aunts in warm cotton and shoved in the oven. You heard me . . . the oven. This homemade incubator kept the little one warm, not baked, until she grew big enough to be carried out on the porch for a look about. Ida Mae is now in her 80s and retired in Florida (perhaps the oven incubator predisposed her to warm temperatures.) Nevertheless, she is no worse for the wear because of her beginnings in General Electric's finest . . . on Layton.

I stood on the porch for a few final goodbyes. My Nana Evans died in that same room off the kitchen. I spent most of the last week of her life sitting beside her there.  I watched as the undertaker carried her out the front door, leaving for the last time the house that she and my grandfather had built.

Thirty-four years later, I stood on the porch, holding the door again, for another final goodbye. The EMT's carried mom out the door and into the ambulance after her fatal stroke. Two generations slipped off this earthly sod through this door on our old porch.

As much as I miss my mother and grandmother, I'm so grateful that the next door they entered, after leaving our family home, opened to a mansion on a street of gold, their new, heavenly home . . . not on a street called Layton.

The House on Layton

At 92-years-old Dad still enjoys visiting the Old Homestead (January, 2013).

We've been together a long time, this old house and I on Layton.

Grandpa Evans built this two story, box-style in the early 1930's with the help of Uncle Cliff, Uncle Dave, Uncle Walter, Uncle Gordy, and probably a few others. They hand dug the basement and the well. The rock ledge hampered the work as surely as the economy of the Depression, but this group of brothers-in-law from North Scranton made it a family effort.

The band of brothers (in-law) built the house with three rooms down, three rooms up, and a 60 degree angle on the roof. The only bathroom, located on the first floor near the kitchen,  had the family bathing and running upstairs to the bedrooms . . .   for about the next thirty years. Closets were non-existent downstairs, a problem that took that same thirty years to correct. Lathe and plaster walls, yellow pine floors throughout, arched doorways, five inch moldings, and hundreds of pounds of hot water radiators still grace the house.

Dad took over home maintenance when Grandpa Evans passed. Like Grandpa, he proved to be a master craftsman. Dad built a house for his family right next door to Grandpa's, and he and mom raised their three daughters there. My years were spent back and forth, everyday, between the two houses on Layton.

The generations rolled on: Grandpa and Nana Evans died, then Mom, Dad retired to South Carolina, my sisters moved out of town and out of state, and I . . . stayed on Layton in Grandpa's house. My sons grew up romping through the same rooms as me and my mother before. And now my grandsons use the same hiding places and ride their bikes in the same route around the yard. 

The front door of Grandpa Evans' house has welcomed five generations of family and friends. Originally accessed by a few wooden steps, the front door eventually gave way to a small concrete "stoop" which later expanded to a roofed porch that ballooned to a deck in its seventieth year. And it's here I sit, these sixty-something years later, enjoying the view . . . on Layton.