When I was a little kid in Tamaqua, I spent a lot of time at my Grandma’s house and at my Aunt Essie’s house. They babysat me, they fed me and I slept over in their homes.
They lived in a side by size duplex on Arlington Street in Tamaqua. Grandma and her family on the left, Essie and her brothers on the right. A brick divider that was about 3 feet high separated their front porches.
Most of the houses on the street were side by side duplexes or small tightly packed single homes. All has front porches that butted up against the sidewalk.
My 4 room elementary school was on the corner. The community park was a block away. The woods encircled the park.
There were kids all over Arlington street. In summers, we’d be playing with 5 or 10 or 20 other kids ranging in age from 5 to 18 years old. We’d play freeze tag. We’d play kick the can. We’d play curb ball. We’d ride bikes, jump rope and run up to the park.
It was a fantastic place to be a kid.
The other great thing about Arlington Street were the old people. They had grown up together and lived there forever – often in the same houses they had grown up in. The really old people (over 50!) hung out on their porches in the evenings.
As I walked up the street to see friends or go to the park, I’d stop and talk to them.
Mr. Fort had a leg with a metal brace and a cane. He’d sit on his porch or would slowly limp his way down to my Grandfather’s porch and sit on the stoop while smoking his cigar. When I saw him, I’d sit with him and we’d talk. Sometimes we’d talk for a few minutes, sometimes we’d talk for an hour. I have no idea what we talked about, but I remember his eyes crinkled when he smiled and laughed – which was often.
The old lady on the corner would see me and call me up to her porch. I played with her grandson Todd when he was visiting. But if he wasn’t there, she’d still wave me over and feed me homemade cookies or candy while we talked.
Across the street were the Boyers. They were an odd and interesting family who I really liked. They had a red headed son. And a pet duck in the yard. And a swimming pool! I’d use their yard as a shortcut to get to the woods when I was too tired to walk all the way around the block.
Next door was Charley. He was a grizzled old veteran who lived in an upstairs apartment. I’d go hang out with him on the back porch and we’d watch the blinking lights on the radio tower from his porch while talking.
Mr. Anderson had a pickup truck with a camper cab. He had 4 beautiful teenage daughters who were too old to play with us. I was gaga for all of them. They were so pretty and sweet to me.
My Aunt Es would sit on the porch and read the paper and talk to her friends who stopped to visit when they were out strolling. My grandpa would sit on the steps, smoke cigarettes and drink beer with the other old men in their white T shirts and overalls after work.
Most of the men smoked – cigarettes, pipes or cigars. They would work on their cars out front. They’d stop what they were doing to talk to us kids. They’d show us how to change the oil, to shift a car into gear, how to shovel coal into the furnace and all kinds of other manly stuff.
I miss the porch people.
After we moved away from Tamaqua, I never lived anywhere else that had a community as tightly knit, as friendly and as enveloping.
Sometimes, when I think about my life today, I think might want to move back to a small town. I wonder if I’d ever be able to feel like I belonged there, the way I once did so many years ago.