Best Friends Sit on an Old Front Porch

Summer vacation and the possibilities seemed endless

Growing up in a quiet neighborhood in 1960s Chicagoland, it sometimes seemed like remembering a pleasant dream. The world was roiling around us, but for my best friend and me, being 8 years old with a summer stretching out in front of us felt… wonderful.

That old front porch wasn’t so special. About three weeks after Mr. Bowen slapped on a new coat of gray paint, it started to blister and peel. He painted that porch a dozen times; it was always the same old porch. Evergreens flanked either side, overgrown along the front of a white clapboard bungalow. The front door framed a large pane of glass. It was on that glass that I tapped and rapped to summon my next-door neighbor and my best friend, Danny Bowen.

Danny was a wiry, skinny kid. He wore thick, black-framed glasses with a piece of scotch tape wrapped around a crack at the temple, the bridge. We’d sit squinting into the sun on the steps of his front porch. A fine hot steam rose from the green grass of his front lawn. The structure, the routine of our second-grade classroom, drifts away. Summer stretches out like a wide sandy beach, warm and inviting. The possibilities stretch like a shoreline, begging exploration.

“What d’ya wanna to do?” It’s a recurrent question, volleyed back and forth ten times each day.

“I don’t know. What do you want to do?” is the standard reply.

We considered going to the park on the corner to climb the crab apple tree, dig for worms in Danny’s backyard, or ride our bikes up Greenwood and down Lincoln Hill. To do some serious thinking, we’d shift from the steps to perch on the rail, moving toward a plan of action.

“How about a Kool-Aid stand?” It was about a block to the corner grocery. We favored Kool-Aid because the packets cost a nickel. Wyler’s Lemonade, a clearly superior product, cost a dime.

We’d borrow paper cups, sugar, and big pitchers from Mom’s pantry. We’d drag chairs and a picnic bench from the backyard. We’d mix up a batch and throw in a tray of ice. We were open for business.

It must have been curious to the occasional passer-by, the two of us sitting on our folding chairs behind a sticky redwood bench, with eight or nine neighborhood kids milling around the stand, “taste-testing” our product. Although we didn’t get many new customers, there were enough kids to buy a glass, making just enough money to run to the store for another packet.

Sometimes business slowed. Advertising was needed. As we saw someone approaching on the other side of the street, we’d dash down our wide parkway to the curb to yell, “Kool-Aid, fresh, cold Kooooool-Aid, just two cents a glass,” again and again.

By the middle of the afternoon, we would throw the empty pitchers in my sink, put back the bench and chairs, and go spend our riches at the Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors Ice Cream Shop.

The afternoon featured a Chicago Cubs baseball game on Dad’s transistor radio, digested from the bottom step of the porch, new PF Flyers tracing patterns in the dirt. Then home for supper, and on those warm summer nights, with light fading from the sky, kids would gather to play the “neighborhood game.”

There were variations of the game, a mashup of tag and hide-and-seek, with two teams and the Bowen’s front porch serving as home base or jail. Could there ever be a tighter community?

Ten or twelve of us, tearing all over the neighborhood, hiding in the Burke’s dogwood or behind the Young’s evergreens, then dashing toward home!

I held my breath, the enemy would pass two feet from my lair as I stood in the middle of Dad’s Mock Orange bushes. Decades later, I smell the fragrance of those bushes and feel the excitement of the moment. There I wait, breath held, undetected. There she goes, there she goes, around the corner of the house. Ready. Ready. Make a break for the porch. Almost home free.

Ayeee!

Danny, hiding behind the elm tree along the driveway. It was a trap. I’ll never make it to the porch. Run for it! One last dive for the first step.

After the game broke up and after kids were called home, as the stars blanketed our neighborhood, Danny and I sat on the porch. The breeze felt cool.

“What d’ya want to do tomorrow?”

“Don’t know.”

“Meet me on the porch as soon as you get up?

“Good night, Danny.”

“Good night.”

Mrs. Bowen turns off the porch light.