Summer porches are special places. And so was ours.

Made up of many memorable moments, the porch stretched across the front of our cottage near the lake.

The wooden floor, painted gray, creaked as you walked across it. The screen door squeaked shrilly. Slammed too, despite my mother's cautions.

There was a metal glider at one end. When you rocked back and forth, it sang out a little song of its own. Two people sitting there required coordinated efforts - something my brother and I purposely avoided. A strong piece of furniture, it took a beating.

There were a few rocking chairs, and a table with three chairs, shoved against the wall. Then, there was Grandpa's couch. There it sat at the end of the porch, with special pillows and cushions for him, placed nearest the front screen. Grandpa sat there all day …smoking his pipe, gazing out the window, checking his watch, measuring his time left, it seemed, in minutes.

On special days, usually rainy, we were allowed to hang up the hammock at one end of the porch. Made of green and white striped canvas with white fringe, it had a musty, wet-weather smell to it. My brother and I would sit back and sway, as the ropes holding it made thump-thumping noises.

We loved setting up the hammock during thunderstorms. My brother (he was older and wiser) taught me how to judge the distance of the storm. Storms always approached from the lake. Oh, did they echo. After we saw the lightening flash, we counted the seconds before each thunderclap. As the storm drew closer, the time between the light and sound shortened. Until finally, the storm was upon us.

I LOVED the thunder crashes. The electricity in the air, the wind roaring through the trees, the fine mist layering our faces - I can feel it right now.

The cottage was surrounded by huge catalpa trees too, with their long, dark beans hanging down. How they swung back and forth in the storm's fury!

The rain came in pellets, pounding on the screen, as we snuggled under blankets, not really keeping dry. After the storm there were always huge puddles on the lawn. We quickly made paper boats with newspapers saved just for that. And paper sailor hats - of course. After the storm, we rolled up our pants and played barefoot in the puddles till our mother called us in. She measured our puddle time. Too long, and we risked polio, she thought.

After the storm, I would often gather up bunches of catalpa beans and place them on the porch table, later breaking them up into tiny pieces for pretend stew.

During all-day rains, we'd sit at the table and play cards or "Parcheesi." The table had an oil cloth cover that grew sticky on damp humid days. The cards drew like magnets to that slick surface. I loved the feeling of lining up those cards during Solitaire, peeling them off the oil cloth, as I re-positioned them. "Crazy Eights" was another favorite card game and "Slap Jack."

Some days we would rifle through old "Life" magazines and cut out pictures to paste in scrapbooks. The glue was clear, with a strong pungent scent. It brushed on with a large brush attached to the top of the glue jar. My brother cut out all the pictures of cars and boats. I was drawn to colorful illustrations used in advertisements.

Tall hollyhocks surrounded the porch. On hot summer days, the whole porch was abuzz as yellow jackets swooped from flower to flower, gathering nectar. The screen gave us a chance to draw very close to those plump furry creatures. On brave days, we'd hammer nail holes into Ball jar tops and trap bumblebees, later letting them free.

We ate all our meals on that porch, unless it was terribly cold. The best meals came after visits to Jackson's Vegetable Farm down the road. While our mother listened to the farmer's wife (she loved to gripe about her husband), we would follow the farmer around on his rounds. On special days, Mr. Jackson let us ride on the hay wagon with him as he rode out to the apple orchard. He had a small pond too, just past the mucky pigs (I'd hold my nose), where we'd catch pollywogs and frogs. (One time we put pollywogs in Grandma's rain barrel water that she used to shampoo her hair. Grandma was a good sport.)

That night, we'd have fresh corn on the cob, green beans, cucumbers in sour cream, sliced tomatoes with salt, and stuffed peppers. It was a feast for kings.

The porch was the gathering spot at night too. The only outside entertainment came from the little black radio perched on the porch table. Oh, those spooky stories. With no pictures to look at, our imaginations made those monsters worse than anything real. "The Spider" program was introduced by a man whose voice alone made your hair stand up. Listening to the resonant voices from the "Lone Ranger" and "Tonto," you just knew they were the "good guys." We never grew tired of the ending - "Who was that masked man?"

There was a detective story that was followed by a public announcement from the FBI. The speaker would describe the Ten Most Wanted Men in America. We listened solemnly to the descriptions of "long scar over right eye" and "large tattoo on left arm," and later kept our eyes open at the markets and beaches for anyone who matched. Being scar-less ourselves, we'd wonder how the FBI could ever describe us to a radio audience.

Some nights, we would just sit in silence on the porch, listening to the chirping crickets, watching fireflies. The jars used earlier for bumblebees would now capture those glowing marvels of science, as we'd run barefoot, jumping to reach them.

Grandparents were different back then and loved to scare little children with spooky stories. Our eyes would grow wide as Grandmother would sit in her porch rocker and tell tales of Mr. Miserable who lived down the street in a ramshackle house. She borrowed from "Hansel and Gretel", as she told stories of boiling pots and makeshift traps. Even later, as a teenager, I never walked by his home, but walked fast past the specter of him sitting on his own front porch.

Friday nights were special vigils, as we waited for our father to drive up from the city for the weekend. How we would listen and watch every car that drove by. He always arrived with smiles and hugs, mail and magazines for my mother, and some candy or treats for us. Sundays, when he left, we would run next to his car all the way to the end of the block, asking him to "clock" our run as he drove off.

Because this was a small town, the firehouse was only a block away. Every day at noon, the siren would scream out, alerting us to run home for lunch. When there was a fire, we would rush outside, slamming the screen door. We were allowed to run to the corner and watch the fire engines pull out, men leaping on as they flung on their jackets and fire hats.

Once every summer, our mother would take us to the swamp near the beet factory in a neighboring town. Dressed in high boots, we bravely trudged the "snake-filled" waters, looking for perfect cattails. After we retrieved forty or so, we'd bring them back to the cottage.

For this special day, our father always saved kerosene from the little heater that warmed the cottage. He'd place the cattails in a large bucket, filled with kerosene and let them soak till dark. Then, we'd all gather on the porch - friends and family - and watch as he placed them in a line across the front lawn. One by one, he'd poke them into the grass. As the anticipation built, he'd light the last cattail, which he carried in his hand. Then, he slowly lit each waiting torch. What a spectacle! The smoke and smell - distinct from any other. After the fires died, sparklers were passed out to all the children. If you moved them real fast, you could draw pictures in the air.

There was much adult laughter coming from the porch that night, as the onlookers shared our excitement and comic antics.

If I close my eyes real tight, and clear my mind, I am back there today.

The laughter, the crickets, the bees, the radio, the creaks and thumps, the thunderclaps. I can hear each one distinctly.

I can resurrect the scents and smells as well. The hammock canvas, the rain in the air, the smell of wood and moisture, corn on the cob, burning sparklers.

The sights, the textures, the very atmosphere of summer days are close at hand.

But even more than all those memories - I can feel the love. Love for my brother who is now a grown man - retired. Love for my grandparents, who have long since left this world. Love for my parents, to whom I wish I could read these memories and tell them how much it all meant to me. They are gone too.

Love blossomed forth from every corner of this porch, that cottage, those summers. It was given and received, without boundaries.

It was the type of love you never quite recapture…. the love a child feels when time is endless, family surrounds, and life is nothing but innocent and beautiful.

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