I didn’t grow up in a house with a front porch. It seems like a silly thing to lament about, but it had always bothered me. I’d been born in the north, in Ohio, which had almost no front porches, (dead end nowhere/anywhere state like so many others in the mid-west), but had moved to South Carolina when I was ten, and the impression that had always stuck with me from there was one of huge wrap around porches with loveseat swings and lemonade on a hot summers day. Maybe an old hound dog lying at someone’s feet, tongue out and panting.
We lived in an apartment, so there was none of that for me, but it had left its impression nonetheless. And even later in Texas, where I finished my time growing up, no one had a front porch. Well, that was Dallas, anyway.
Dallas was the worst city in Texas for no other reason than it really didn’t feel like Texas. There had been a migration of northern companies to Dallas a few years before (with transfer employee’s in tow) that was ongoing, and it left the impression of the same nowhere/anywhere feel that Ohio had. Bland and lifeless. Dallas is the only town I’ve ever lived in where you could be surrounded by a million people in every direction and you could still feel like there was nothing important going on anywhere for a hundred miles.
Anyway it was no surprise to me when I bought my first house that it had a huge front porch. The porch was bigger than any room in the house and was used ten times more. So it was again no surprise that I was sitting there when I noticed the car.
“That looks just like my fathers car.” I told my hound dog. That was his name, too. ‘Hound Dog’. His tongue was hanging out. He didn’t care.
So because of this association I suppose, I was not at all surprised to see my father get out of the car. He arched his back and then squatted, stretching after God knows how long of a ride. I couldn’t hear it, but I’m sure his knees popped when he performed this feat.
I didn’t even know where, exactly, my parents lived anymore. We’d not completely lost touch due to a once or twice times a year phone call from them, but matters like a move would not have been discussed. I never visited and they knew I probably never would, and they knew of my disdain for small talk, so the subject was never breached. It was fine with all of us. We’d never been a really close family. I can never remember my father sitting me down just to give me any ‘fatherly advice’. The longest talk we’d ever had of a personal nature was when my dad found out I was smoking pot and he had to give me ‘the talk’.
Now, my dad was a nice guy, and cool in his own way I suppose. He’d tried to relate to me by telling me about the time he was in college and had smoked a joint with some friends at a party. I was as willing to believe that was true the same way I believe in God. That is to say that it didn’t really affect me and I couldn’t be sure one way or the other, so why not believe it. Anyway, he wasn’t even pissed about it. He just told me it was no worse than drinking (which he already knew I did) and that like drinking I had to be careful with it. Good advice in my opinion.
He also told me how he used to paint houses in the summer between semesters at college and how he’d had to hitchhike an hour down the highway each way to school every day. This left me with my one and only strong impression about whom my father was, what kind of man he was. Hard working and dedicated, but it left him with not too much else in his life. I knew nothing at all about my mother.
I respected that about him, don’t get me wrong, but it was like seeing the Mona Lisa and only noticing the landscape behind her. I could tell the painter was good, but it told me little about what was really going on.
Anyway, there he was, and there I was. I hadn’t seen him in seven years.

When he walked onto my porch I stood up and we shook hands. Our customary greeting.
“You look well.” He told me.
“Not you, you look like hell. How long you been at it?” I gestured towards his car.
“I don’t even remember, at least two days. I had to sleep on the way. This wasn’t even where I was going when I left.” I thought he was kidding at first, but he never kidded. At least he certainly wasn’t now.
“You want anything to drink?” I asked him.
“Got any beer?”
“Of course.” I got us each a beer and we enjoyed the sunset together.

“I’d always wanted a front porch, but never got the chance to live in a house that had one.” He told me. At first I wasn’t sure if he said that, or I did.
“It’s why I bought the place.” I said.
“Well, it’s a nice one.” He sat back in his chair and let out a long, slow moan reflecting his comfort.
“You haven’t even been inside yet.”
“Who cares, with a porch like this.” He said. I laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s just that I’d always wanted a front porch when I was growing up and we never had one, and now I find out you were thinking the same thing. It’s funny. You spend seventeen years living twenty feet from someone and share a dream, and neither of us knew it.”
“Any more beer?” he asked me. Now I’d never in my life seen this man drink anything with alcohol in it. I didn’t even think he drank cough syrup with alcohol in it. It had never occurred to me that he might be an alcoholic. I figured it was his business, though. Plus I didn’t really care.
“Sure thing.” I came back with a bucket full of beer and ice.
“I knew I raised you right.” He popped the top off another one and sat back again, lazily petting Hound Dog, who at his best was indifferent even to me unless he was hungry. My father poured a little beer on the porch in front of Hound Dog’s hanging tongue, which was dutifully lapped up.
It suddenly occurred to me that the man sitting beside me was a stranger.

“It’s not that I’m not glad to see you,” I told him, “but what are you doing here?”
“That might be a story best left for the morning.” A sip of beer and a long look west told me to leave it alone. I obliged.

When my wife came home he sat right up in his chair and quick.
“Now who’s this pretty little thing?” he asked me, and she of course heard him.
“Is this a friend of yours, Mike?” She asked me, smiling.
“This is John. John, meet Amy, my wife.” They shook hands and she sat down next to me on the swing.
“Somebody married you?” he asked me.
“Sure, two years now. Did I not tell you?” I honestly couldn’t remember.
“No. No you didn’t. I’m sorry I was not at the wedding.” And then to Amy, “I’m sure you were a vision to behold on that day.” I had never in my life heard my father talk this way. Like a person. More than that, like a poet almost, it seemed to me.
“Are you two old friends?” she asked.
“He’s my father.” She didn’t even know how to react to this. I’d never before even talked about my parents, always changing the subject whenever she brought it up, or telling her I’d rather not talk about it. She expected a monster maybe, or thought maybe I had no parents at all.
“I’m sorry, sir, but when he introduced you as John I thought you were friends.”
“No, darlin’, we ain’t friends, but he’s right about me being his father.” I could not believe that my dad just used the word darlin’. Again I laughed out loud. It was perfect.
“What’s so funny?” she asked me.
“Don’t you worry about him, he’s been doin’ that all day.” He told her.
I laughed my ass off about that one, too.

What now occurred to me was possibly the best advice ever given to anyone, ever. My dad told me once, “Don’t ever trust a man that don’t like Skynard.” Sweet Home Alabama had just come on the radio. I was maybe fourteen at the time. The one true clue I ever had as to who my father really was. I’d never even heard him listening to them. I’d find out later that it was because my mother hated them. When all of this was over I wound up wondering why they’d ever gotten married in the first place. It turns out that I was the answer to my own question. Wild. Same reason I’d married Amy, except she lost the baby. Anyway, it was the darlin’ that reminded me. Southern twang.

So the night turned into a party as Amy called all our friends telling them to ‘get on over here and meet Mike’s dad’. They couldn’t resist. And they all loved him. I was amazed at the kind of man my father was, at least who he was for the night. A stranger whom I knew. Telling jokes, hitting on girls, drinking like a fish. He was great. I thought maybe he was just a man reliving a youth he had left so long ago, and maybe I was right, but it was the truest and most real thing I had ever seen him do. He seemed to be twenty-one again. Reborn and I didn’t even know why. That night, though, I didn’t even care. And I’m pretty sure he got lucky.