Photo Essays

Front Porch- September 6, 2026

I’ve been thinking a great deal about my Grandma Gerhart lately. E. Lorraine; the E is important.

Growing up, I never knew what that letter meant. It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I learned her first name actually started with an E. She hated her first name, so she went by her middle name, Lorraine.  A strong, independent, and at times very opinionated matriarch, Lorraine was the glue that held our family together. She had three children before she married my grandfather. He had four of his own, and together they had two more. That’s important because Grandma’s house very much accommodated her large, growing family. There was always room for somebody.

During the summer months, my brother and I basically lived at Grandma’s house. It was our home base for baseball practices, bike-riding adventures, and the kind of shenanigans you can only get into when you’re surrounded by friends who live in town. The first floor was her house: two bathrooms, three bedrooms, a living room, a sunroom, an eat-in kitchen, and a large dining room. But perhaps my favorite part of Grandma’s house was her huge wraparound front porch.

There were not many days when Grandma wasn’t sitting out on that front porch if the weather was nice. She would spend hours outside, greeting friends, kids, neighbors, or simply waving at the passing cars. And there were many hours when I would be sitting on that front porch with her. My brother and I used to play a game: who could guess the make and model of a passing car first? Of course, rules had to be established. You couldn’t guess until the car entered the playing field, marked by a couple of road signs we had established as the boundaries.

Sitting on that front porch in the early 1990s was formative for my childhood.  On that front porch, I learned about the world. I learned that neighbors are people. The Peppers who lived across the street. Rosemary who lived two doors down. Zach and his parents who lived next door. On that front porch, we encountered the world.

Front porches almost seem to be a thing of the past these days. Drive through an older town in rural Pennsylvania and you’ll see plenty of porches that no longer seem to function as porches. They’ve become places for storage, decorations, or simply an entrance to the house. New construction seems to tell another story. The gathering spaces have often moved behind the house: to patios, decks, fenced yards. None of those things are bad. 

I’ve moved a few times in the past ten years. Once from Coudersport to Erie, and again from Erie to Karthaus.  Our home in Erie had a large fenced-in backyard. It was a sanctuary. It was safety. Our front porch, however, was simply a set of stairs covered by a roof with a small stoop. In the backyard we had a huge patio and porch, and we often invited friends and church members over for cookouts or jam sessions. I loved that backyard.

But since moving back to rural Pennsylvania, the house we live in now has a huge front porch, and it has reminded me of Grandma’s. I find myself wanting to sit there and witness the world the way I did years ago on Allegheny Avenue. Waving to neighbors as they pass by. Watching the sun come up over our small valley.

It is a small blessing to me. A gentle reminder of a different time. Not necessarily a better time, but a different time. One summer morning, I sat on our front porch from dawn until early afternoon with my camera beside me. This is what passed by.