The Porches of 101 North Pine Street

By Wiley Traylor

In The Porches of 101 North Pine Street, Cody visits the home of his deceased grandparents 20 years after an eventful summer there to discover there was much more to the history of that home, the town, and the life of his childhood friend than he could have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley Traylor
• Release date: Mar 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201945534

Wiley Traylor

Wiley Traylor is an amateur writer who writes for fun.  Born a long time ago in a small town in Louisiana, he now abides in Tennessee where he spends his retirement thinking about and writing stories of adventure with an element of mystery and developing characters whom he would like to meet one day.

Book preview

Memories of Childhood

At the northeast corner of the intersection of North Pine Street and Main Street in a certain small town in Southern Indiana sits a somewhat unique house, at least to that particular town.  It is not unique in color, style, or construction, and it is not even unique in that it has two porches, for nearly all of the houses there have at least one porch, and in fact, a good many have two. 

What makes it unique is that instead of having a front and a back porch, as seems to be the norm, it has a front and a side porch, joined together so as to wrap half the house in a single continuous porch. 

The house was built back in the day when porches were essential for respite from the summer heat and for getting to know one’s neighbors.  So, somewhere in the planning of the house, the original builder decided there should be two porches, one to face North Pine Street to the west and the other that faced Main Street to the south. 

101 North Pine Street is the address of that house which just happened to have been my grandmother’s house.  I’m not sure why my sister and brother and I all called it Grandma’s house, for my grandfather lived there too.  I guess it was because on most of our visits, Grandma was the prominent figure, what with her being still so very active in the kitchen.  Holiday meals were a feast back in those days and she was the principal player; her kitchen, her rules.

I’m also not certain as to why the address was designated as North Pine Street, for the side of the house that faced south was actually closer to Main Street.    I suppose the address was designated as North Pine Street due to the entrance door and the driveway being on the west side of the house that faced North Pine.  

There was also a short picket fence that encircled the house, complete with three wrought iron gates.  There was a large one at the end of the driveway that led to the detached garage and workshop that Grandpa had built not long after they had purchased the home. 

There was a smaller gate for the stone and brick walk that led up to the steps of the porch on the west side, and another identical gate for the stone walk that led to a similar set of steps at the south porch. 

One could approach the house from either street simply by lifting the latch on either of the old metal gates.  The gate would cry out from its rusty hinges with a most recognizable screech, depending if one pushed or pulled.  When pushed open, the screech had a sound that rose in pitch, and if pulled, strangely enough, a sound that fell in pitch. 

Despite the number of old and greasy oil cans in his shop, I think Grandpa intentionally refused to oil the hinges, for the squeak served as a sort of early warning system to the presence of visitors entering or leaving the property.

The holidays were especially noteworthy at 101 North Pine Street, for it was then that Grandma asserted her reign of the home.  Mom, and any of her sisters who happened to be present for the holidays, contributed what they could, but mostly they stood clear of the hustle and bustle until such time as word should be announced that the meal was ready and for the ‘men folk’ to come to the table.

In those hours leading up to the meal, Dad would join my grandfather out on the porch that faced North Pine Street.  I’m not sure why Grandpa preferred the west porch for these moments, perhaps because it was the one place that provided him the greatest distance from the kitchen, and thus the most peace and quiet. 

He was a rare character who moved quite slowly but who had an incredible endurance.  In his younger days, he had been a truck driver and construction foreman.  Of course, I didn’t know him back then, and all that is left to attest to his earlier days is the extraordinary collection of old, somewhat strange, and well-used tools, nuts, bolts and unidentified bits and pieces in his shop out back of the garage, and his stories. 

Ah yes, his stories.  In those moments leading up to the meal, I would often wander out on the porch and take a seat against one of the ornate posts closest to the steps, and plunge myself into the middle of one of his recollections.  He would go on and on recounting to us the work they did out on the west coast during the early days of World War II, how they built the gun emplacements for the coastal defenses, the tricks they did to camouflage their work, and all of the hardship and stress of driving construction materials up the sometime slippery roads of the hills of California. 

He could ramble on for hours and hours if not interrupted, about overloaded trucks, engines that suddenly stopped running on the steepest inclines, failed brakes, and crashed vehicles, staring upward as if he were reading his history that had somehow been written on the clouds in the bright blue sky.

Dad didn’t participate very much in those monologs of chatter until the moment when Grandpa would pause to roll another cigarette and light it up.  Dad had often purchased a carton of cigarettes as a birthday or Christmas gift for him, but I cannot recall ever having seen Grandpa pull a cigarette out of a pack.  I think he stored them away as was the nature of the generation that had endured the Great Depression.  I assume, somewhere in the unexplored recesses of his closet, one could probably find stacks and stacks of cartons of Camels and Lucky Strikes.

Anyway, during the time it took to pull the small tobacco bag from his upper left shirt pocket, retrieve the small slip of cigarette paper, and open the pouch and using his index finger to tap out a bit of the tobacco on the half-folded paper, Dad would make some comment or share some brief tidbit of related information to let Grandpa know he had been listening. 

By the time Grandpa would roll it into the familiar crumpled tube, lick the edge of the paper to seal it, tuck it between his lips, and strike fire from the matchbook, Dad would again fall silent.  Upon pulling the drawstring tight against the top of the bag, the stories would resume, sometimes starting over from the beginning of a story that had just previously nearly reached its often-heard familiar conclusion.

I, being too young to recognize the value of the history that was unfolding on my ears and the symptoms of early onset dementia, had neither the good sense nor the foresight to write any of it down.  For though it registered somewhere in the deepest recesses of my brain, most of the important details, if still there, cannot be recalled.  As usual, the stories would end when Mom came with the much anticipated and welcomed announcement that dinner was being served.

Why my grandparents moved from California to this small town in the Midwest has been lost to history.  Some of their descendants have speculated that he grew weary of the crowding he felt in California following the war; others said a sudden urge to farm came upon Grandpa.  Why he didn’t farm in California cannot be explained, but the evidence of the desire could be found a few miles east of town, for Grandpa had indeed purchased 100 acres of good arable land. 

Maybe he had tried and failed, or perhaps the enthusiasm for farming was replaced by a stronger desire to enjoy his advancing years, but the only evidence that he ever produced any crop at all was the small area that had been cleared and the faint awareness of the evenly spaced rows of the surface of that small plot and an old shed that housed his still operational Ford tractor. 

The remainder of the 100 acres was covered with hundreds of hardwood native trees from which he cut his supplies of winter firewood, including a stand of rather large and very productive pecan trees which was off-limits to the saw and axe.

As my grandparents grew older, we visited more frequently, especially during the colder months of the year, despite the fact that we lived some distance away in the next county.  Any visit necessitated the use of a poorly maintained dirt road that connected the two counties that the cold, soaking rains of winter would turn into a mud pit.  I can still recall the sound of the mud kicked up by the tires splattering against the underside of the car as Dad cautiously slipped and slid his way through. 

Mom and Dad both worried about the older folks, and