“The magnificent houses, the three old-money brick houses, each with a small turret and a wraparound porch, had been built uptown near the churches when the town was younger and smaller, before the Great War. The wraparound porches were there to hold rainy-day children and morning tea carts and quiet late-evening converstion, cosy, discreet conversation which could not easily take place in front rooms or kitchens or bedrooms, certainly not on the street.”

“At night we turned all the lights in every room of our house on. We turned the lights on the front porch on. We turned the lights on the back porch and over the garage on too. We wanted to keep the darkness that surrounded our house and us as far away from us as we could.”

“He raised a hand in response and tossed the ear of corn into the wagon. Then hereturned to his fantasy, imagining himself running the livery instead of working there, making the decisions, placing orders, selecting new horses, agreeing to board others, andhiring a boy to muck out the stalls and pitch hay.In his daydream, he no longer lived in the back room. He came home at night to a small house he’d bought with his earnings. Inside, a woman waited for him. A wife. In his fantasy her hair was as golden as the ear of corn he tossed into the wagon and hereyes as blue as the cloudless sky overhead. Catherine smiled at him and he could hear as well as see her say his name. “Jim! Welcome home.”

“This is an old house. Among the oldest in the area, a white clapboard former farmhouse built in 1748. Fart on the porch and it rattles a floor board in the attic. -Dice (Swoon)”

“Afterwards, they always had tea in the kitchen, much the nicest room in the house.”

“i had spent four years propped on the front porch of the fraternity house, bemused and dreaming, watching the sun shine through the spanish moss, lost in the mystery of finding myself alive at such a time and place.”

“Nevertheless, I drove right past my landmark, an antique store which looked to me like an ordinary house with junk piled on the front porch.”