Mayor Fraser Carries Torch for Porch
The Cape May Point Planning Board at 7 p.m. June 13 will review a proposed zoning ordinance aimed at discouraging “boxlike” houses. And borough commission will hold a hearing at 7 p.m. July 12.
The ordinance would allow builders more total square feet for more diverse construction. Officials cite Wildwood and Ocean City as places they don’t want Cape May Point to resemble.
Mayor Malcolm Fraser has suggested a change: Keep porches out of the square feet limits so more of them could be built.
Amen, Mayor Fraser.
Essays, poems and books have been written in honor of porches,
In two separate childhood houses, I was privileged to have porches,
As a small child, my porch was used as an imaginary submarine, a fort under attack by Indians, I mean native Americans, and all sorts of things.
As a young man, my porch was the perfect place to sit and have a beer, swat an occasional bug, and watch the birds in the field across the street.
Later in life I had a carport — not a porch but better than nothing,
The front porch is the outstanding feature in our current home. From it, I watch the seasons change, usually according to the type of tourists walking by: Right now, young parents with children not yet in school; soon, your general, all-around tourist; and after Labor Day, senior citizens.
Where would you rather have your morning coffee and newspaper, in a kitchen looking at the same old scene, or on porch where the view changes by the minute?
Fight for porches, Mayor Fraser. You are right, again.
posted by Joe Zelnik @ 11:54 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
I have had a lifelong love affair with porches. For me, it's tea (not coffee) out on the porch twice a day -- morning and evening. Breakfast and dinner are occasionally partaken on the porch. The wallpaper in my office features -- what else? -- porches.
Porches are definitely a childhood memory of playing with friends and imagination as well as the place where the grown-ups would congregate in the evenings while we kids waited for the Good Humor man. The grown-ups discussed the news (politics, Viet Nam, usually), and we caught fireflies. The white truck with the musical tones came around the corner promptly at 7 p.m. each summer evening. After rockets and drumsticks and ice-cream sandwiches (everybody had their favorites, but we were limited by the kind of coin Mom or Dad had given us, too -- whether nickel, dime or quarter that day), we'd all head to our own houses for baths and bed.
My aunt's porch featured a swing, and I would sit there for hours, reading a book or talking with my grandmother. Sooner or later, everybody would be sitting on the porch ... talking.
Yes, houses NEED porches. Without porches, it's tough to be neighborly. And the house looks kinda sad and lonely.
Porches are great, but not always so great on the front of the house. Neighbors sitting on their front porches at all hours of the day and night can be annoying, making an otherwise quiet neighborhood appear like party-world central. We don't live in someone's fantasy of idealized turn-of-the-century small town America. We don't life there now, if we ever did.
For Anonymous (June 23; 10:55 p.m.), there are decks. However, in my experience, decks are where the wild and crazy parties are -- not porches.
I'm just glad I don't live next door to this miserable crank; pity the neighbors that do. I hope he has air conditioning so that he can live shut up tight and isolated in his house, watching televison and typing his mean nasty notes into his computer.
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