I can claim the bliss of sitting out in the elements on warm July evenings without having been bitten by mosquitos.

How Sweet It Was. At nightfall, my family would gather on our screened-in porch. My dad always pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket and lit up. My mother, who might’ve spent the day tending the flowers in her gardens, leaned back and relaxed. I just closed my eyes and listened to the sound of crickets chirping.

The fairgrounds were about a mile from our house. When the county fair was in progress, we could faintly, almost magically, hear the tinny sound of the merry-go-round while sitting in the dark.

The house itself was built in about 1900. It was a standard design available in the Montgomery Ward catalog, having two stories, an attic, and a root cellar.  A bay window graced the living room.

The screen porch was a standard feature of this house. We used it all summer long, and for much more than a night-time refuge.

My Norwegian mother drank coffee by the gallon year round. The porch served as the summer klatching venue where she was joined by neighbor Helen and other women who lived nearby.

It was the first place my sailor brother, Orville, headed when he came home after serving on a light cruiser in the Pacific during WWII. Orville had seen serious action in places like Kwjalein, Maloelap, and the Marianas Islands. I still remember him sitting there alone for long periods of time

When I was little, my girlfriends and I would play “dress up” on the porch in my mother’s old clothes, or the cards would come out for a game of Old Maid until a rain shower sent us scurrying inside the house.

And that is where I spent my teen years, reading, sitting in an old lawn chair, and always wishing we could afford the comfy, expensive redwood chairs with plush print cushions that were so popular then.

Nevertheless, my feet were propped up on the indoor ledge. Friends in cars that passed on the road in front of our house would wave. I anxiously awaited boyfriends to pick me up there for dates. My many pleasant youthful memories of that place inspired me to wax poetic:

Oh, come sit on the porch at dusk

Close your eyes, breathe deeply,

Smell the damp earth

The fragrant honeysuckle

Open your eyes when darkness falls,

And fireflies twinkle in the fields

Carol Hall lives in Woodbury. She’s a longtime freelance writer, a University of Minnesota graduate and a former Northwest Airlines stewardess.