His porch

He sat on his front porch on a fine summer evening watching and waving to passersby as they took their evening walk. Some would nod others bid him a good evening. He lived in the same house for over fifty years now and watched as babies grew up and children had babies of their own. He tried to remember all of them but lately, the faces looked familiar but the names escaped him. He made it a point to sit on his porch every night even in bad weather because it was a fairly busy street and somebody he could wave to would surely pass by. He knew the paper boys all forty-six of them over the years. Some went off to college others to war. Some worked in the canning plant like their fathers did and some sit at the same bar stools in the same bar just like their fathers did Some grew up and became firemen and police officers and some went away never to be heard from again. He knew of twelve houses on his street where the parents left the house to a child and that child married and had kids and no mortgage. He watched countless birthday parties, first communions, graduations, weddings, funerals, and just about everything else you could think of on a city block. He saw teenagers making out in cars, and fist fights between brothers on the front lawn. He has seen a lot on this old porch and wouldn’t trade a minute of it especially right this minute when he heard the obnoxious song of the ice cream truck coming towards him. Looks like a chocolate dipped cone kind of night.

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