What’s the most romantic part of a house? Some people would say a porch. Well, 841 N. Maplewood had a great one, and I would wager it was my mother’s favorite part of the house.
Our porch wasn’t a front one or a back one, but a side one that ran at least half the length of the house and overlooked the corner of Laura and Maplewood. We resurrected the porch in spring, like some people open up their summer homes. With its maroon tile, white wicker furniture, and screens that ran from almost the ceiling to more than half way down the walls, the porch was cool on the hottest day. It was the perfect place to sit and watch our part of the world go by.
To be honest, I didn’t appreciate the porch when we lived in the house. But my mother did. “Breakfast, lunch, and dessert,” she listed when I was trying to remember the times she spent on the porch. She would read the newspaper and drink her tea.
During the day, a steady stream of Bradley students and staff passed by the house: Ruthie Keyes, who worked in the library, John Kenny, the physics professor, (he once replied to my husband, his student, who said in frustration during a lab, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” with “Who does?”), Clarence Brown from the counseling department. I wish we could run a tape fast forward through the decades to see all the people who walked down Laura to and from Bradley; it would be a cornucopia of hair lengths and clothing styles.
When I was 16 and in possession of my driver’s permit, my friend Bernadette, who had her license, picked me up along the side of our house in her family’s station wagon. We drove one block to the corner of Cooper and Laura, where Bernadette and I switched places in the front seat. We didn’t drive quite far enough away, because my mom sitting on the porch, couldn’t help but witness this act, shocked at the treachery that her firstborn would engage in. I don’t remember this incident or the repercussions that followed, but my mom assures me she saw the whole thing from the porch.
What easy, fun childhoods many of us who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century had. It wasn’t the same for the namesake of the street that our porch overlooked. In 1864, about 113 years before my driving shenanigans, Laura Bradley, 14, the last surviving child of Tobias and Lydia Bradley, died. According to Allen A. Upton in Forgotten Angel: The Story of Lydia Moss Bradley, one of Laura’s teachers had this to say about her:
“I became acquainted with the family of Mrs. Lydia Bradley in the fall of 1862, and I was an occasional guest at their home. The family then consisted of the father, mother, and Laura, the last survivor of several children. The loss of the other children seemed to have intensified the affection of father and mother for their daughter, and their affection was fully and warmly reciprocated. When Laura entered my school—the old Franklin—in the fall of 1862, she was a slender, vigorous, fair, light-haired girl, ambitious and earnest. She was a generous, amiable and affectionate girl, and always did her best with all work given her to do. Her unselfish generosity and kind disposition made her a general favorite. . . . She was possessed of a dignity and propriety rarely found in one of her age, though full of life and spirit.”
Our porch wasn’t a front one or a back one, but a side one that ran at least half the length of the house and overlooked the corner of Laura and Maplewood. We resurrected the porch in spring, like some people open up their summer homes. With its maroon tile, white wicker furniture, and screens that ran from almost the ceiling to more than half way down the walls, the porch was cool on the hottest day. It was the perfect place to sit and watch our part of the world go by.
To be honest, I didn’t appreciate the porch when we lived in the house. But my mother did. “Breakfast, lunch, and dessert,” she listed when I was trying to remember the times she spent on the porch. She would read the newspaper and drink her tea.
During the day, a steady stream of Bradley students and staff passed by the house: Ruthie Keyes, who worked in the library, John Kenny, the physics professor, (he once replied to my husband, his student, who said in frustration during a lab, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” with “Who does?”), Clarence Brown from the counseling department. I wish we could run a tape fast forward through the decades to see all the people who walked down Laura to and from Bradley; it would be a cornucopia of hair lengths and clothing styles.
When I was 16 and in possession of my driver’s permit, my friend Bernadette, who had her license, picked me up along the side of our house in her family’s station wagon. We drove one block to the corner of Cooper and Laura, where Bernadette and I switched places in the front seat. We didn’t drive quite far enough away, because my mom sitting on the porch, couldn’t help but witness this act, shocked at the treachery that her firstborn would engage in. I don’t remember this incident or the repercussions that followed, but my mom assures me she saw the whole thing from the porch.
What easy, fun childhoods many of us who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century had. It wasn’t the same for the namesake of the street that our porch overlooked. In 1864, about 113 years before my driving shenanigans, Laura Bradley, 14, the last surviving child of Tobias and Lydia Bradley, died. According to Allen A. Upton in Forgotten Angel: The Story of Lydia Moss Bradley, one of Laura’s teachers had this to say about her:
“I became acquainted with the family of Mrs. Lydia Bradley in the fall of 1862, and I was an occasional guest at their home. The family then consisted of the father, mother, and Laura, the last survivor of several children. The loss of the other children seemed to have intensified the affection of father and mother for their daughter, and their affection was fully and warmly reciprocated. When Laura entered my school—the old Franklin—in the fall of 1862, she was a slender, vigorous, fair, light-haired girl, ambitious and earnest. She was a generous, amiable and affectionate girl, and always did her best with all work given her to do. Her unselfish generosity and kind disposition made her a general favorite. . . . She was possessed of a dignity and propriety rarely found in one of her age, though full of life and spirit.”
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