Above is a painting I did of my aunt and uncle sitting on their front porch. For Bud and Emmy, sitting on the porch watching the cars go by was one of their favorite pastimes. Often when we visited, we joined them in that pursuit. The road had a long straight stretch toward their house, then there was a curve directly in front of the house, so you could watch the cars approach from the distance, then see them closer up as they went by.
Every summer, we convert the carport on the shop to our “lanai”, with lawn chairs and a table. We often go out there in the evening to sit, but it doesn’t work nearly as well as Bud and Emmy’s porch. In the first part of spring (and sometimes longer) our mosquitoes are bad, so if we sit out there, we have to burn mosquito repellent coils, to tolerate being outside.
Later in summer, the bugs have gone, but it still isn’t quite as good, because it doesn’t take long for boredom to set in, because there is hardly any traffic on our road to watch, and we can only see the road from a distance and for a very short instant as they drive by, so after about fifteen minutes, one of us will say, “Well, let’s go back into the house.”
Another problem with our lanai is that in the evening, the sun is low so shines directly into our faces when we sit out there. We do have a big shade we can lower, but when we do that it restricts our view.
Despite all that, at our age there does seem to be some innate desire to just sit outside and relax, but without the stimulation of a vehicle or two going by or some other visual stimulus, we usually don’t last very long.
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