You know, I suppose change is something we all have to accept...but not all change is good, and not all progress is either.

Example? Well, I was just thinking about the small town in Indiana where I live.

Back when I was a kid, and my grandma was alive she had something very magical, and very wonderful. It was called the "front porch swing". Grandma had one, and as a family we would employ that wonderful, creakin' contraption to just SIT and swing as a FAMILY, and chat, and treasure each other's company, and watch the world go casually by.

Sometimes we would eat home made ice cream together, or play a simple game...but it was so WARM in our hearts, and it was pure magic!

Now, I suddenly realize that as I drive through my town, there ARE NO MORE front porch swings. They have become a relic of the ancient past when families actually had time for one another.

SAD, but man how things have changed.

We hung one on the front porch of the old house we bought halfway through our marriage. It was a favorite of old folks and young kids alike. My wife would often sit and swing and play her guitar on warm summer nights. It was the only house we ever lived in that had a porch swing, and I often think that many of our best memories were made there.

Now houses face backwards, to their decks and patios and big fenced-in backyards. Often the only thing you see when you drive past a new home is the big blank door to a two-car garage. Very un-neighborly.

And this has a lot to do with what's wrong in America today.

My best "grandparents/good ole days" memory was sitting around the piano. Grandma would play and the whole family would sing. It does not sound too entertaining, but it is. We always had a great time doing that. Back in New York, they had a paino bar that was like that. I wish I could still find a place like that near by where I live. People have largely forgotten that the simple things in life can often be the best things in life.

Oh yeah!

Times change . . . .

Gentlemen...

You have left out the pitcher of lemonade on the table next to the porch swing and running barefoot through the grass - catching lightning bugs in a mason jar.

Lyndel

Sometimes that's good, but sometimes it's not.

Individuals today seem to keep themselves more isolated from others--hiding on the deck in the back of the house behind the stockade fence, instead of sitting on the porch facing the street and each other. They don't know their neighbors as well. They don't look out for each other as much. Many suburban streets are sterile and lifeless.

On Wednesday mornings (my day off) I walk my six year old daughter a half-mile along Main Street to school. It is rare that we ever meet anyone else walking along the way.

That's not a particularly good thing.

Umm, that's what I said at the beginning of my original post....

Lightning bugs in a mason jar...that is what we did every june as Grandma sat on that porch swing and watched us with happy delight. Then after we caught them in the jar, we would get BACK on the swing and share our glowing treasures with her.

So the swing remained central...a focal point of all the other family activities.

My grandmother had one of those large two-seated glider swings in the yard. I have a very clear memory of her singing a particular song to me while swinging there. When my daughter was younger, I sang the same song to her at bedtime a few nights a week. Every single time I sang that song it brought to mind the image of my grandmother singing on the glider swing.

The other grandmother had a swing on her porch, but that porch was on a second floor apartment. It was a little too high for my liking when I was three or four.

In the house I grew up in, which my brother now owns, we had rocking chairs on the porch. We always sat out there during thunderstorms, watching the water rush down the street out front.

We used mayonnaise jars for lightning bugs. Still, do, actually. I caught some for my daughter last summer.

Yhe fond memories grow sweeter with times relentles passing, it seems.