A Piedmont Porch Light Story

If you spend enough mornings at the Coffee Cup, you’ll eventually discover that breakfast isn’t the first thing folks come in for. It’s conversation. The eggs are just an excuse. I was halfway through a plate of bacon and grits when Hattie Lane slid another cup of coffee in front of me.

“You hear that?” she asked.

I looked around.

“Hear what?”

“That screen door.”

I listened. Somewhere outside, a screen door slapped shut with a sharp whap. I shrugged.

“Sounded like somebody’s screen door.”

Hattie rolled her eyes.

“No, Jim.”

She leaned a little closer.

“That was Mrs. Landry’s.”

I laughed.

“Hattie, you’ve finally worked too many breakfast shifts.”

She put one hand on her hip.

“I most certainly have not.”

Just then Curtis Pope wandered in, brushing a few whiskers off his shirt from opening the barber shop.

“Mornin’, y’all.”

Without looking up, Hattie said, “That was Mrs. Landry’s screen door.”

Curtis stopped in his tracks.

“It surely was.”

I looked from one to the other.

“You mean to tell me y’all recognize folks by the sound of a screen door?”

Curtis grinned.

“Don’t you?”

“I reckon I never paid that much attention.”

He eased into the booth across from me.

“Well, you should’ve.”

“There was old Mr. Dobbs.”

“His always squealed before it shut.”

Hattie nodded.

“‘Cause he never got around to oilin’ the hinges.”

“And Miss Lorene?”

Curtis smiled.

“She never let hers slam.”

“Not once,” Hattie agreed. “She’d catch it every single time.”

I stirred my coffee.

“I’ll be.”

Curtis pointed his fork toward the window.

“Now the McCallisters… them boys hit that door like it owed ’em money,” Hattie interrupted.

The three of us laughed. Funny thing about little towns. You don’t just recognize people’s faces. You recognize the way they walk. The way they wave. The sound their truck makes when it turns the corner. The bark of their dog. Even the way their screen door closes.

Every house had its own music. Some doors squeaked. Some rattled. Some slammed hard enough to shake every Mason jar in the kitchen. You could be shelling peas on the porch and know exactly who’d just gone inside three houses down. Not because you were spying. Because you’d been neighbors long enough for everyday sounds to become familiar.

Nowadays, houses are quieter. Garage doors hum. Car doors click. Folks step inside without making much of a sound. There’s nothing wrong with that. I suppose progress has a quieter hinge.

But every now and then, I’ll hear an old wooden screen door catch the wind and clap shut behind somebody. For just a second, I’m ten years old again. I can almost smell fresh-cut grass. Somebody’s frying chicken. Kids are chasing lightning bugs through the yard. And somewhere, a radio is playing on a back porch where supper’s almost ready.

Hattie came by to collect our empty plates.

“You know what I miss?” she asked.

“What’s that?”

“The sound of Mama hollerin’ my name through that screen door.”

I smiled.

“My mama never bothered with the screen door.”

“No?”

“No, ma’am.”

“How’d she call you?”

I took one last sip of coffee.

“Hattie… if Mama was calling my full name, she wasn’t interested in whether I heard the screen door or not.”

Curtis laughed so hard he nearly snorted coffee through his nose.

Hattie just shook her head.

“Some things never change.”

“No,” I said, smiling into my coffee.

“They surely don’t.”