The "The Porch With The Rocking Chairs On South Prince Street" Story

Aunt Lois and LDub on the porch on North Prince.

It was an ordinary day.  Sitting on the top step of the porch with my Aunt Lois.  Lois is only a year and a half older than I am, since she came along much later than my mother.  The cement steps that lead down to the pavement below number perhaps ten.  The wooden porch holds at least half a dozen wooden rocking chairs and is covered with a canvas awning that runs the length of the porch.  The entire porch is fronted by a wooden railing with porch rails that are painted white.  Pretty neat site as you pass on the street.  As you look to the right, up South Prince Street towards the center of Lancaster, you can see at least five or six other houses, on both sides of the street, along the row of homes that also hold chairs of various kinds and sizes.  

Dad holding me in front of the homes
on North Prince Street.

Today the chairs are full of my relatives as my mom and dad and I have come to visit my Grandpap and Grandma for a Sunday meal.  Seems everyone is talking and rocking and having the best time of their lives.  We usually spend a few Sundays every summer the same way.  And, I love it!  So neat to sit next to my Aunt and listen to the adults talking about anything and everything including the mess, as they say, that happens across the street at the home of Grammy, my Grandma's sister.  Grammy, I never knew here real name, is hard of hearing and has to turn the TV so loud all the other homes on both sides of the street can hear it.  Oh, the stories they tell every time we come to South Prince Street.  I pretend to play with my Hubley cap gun as Lois tries to play "Jacks" on the edge of the porch, but all we really want to do is listen to the conversation.  

That LDub on the left with brother Steve and Aunt Lois.
We are playing in the street which was flooded by rain.

I was born while my dad was in the Army and my mom lived with her parents in the house on South Prince Street.  Dad managed to get leave to come home in time to bring me back with mom to South Prince where we lived with my Grandparents and my Aunt Lois.  I spent many a day during the summers the first two years of my life on that porch with the rocking chairs playing in a playpen with my Aunt Lois.  When my dad got out of the Army he joined us in the third floor bedroom on South Prince Street for a year or two until we moved in with his mother, my Nannan, on North Pine Street.  There we also had a bedroom on the third floor.  

My mom at the beach with my Aunt Lois (her sister) on the
left, cousins Judy and George, and brother Steve on the right
of the photo.  LDub is standing next to her in the center.

Funny how I don't remember much about the house on North Pine Street except maybe the jelly dish on the kitchen table that was always full of jam and the china cabinet in the dining room that held some of the neatest dishes.  Oh, yeah, there was the piano that took up an entire wall in the living room.  My Aunt Doris played the piano and she also lived in the house while she worked at a store in downtown Lancaster.  We finally moved to a second floor apartment on East Orange Street, above a barber shop, when I was four and then to a house on North Queen Street the following year.  Shortly my brother was born and we lived happily ever after, mostly, in that house until I graduated from high school.  But, some of my fondest memories were of those Sunday afternoons sitting on the top porch step with my Aunt Lois, listening to the adult conversation, as we waited for Grandpap to proclaim that supper was ready.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.