Today my porch swing is a tiny boat. The boat is nestled in the ocean waters of a beautiful rocky coast harbor town in New England. The breeze is easily moving the boat along, gently pinging the boat’s fog bells. The wind is calm enough to coax individual notes from the wind chimes hanging on a colorful house’s porch near the shore. The sea birds are mewing, fussing and diving in the water. The sun is hot on my face but the breeze cools my sweat and ruffles my hair. The sky is clear and bright and the briny smells of ocean water waft around. The waves slapping the rocky shore lull me to a drunken pleasantness. Then the lawn mower cranks down the street and I’m jerked back to reality.

The morning is so beautiful I sat down in the swing to enjoy the ambience of a Southern yard. The birds are singing and the tomatoes are blooming. Stew comes out and the wooden screen door slams. I know y’all remember the slam of a wooden screen door before air conditioning started keeping you off the porch. My Aunt Margaret remodeled her kitchen years ago and wanted a new screen door, old fashioned like she remember from her childhood. She hired Jeb Ewing to build her a simple screen door. And Jeb being a perfectionist, built a door that even when slammed shut made no noise. He was so proud, but Aunt Margaret wanted to hear that slam when it closed that she remembered from her childhood. He had to come back and do some readjustments with a little cussing to get it to slam just right.

A slamming screen door defines summer to me. No more door bell ringing, just holler “Hello, anybody home?” through the screen. Keeps mosquitoes away and lets the cool breeze in. I actually think I have the only wooden screen door on the street. Storm doors and wrought iron glass doors have replaced the Southern screen door. I love mine. Needs a little work. Has a small hole in the screen with a piece of duct tape covering it. No door handle, wore out all three screen doors knobs on the porch moving them from screen door to screen door. Bought a new door handle forgetting nothing is standard in a 100 plus year old house so I took the handle off a dining room window and put it on the door. Looks just like a screen door pull. Probably needs a turnbuckle to get a good slam going, it’s dragging a little on the right. But I’m used to shutting the door hard so Balthazar, my resident king snake, can’t squeeze in.

Have to have the hook and eye lock on the screen door to be authentic and if you open the door with too much force you rip the eye out if the door frame. I’ve done that many times, myself. Don’t guess it’s too good in the protection category. My grandmother McMurray had a hook and eye lock on the outside of her screen door so her German shepherd couldn’t get off the porch when she was outside in the yard. Her porch had two screen doors. My front porch has three screen doors. I wanted to do this on our screen door here so I could lock Penelope in when I went outside but Chief thought I was crazy to suggest it. She’ll stay by the screen door in the house and wait now when I go outside briefly. When we first got her she’d hit the door running and push it open to escape the house every chance she got.

Before screen wire became popular, Americans used cheese cloth for door and window screens. After the Civil War doors and windows were framed in wood and screened with paint coated wire. A Connecticut based company, Gilbert and Bennett, are given credit for the modern widow screen. I love the windows open, too, but I’m thankful for window screens that keep the critters out, too. Balthazar was thwarted by the window screens when he tried to get in last week. The original screen is jammed up and I was tired of trying to wrangle it in so I put a retractable screen in that window. Thank goodness!

When central air conditioning became popular, the simplicity of a wooden screen door was exchanged for a stronger storm door. The wooden screen door no longer needed to cool off the house, no longer opened on the porch as a good will gesture of welcome.

“Every so often go where you can hear a wooden door slam shut,” — Author Unknown