Free entertainment on the other side of the porch screen

By Jeff Orvis

It's been a year since I packed up the van, said my good-byes to my friends in Belle Plaine and began the next chapter in this interesting life. While the past year has been less than a success from the standpoint of finding employment, it's been very rewarding in the fact that I've been able to reconnect with family and some of the friends I grew up with.

I wondered how I would adapt to giving up a three-bedroom, two-story house for a bedroom and a storage unit. What kind of adjustment would I have to make going from a quiet, friendly town of just under 3,000 to a metropolitan area of more than 350,000, where everybody seems to be in a hurry?

In the first place, Mom's condo is incredibly well insulated. We live within two miles of perhaps 40 restaurants, four supermarkets, more than a half-dozen big box stores and one of the busiest streets in the area. But with the windows closed, every night is as quiet as a snowy winter night in Belle Plaine when the wind is blowing from the north. The last time I heard a train was this summer when I went down to the Davenport levee to hear a concert during the Bix Beiderbecke Fest.

The condo complex adjoins the Crow Valley Country Club. While we don't have a big course view, the golf course provides a small slice of solitude.

As I've grown older, I am discovering that I inherited some of my dad's traits. He could be quite eloquent on the rare occasions he sat down to write a letter in longhand. I've spent the better part of 35 years trying to put words together in a coherent way. His best expression came in his photography, where he could capture Minnesota nature at its finest. While working in the news business, I would take pictures when necessary, but not nearly as well as he did.

He grew up in small towns in south central Illinois, moving to the Quad-City area for work. I spent more than 30 years living in towns of similar size to his hometown and discovered an easy-going lifestyle where rush hour usually lasted about 10 minutes and involved a couple dozen cars.

So what does this have to do with my current living arrangement? Many summer nights when I was growing up, Dad would take a cup of coffee after supper and go out and sit on our front porch, which was across the road from a park. My sister and I might scramble to finish eating so we could go out and play or watch a favorite TV show. Dad would be content to spent an hour or two just sitting on the porch, enjoying the quiet.

Well, it too more than 40 years, but I finally found some of that contentment. Make no mistake, I admit I am a TV addict. Nobody is as well-versed in the operation of the remote than I am. But some of the best time I have spent since coming to live here has been spent on Mom's screened porch. The view is not really impressive – the next condo building is only about 40 yards away. But there's enough room for a few mature trees and a small patio where Mom has put up a couple of bird feeders.

I never saw a hummingbird before this spring. We had a couple who would regularly battle for the best spot to suck up the sugar water put in the feeder for them. I remember only seeing one or two gold finches over the years. We had a small flock who would constantly remind me that I should keep that feeder filled. Sometimes we see a hawk soaring overhead. One of his favorite perches this summer was on the roof of the adjoining building.

We also had a few non-winged visitors. Several squirrels seemed to find new and innovative ways to climb up on that hanging bird feeder. It really amazed me how far they could fly when I scared them off the feeder. Make a sudden noise and watch them fly off the five-foot high feeder and land on their feet.

A couple of chipmunks also were local residents. Mom had some potted plants on the patio and the chipmunks liked to forage in the dirt, trying to eat the flower bulbs. Mom heard somewhere that if you sprinkled chili powder on the base of the plants, the chipmunks would leave them alone. A couple of days later, I told Mom that I saw a few chipmunks wearing tiny sombreros, playing mariachi music and having a fiesta. She didn't see the humor in that one.

The point is, we spend about 40 years of our lives raising families, looking after our investments, perhaps trying to own the best car or biggest home. How many of us spend the afternoon or evening simply sitting on a porch, away from the TV or computer, enjoying the best entertainment in the world?

Would I like to find the perfect job to finish my work career? Of course. But even more important is waking up to many more days when I can take at least a few minutes to the kind of free entertainment on the other side of that porch screen. I hope that would show a potential employer that I pay attention to detail and know how to prioritize my life.

And even more importantly, know how to occasionally stop and smell the roses – and maybe feed a chipmunk or two.