It's five in the morning on another Spring day that appears to be both
warmer and drier than the farmers really would like. Of course, the farmers
are seldom happy with whatever winds blow across the land. Outside the Town
of Springdale, Joe Abernathy rises, as is his habit, about the time the sun
first touches the weather vane atop his hundred year-old barn.

In the time that it takes the sun to turn the entire valley bright red with
its rising, Joe already has his first cup of coffee for the day and is
sitting outside on the sun porch (aptly named, since it faces the sun this
early in the morning) on the old-fashioned swing he installed twenty years
or so ago. Joe and I talked about how, in middle age, we are awakening
earlier in the morning, and spending more time on the sun porches of our
respective homes.

There is a lot more to think about as one ages, it would seem. Although most
of the important decisions, such as the children or the house, have already
been made, there are still a lot of moments while the sun is rising, the
wind is silent in the pines, when one should be outside on the porch in
solitude with a cup of coffee and nothing more than a beautiful spring day
for company.

They say that if you are quiet long enough, this far away from the city,
that you will eventually hear your own heartbeat, blended among the other
noises of the world starting up a new day. Joe's wife often perniciously has
observed that might prove to be a difficult procedure, since she is nearly
certain that Joe does not have a heart, hasn't had one, in fact, since she
married him. Joe goes out and listens, every morning, just in case.

I have heard the muted roar, the rumble, as thirty-five thousand sets of
guts get to rumbling in unison in the city. When you take that human sound,
then combine it with the noise of thirty-five thousand Honda Predators or
Toyota Crumbles firing up their heartless combustion chambers for the
suicidal commuter run, it makes for some pretty awesome pandemonium, indeed.
You couldn't hear a tortoise fart, even at close range. Tragic, that.

But folks who live in the city don't have a whole generation of late
middle-aged men who rise at the break of dawn to go sit on the sun porch in
silence awaiting perhaps a heartbeat or a tortoise fart. Besides, one could
not hear much of any sound over the rumble of the commute.

Perhaps that is why new houses on the South Hill no longer have sun porches.
The designers simply have given up hope that the middle-aged men of the next
generation will be listening in the tradition of the men, like Joe, who live
out past the city lights.