Lannie's Porch

Nothing is outstanding about Lannie’s back porch. Eight feet by eight feet, a wood floor painted a dull grey long ago, three unsafe chairs and one rocker. The door is old, and the paint is cracked and peeling, but he doesn’t care.

If I had to describe Lannie, I just did. That’s him. He’s been repaired more times than he cares to remember. He’s old, his skin is cracked and peeling, and he doesn’t care.

Lannie sits on the porch as soon as the weather comes warm and stops with the feel of winter. Most evenings, after dinner with his wife, he sits in the same chair, the one not broken, and likes to read the newspaper. More often than not, he watches cars go by the end of the drive; their drivers, a few of whom he knows, wave to him, and Lannie waves to those he doesn’t know.

But here’s what I’m learning about the Midwest. Lannie looks a certain way when he sits on the porch — like he belongs there. It’s almost as if Lannie’s was the first porch built in the Midwest because when I see him out there, there’s a certain timeless quality to him. He has no time for politics, never heard of Trump, nor cares who is President. Not Lannie.

When he’s sat on his porch, it’s as if to say, ‘I may die soon, but it sure as hell won’t be on my porch.’

Those of you who know my circumstances, having been blessed with grandchildren here in the Midwest, I miss being close to the sea, the shore, and the evening walks. I have no feeling about Missouri. It’s the butt of jokes and a fly-over state. That said, we all give up something for our grandchildren.

I don’t enjoy Missouri, but wherever I am, my writing is so much better when I know who I am writing about. So, when I first met Lannie, he wasn’t one for speaking much to a man with a British accent. I first met him in Kansas City, in Missouri! Go figure, right?

He was in a bar talking about how fast the world seemed to be moving but telling folks around him, strangers all, that the world didn’t move at all while he sat on his porch.

Lannie collected more people around him in a few minutes than I could manage in a month on Medium. Fancying myself as a writer, I wanted to stretch that particular moment into something more, to live Lannie’s entire life in that moment. For in that moment, he had everyone’s complete attention.

I couldn’t do what Lannie did, even in my work as a creative writer, which was that Lannie’s spoken word had people held spellbound. The only other man I can talk about in that way was my father.

I’m talking about there being close to a dozen Missourians, all holding beers, who knew nothing else in the world mattered but the small moments. These moments were interwoven into a memory of a lifetime when nothing else did matter. A time when the world did indeed stop, the moment collected up and formed the whole of their lives. This was such a moment.

I had been driving from California and stopped on my second night in Kansas City on my way back to St. Louis County. I hope I still have you, reader, because this was important to me as a creative writer. There are men in this world even a writer cannot make better.

We’ve now been acquaintances for a little over three months. Lannie doesn’t believe a friendship can be struck up in under forty years.

Sitting on Lannie’s back porch is to realize that he and his wife, Lottie (I kid you not), hold the meaning of life in their hearts. They know the reason for existence in their minds. They learned of true happiness in their souls.

Like the smoke of the cigarette that rested in Lannie’s hand as a young man, this intimate knowledge of life and happiness fleets from any visitor as soon as they stand up to leave, as soon as the moment has passed.

I’ve been on his back porch seven times, and I feel the pull of time on my soul every time. There is a yearning to stay for the rest of my days, for a single moment, pulled to eternity, and it gets stronger every time I’m there.

But I’m a sailor in my heart and still learning what Lannie knows, just in a different place. But his heart is Missouri, and in his heart, it is a fine place.