52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 17 "Favorite Place"

THE PORCH SWING

My earliest memories of visiting my maternal grandparents include their porch swing.  Though I was born in St. Joseph, Michigan where they lived, my parents and I moved to the Detroit suburbs when I was a toddler and only visited St. Joseph in the summer and on Easter week-end.  I was always excited to visit my grandparents because their home and the town were happy places to be.

My grandparents had a two-story home on Pleasant Street in St. Joseph.  Kitty corner from their home was the local Catholic church and school and directly across the street was the Catholic convent where the nuns lived.  The street wasn't very long, perhaps containing 10 homes at the most, between Court Street and Church Street.  Being in the downtown district everything of enjoyment was within walking distance.  

There were the stores to shop or browse in, the dime store with the wooden floors (which still exists today) where my mother had worked right after high school, the drug store with the soda fountain where we would get an ice cream sundae, the band stand where Sunday performances were held by the St. Joseph Municipal Band and the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan.  We could walk down the staircase from the bluff to the railroad tracks and a little further we would be on the sand by the Lake.  There was also Silver Beach with the famous Carousel (which has now been restored).  Visiting St. Joe was a happy and fun time.

But the thing that gave me the most pleasure was the porch swing that hung on my grandparent's front porch.  It provided a place to sit in peace and quiet, a place for reflection and calm.  It resembled this swing:

There were other chairs on the porch and my grandparents would graciously allow me to sit on the swing while they would take the chairs.  We would talk and they would always be interested in what was going on in my life.  After my grandfather passed away when I was 12, whenever we would visit, my grandmother and mother would sit on the porch with me and we would just relax and enjoy the flowers my grandmother had around the house.  I spent countless hours on the swing myself reading and relaxing.  

The years have gone by, my grandmother and my mother are also gone and the house on Pleasant Street is gone as well.  That side of the street was demolished and a banking complex was built in it's place. (The Catholic church, school and convent building still exist on the opposite side of the street.)  I have walked the street many times trying to picture just where the house was and have determined it had sat where the drive-up lane of Fifth Third Bank sits today:

But in my mind's eye I can still see the house as it was when I was growing up and I can picture the porch swing that I spent many hours relaxing on.  Unfortunately the porch swing is not shown in this portrait but I can see it in my memory:

Good memories of happy and peaceful times!

Copyright 2021, Cheryl J. Schulte