My Back Porch Used to Be My Front

Actually, the back was never the front, but it was designed to be. The back porch is where the ornamental woodwork was installed, constructed around the porch area as if that's where the horseless carriages were intended to pull up to the house. But, alas, the road behind me was never laid out, never made into a passable thoroughfare, so the alleyway off of which my driveway runs is now the street from which people approach me.

This neighborhood is and has always been a workers community... coal miners (these hills were thick with small mines), steelworkers, landscapers, computer admins and healthcare workers. All the colors of the Pittsburgh region. I'm what I like to call a workers hillside house: tall, narrow, on a steep hill; lots of steps. When people approach me from down the hill, climbing all those steps, they don't see the ornamental front, they see a moderately plebeian front...with lots more steps up to a basement-level front door.

..HF.