This
shows the replacement new porch. (on the right)
THE NEW FRONT PORCH
In the late 30's the mines started working again and Dad
felt able to replace the old gingerbread
Victorian screened porch on the south side of the house,
whose foundations had rotted. This old
porch had never really matched the rest of the house,
a middle 19th century Southern
Colonial design. Dad was a good engineer, but somewhat
flamboyant at times, influenced perhaps by Stout
and F. L. Wright. The new porch was to be built
to last through the ages.
After the carpenters from the mine came and disassembled the
old porch, the masons
arrived and built a proper foundation. The new porch was to
have a flagstone
floor, so the foundation had to be filled with rock
and gravel. Much to my surprise, a couple of big
dump trucks arrived from the mine and proceeded to fill the
porch foundation with a bunch
of tons of high grade ore. Beautiful pieces of pure
Sphalerite and Galena are now re-buried there!
The carpenters came back and made round pillars to match the
front of the house, and built
a flat roof. This roof was never going to leak, so was clad
with sheet tin, two-foot squares soldered together.
This mind you was pure sheet Stannum, not the stuff used in
cans, nor the Zinc-plated steel
commonly used at that time. Where Dad got some 400 square
feet of pure tin sheet, with WW-2 looming then,
is now a major mystery.
It was very enjoyable to be able to relax in comfort on the
new porch of a summer afternoon,
looking to the southwest across miles of Kansas prairie and
watching the line fronts sweeping in. One
kept an eye peeled for funnel clouds too.