“If the old screen door could talk today, what do you think that door would say? All the laughter, the loving children at play. All the squeaks, slams, and knocks, the old screen door can’t say.”
After a rainy and cool Memorial Day weekend, summer has come to our little part of North Carolina. With brilliant Carolina blue skies and expected temperatures in the 90-degree range, the hum of air-conditioners in our cul-de-sac sing their tune in harmony with the crickets and katydids.
Yet there’s another summer song I recall from my growing-up years…the slam of the screen door. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s (yes, I’m that old!) no one in our family or circle of friends had air-conditioning in our homes or cars. But every house had a screen door that turned the inside into the outside, invited the fresh air in while keeping out the mosquitoes and flies. That half-barrier told my young cousins the door is shut, and we stay inside. But it also said to our neighbors we’re home, “come on in.” The screen door rendered life airy and bearable through the long, buggy evenings of summer.
History
People had been working on wire window screening for a long. Past civilizations used fabric screens that kept out the bugs fairly well. However, they restricted air circulation and dimmed the light. Early European settlers to Boston worried about “the three great annoyances of Woolves, Rattle-snakes and Musketoes.” The first two critters could be kept out by physical barriers, the last demanded something better. Settlers discovered that cheesecloth allowed air to circulate, but it was delicate and easily torn.
During the Civil War, a Connecticut sieve company, Gilbert & Bennett worried about what to do with the screening for sieves that built up in warehouses when the company lost access to Southern markets during the war. An employee of the company came up with a new idea…coat the wire cloth with paint to prevent rust and sold it for window screens. The idea became so popular the company made wire cloth a major part of its business, and it became a major manufacturer of screens for doors and windows.
Components of a Screen Door
Comprising little more than wire mesh, a wooden frame, and a handful of hardware, a screen door creates a barrier and an invitation, and an unmistakable sound that says summer. Here are a few examples from the Sears Roebuck & Company Catalogue (1895)
My maternal grandparents lived on a dead-end street in Rensselaer, NY, just over the Hudson River from Albany. I spent countless summer days there, picking blackberries, trailing after my grandfather in his garden, and watching him and my grandmother play pinochle at their kitchen table in the evenings. Their screen door led straight to their kitchen. It was painted a deep forest green with rusty hardware and a black screen. That door kept out the green pollen, Catalpa pods, maple helicopters, and dandelion fluff in the spring.
While the other doors were burdened with locks and deadbolts, the screen door had only a simple catch. And if Grandpa had to lock it–what a foolish notion since any one of us could poke a hole through the screening with a finger–he would use a hook and eye. Which someone, who shall remain nameless, pulled at the door and accidentally ripped the eye right out of the wooden jamb!
But that was the screen door’s purpose…to open easily, letting in people, the wind, the sounds, and scents of summer. Even now, whenever I hear a door squeak on its hinges or hear the slap of the screen door as we go in and out, I’m transported back to that carefree time.
We have our own screen door, except that it’s white vinyl, not wood. For us, it’s a piece of nostalgia, yet, taut and true with its modern mechanisms. It’s a boundary between inside and outside. Between present and past. Between open and closed.
If you have a memory of a screen door, I’d love for you to share with us.
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Happy New Year and may your 2023 be blessed and full of memory making moments!
While researching a book, I came across several accounts of hidden money sewn into clothing, hat brims, or fake compartments in luggage. I didn’t end up using everything I’d discovered in my novel, but it did send my mind racing and ideas spinning. We are so used to electronic funds, checks, and secured shipping that we don’t often worry about traveling with the family’s heirloom jewels or your life savings, but times used to be different.
Once he returned home, however, he stayed home, surrounded by family. He never married, never had children. He rarely bathed and wore his hair long, unusual for a man at the time, and donned baggy clothes that often needed laundering. He chopped wood every day for heat, drew his water from a well, and grew all his own food. Always a loner, his niece remembers him as being very kind, very gentle and quiet. When his uncle died, leaving him the family’s 160-acre farm, Emery didn’t work the land but instead leased it, which provided him a modest income and allowed him to do what he loved best.
Some called him crazy. While the farm deteriorated from neglect, as did his personal appearance, neighbors couldn’t help but have reservations about him. Yet inside the shed, which was practically falling apart around him, beams of light touched on bits of foil, wire, colorful beads, and ribbon. Strings of blinking Christmas bulbs wound around the room. Visitors report being light-headed, feeling overwhelmed, even out-of-breath.
country and were eventually displayed in a New York gallery. Pieces sold from $2,500 to $25,000. The remaining works, including the shed, was acquired by a foundation and donated to an art center in Wisconsin where they all remain today.
With spring’s arrival, my thoughts turn to planting a garden. I love gardens, and it doesn’t matter what kind: flower, bee, vegetable, whatever. I have fond memories of my Grandma Walter’s huge garden filled with green beans, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, strawberries, and what else I can’t remember anymore. Unfortunately, while I received her crafty, DIY, and gardening soul, I didn’t inherit her green thumb. My vegetable/fruit gardens have been dismal failures except for growing green beans.
Talk about one stop shopping!
Please continue to pray for those struggling to overcome the effects of the snowstorm. For many recovery will be a long, expensive process.
