The Patio

The Patio

I miss my old house, and what I miss the most is not having a front porch.  Not only was it a good place to relax and enjoy pleasant weather, from the front porch you could also watch the progression of Spring into Summer, and Summer into Fall.

To the cave and cliff dwellers (apartment renters) in my neighborhood, the patios that emerge in the Spring-time along Corydon Avenue become the front porch.  My preferred 'front porch' is the Bar Italia patio, where I sit in the morning sun, like a lizard on a rock, sipping my latté and puzzling over the Freep crossword.  The morning regulars drift in, some have lap-tops, a couple actually write in notebooks with a pen, they all have phones.

 Another group of morning regulars, the Old Italian Guys’ Debating Society, moves outside during the patio season.  I don’t know what they argue about, because it’s in Italian.  The Young Italians’ Social Club, they sound as though they’re arguing, but they just talk loud.

The morning crowd morphs into the lunch crowd about 11AM, and you start to see bottles of beer and glasses of wine among the cups of coffee.  I usually leave before that, and if I do something productive during the day, I reward myself with a late-afternoon visit to the patio.  On these excursions I don't write, or read a book, or do a crossword.  No, I sip a Budweiser, and admire the passing parade of pulchritude.  Women and girls of the female persuasion come in so many fascinating sizes, shapes, skin hues, hair types and styles, inked or not inked, lots of skin showing or not so much.  I could watch them all day.

I am not, I hasten to say, ogling the female passers-by salasciously.  I am looking at them with a 'artistic vision.'