Our Screen  Doors

There is no sound in the world like a screen door, especially in summer.  If you're a Southerner you know what I mean.  The gentle bang of a screen door closed by a spring brings to mind hopping barefoot around the ice cold sprinkler.  Certain smells are also like screen doors.  There are days when you can leave the doors open with just the screen doors separating you from nature.  The breezes that carry gardenia, lilac, roses, and honeysuckle comfort you like bread and cookies baking in the oven.

The best screen door in the world was at my grandparents' house, a 1920s bungalow in Midtown Memphis.  After sixty years of faithful service, it still welcomed you with a familiar and friendly creak as it scraped the concrete threshold when it opened.  If it was locked when you arrived, you could take your right fist and hit the outside of the door opposite where the hook was and pull the brass handle with your left hand at the same time to get the hook to pop up.  It worked if you held your tongue just right.  I really think the hook was there to keep the dog, or us as small children, from pushing the door open.  It didn't provide much protection from strangers but years ago you really didn't need it.

After my grandfather passed away and my grandmother was burglarized three times, the screen door was replaced with a black iron door that had heavy glass panels in it. You needed a key to enter and leave the house.  This could have been deadly in the case of fire but it was a benefit for security.  The house never seemed the same because of this heavy, permanent, impenetrable separation from the ease of enjoying the front porch and having conversations that could include those on both sides of the screen.  I remember watching Batman and Gun Smoke programs on the television in the living room from the chaise lounge chair on the front porch when we were young.  Screened porches, ceiling fans, attic fans, sleeping porches, mosquito netting and screen doors just all go together in a beautiful, relaxing mix called summers in the South.

Everyone must have a calling in this world; it must be my mission in life to put screen doors back on houses.  I have a long history of removing storm doors in favor of just the exterior door starting with one Saturday when my mother was away for several hours and I introduced a screw driver to the aluminum storm door that came with the house when we bought it.  And when I can, I put the original screen doors that have been stored in garages or attics back on the house.  Melrose, like all old Southern houses, had screen doors.  Before a past owner enclosed the back porch to create a laundry and bathroom, there was always a breeze blowing through the house through the center hall's front and back screen doors former residents have told us.  Sometimes center halls would be used as a family room is today.  I won't be happy until the back porch has been reopened and we are back in harmony with nature.  It will be lovely to watch the sheep grazing in the back pasture just beyond where the new rose garden will be.

I guess most people today don't like the dust that can come into a house when the windows and doors are open or perhaps they have allergies.  With air conditioning, you can live your entire year with the doors closed and windows even painted shut.  But I can't.   Although our screen doors were gone when we bought Melrose, I still leave the exterior doors open to the front porch and hope that not too many birds, lizards, spiders and frogs invite themselves in.  It's all right with me if they do because they can do the job of catching mosquitoes and flies for me so we don't have to use chemical sprays around the house.  I can't think of the twittering of birds and warm summer breezes being replaced by the boring roar of mechanical air conditioners that seal us away from nature.

Robert rebuilt Melrose's front screen doors like the pieces of the originals we found in the woods where a former owner dumped them.  The pieces we found showed us that they were very simple and elegant.  We reused the ceramic knobs from the originals and used copper screen that will turn green with age, also like the earlier versions.  The former owners told us we'd be sorry to remove the metal storm front door they had installed to provide a barrier to the cold winds blowing through in the winter.  We weren't because we accept that this antebellum house has the energy efficiency of a basket anyway.  If energy efficiency had been more important to us more than having a historic house, we would have built a new one or bought a more modern one.  Draughts are just something that you accept when you cherish old fashioned houses, and in fact, more healthful lives.  It makes me happy to know Melrose has screen doors again.  Screen doors always say welcome home wherever you are.

September 10, 2002

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