Where the Paved Road Ends: We Traded Front Porches for Facebook

By Beth Watkins

I miss the days of living in a little one-stoplight town. Everybody knew everybody. If you rode your bike somewhere you weren’t supposed to be, by the time you got home your momma had already gotten a phone call. And if you sneezed on the east side of town, Miss Martha on the west side was already adding your sinuses to the church prayer list.

Every town had a few little old ladies who somehow knew everybody’s business and didn’t mind discussing someone else’s dirty laundry. Today, I guess they call it “spilling the tea.” The difference is, back then they whispered about it over coffee. Today folks post it before breakfast.

Social media wears me smooth out.

But it’s like watching a train wreck. You just can’t look away.

My sister, Glenna, lives a couple of hours from me. Most mornings, before noon, one of us sends the other a screenshot of the most jaw-dropping post we’ve found on our local community page.

One day someone posted, “Can somebody bring my mom and me a Pepsi? She gets paid tomorrow and will pay you back.”

I answered with nothing but a laughing emoji.

Then I sent her one from my town.

“Can somebody bring me a garden hose? My little girl wants to play in her kiddie pool, but I don’t have a hose to fill it.”

I texted my sister, “Do they own a bucket? A water pitcher? Maybe rinse out a trash can and carry water!”

Now before anybody gets their feathers ruffled, my sister and I have a pact. We never comment. We just send our replies to each other. My husband says we’d be labeled as “mean girls.”

We prefer to think of it as community service… spreading common sense from one end of Oklahoma to the other.

Now don’t misunderstand me. If your house burned down, your husband lost his job, or life knocked the wind out of you, neighbors ought to show up before you even have to ask. That’s what communities are for.

But somewhere along the way we stopped asking ourselves, “How can I figure this out?” and started asking, “Who can fix this for me?”

It wasn’t because life was easier. It was because people expected more from themselves and less from everyone else.

I miss that.

Sometimes I wonder how we’d survive if we had to live the way our grandparents did. Can you imagine how many folks would be in real trouble if they had to haul a bucket of water from the creek just to have water in the house?

I also miss when every thought didn’t need an audience.

Back in my hometown there was a widow whose heart was bigger than her house. She loved to cook, and she loved having company. Instead of sitting on her front porch wishing someone would stop by, she’d cook a big meal and call the fire department or the police department and invite them over for supper.

She didn’t wait for community. She created it.

That little lady never threw herself a pity party. She never posted about being lonely or wondered why nobody came to visit.

She simply moved first… and they came.

She chose to be the blessing instead of waiting on one.

Remember when folks knew your business because they lived life alongside you? Today everyone knows your business because you posted it, with filters, hashtags and a play-by-play.

Now don’t get me wrong. I use social media too. It’s how I keep up with family and friends who live far away. I love watching babies grow up, seeing vacation pictures, celebrating anniversaries and rejoicing over answered prayers.

And yes… I use it for entertainment.

Y’all letting AI give you a makeover and posting it like it’s an actual picture… come on now. Every once in a while it’s fun to pretend your Fairy Godmother showed up with a pumpkin, a couple of mice and a little bibbidi-bobbidi-boo. But every day?

Cinderella… it’s after midnight. You’ve lost your shoe.

I miss when people were a little more humble. If they received a blessing, they thanked God for it. They let their character do the talking instead of their Facebook page.

Somewhere along the way we’ve traded humility for visibility.

In our little one-stoplight town, we didn’t need an app to find our friends. We knew exactly where they’d be. We’d spend Friday nights dragging Main, making lap after lap from one end of town to the other. If you didn’t have enough gas money, you’d park at the tag office or the school parking lot and sit on the hood of your car.

We were connected long before Wi-Fi.

The funny thing is, we have more ways to communicate than any generation before us, yet somehow we’ve never been lonelier. We can video call someone on the other side of the world, but many of us don’t know the name of the person who lives across the street.

We’ve traded front porches for Facebook, driveways for direct messages, and waving across the fence for clicking a thumbs-up emoji.

Maybe the answer isn’t another app, another platform or another community page. Maybe it’s remembering how we were raised.

Figure a few things out for yourself.

Keep a few things to yourself.

Help your neighbor before they ask.

Wave at people you disagree with.

Sit on a front porch every once in a while.

And every now and then… tuck your crazy in.