Has Anyone Seen My Porch Goose?
My three favorite words I love you have now been replaced by another three words… I don’t know. I don’t know so much more than I love you. Love will always be the fuel in my life… but curiosity, another word for knowledge, is my engine. All to say, am I the only one that didn’t know about a “Porch Goose????”
Thank goodness!
I know I am old, but I read books, see many of the latest television and movie shows, especially good documentaries, and to the best of my knowledge, I am still conscious mentus. Before I continue, I have to stop and spit three times on the evil eye.
I have eight grandchildren who take me out of my ignorance into the new world. Recently, my oldest granddaughter, Shira, decided to create a small lending library on her front lawn. As they passed, neighbors could take a book, add a book. Shira’s wife, Morgan, helped prepare the selected spot and thoroughly supports and approves her latest project.
Are you with me so far? Good. I also supported Shira’s new effort by sending her a big box of books I had read and wouldn’t be rereading. She responded with a video of what she had created. In the video, she introduced me to Edith, a stone goose that sat protecting what was now called Edith's Little Free Library.
I asked Shira how she came to have a stone goose guarding her library. She told me about the Midwest tradition of using a Porch Goose as a sign of welcome and friendliness. A welcoming goose? These animals are not especially fond of people and have been known to honk, snap, and bite, generally scaring the bejesus if a person approaches. What do I know? I am an old lady from Brooklyn. Maybe that’s the way they welcome you in the Midwest.
Both of us checked Wikipedia as to when porch geese came into fashion… in the 1980’s. Again, mainly in the Midwest. Fast forward to the present day. Shira is always on the lookout for the new and different and the challenging. She is as drawn to people as people are drawn to her. Creating a neighborhood lending library is the perfect project for her. Do not even think of asking me how she discovered that porch geese were about to make a comeback. Some people are just psychic; these porch geese were spreading their wings geographically from the Midwest to include Shira and Morgan’s area in Massachusetts.
It begins.
Shira decides she is going to dress Edith for holidays, so she uses the internet to find clothes for her stone goose. She comes across someone who designs and sews clothes for her own stone goose. Bob Mackie, the famous costume designer for Cher and other Hollywood Stars, beware (ha!).
Damn! Shira can’t sew.
No matter. She has opened Pandora’s Box… or should I say Edith’s closet.
From all over the country, she receives advice, patterns, and names of goose costume designers.
The following is a thread of a conversation between Shira and a fellow stone porch goose person sharing a particular problem of having an overweight stone goose whose arms (wings) are too thick for the standard goose measurement. You do not have to read the whole thread… read as much as you want and then take a nap.
How did all of this come about? Well, since no one knows for sure, for sure, I’ll share my vision version of how the first stone goose landed on a porch.
It was in the ’80s… but not the 1980’s… the 1880’s, after pioneers in their covered wagons settled the Midwest. Plenty of folk who were exhausted after crossing the Mississippi River decided to end their pioneering efforts before crossing the Rocky Mountains. News travels from one wagon train to another and many of them heard about what happened to the Donner Party as they tried crossing the Rockies. They were no dummies, so they stopped before crossing the Mountains and set up homesteads and created states and cities and towns and houses with porches. These hard travelers came from all over the world and all over the Eastern seaboard. They were strangers to each other. Some didn’t even speak the same language.
No matter that some of us like to think otherwise, there is a very strong human impulse towards connection and community. We may be skittish and fearful and not very trusting, but there is a gravitational pull towards fellowship. Yeah! Yeah! There are exceptions to everything. Who don’t know that?
Where was I? Oh, yes, connection, community. So these pioneers are alone out in this new territory and thank goodness for Manny and Myrna. On a crazy whim, they left their cold water 5th-floor walk-up tenement with a deluxe outhouse in the back, on the lower East Side of NYC for a homestead outside what would someday be Deadwood, South Dakota. He had apprenticed as a stone mason in NYC. They survived their first winter of snow storms, ice storms, wind storms. Thank goodness Myrna was a worrier. Worriers prepare for the worst, so she prepared a lot of food.
Manny couldn’t believe he missed his cold water 5th-floor walk-up tenement with a deluxe outhouse. He was going stir-crazy. He had to do something or he’d crack. After cementing the cellar floor, he had enough clay left over to make… you got it… a stone goose.
Rachel was horrified. A stone goose on her nice clean floors. “Out.. out.. put that ugly thing out on the porch, or I’ll put you out on the porch… .”
They were really getting on each other’s nerves.
The next morning there was a knock on the door. They opened it.
“Hey there, my name is Sven, and this is my wife Brigitta.”
Manny and Myrna were shocked.
Sven and Brigitta were neighbors.
They never knew they had neighbors.
It had stopped snowing, icing, and blowing.
Since their neighbors were from Sweden, their wagon wheels were made with sleds. They were going into town. They saw the goose on the porch and stopped to ask if they needed anything.
“Oh, and by the way, my wife Brigitta would love to have a stone porch goose. She makes great meatballs. How about a goose for a meatball.”
That is my vision of how a Stone Porch Goose became a symbol for creating a friendly neighborhood. Signaling to one and all no matter how much they weigh or how they are dressed, no matter what the differences are, one can always find common ground… like a porch… to come together.
Go on. I dare you. Turn all the negative naysayers on their heels. Put a stone porch goose outside your door. Meet your neighbor and create a community.
P.S. You can follow Edith’s adventures on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok
❤️🙏😆😂😂♥️♥️♥️