Rites Of Summer: Porches of Cape May

CAPE MAY, N.J. - The feet are over the railing, the rocking chair tucked nicely into a corner. The book was taken serendipitously off a shelf, and, not for nothing, the husband was left on a different porch.

None of it was deliberated, really, but come to think of it, Sarah "Sally" Gibson, 69, would have to acknowledge she did not take her Cape May porch routines lightly.

"I tried all of them," said Gibson, a social worker from North Jersey. "They have three. The air is a little better on the side one, but not the shade. My husband's on another porch doing his crossword puzzle, and I deserted him. He prefers the breeze."

What better place to mull over things ordinarily sent through the brain's E-ZPass lanes than on an earth-toned, Ocean Street-facing porch of the Queen Victoria Bed & Breakfast in Cape May?

Especially in this quieter time before the official "Tea on the Porch" ritual - when guests appear from nowhere to scamper after pastries and tea and suddenly fill every seat on the bigger side porch - Gibson warms to discussing the nuances of the Cape May porch.

She is far from alone. This is famously - architecturally and ritually - a front-porch town.

As Inquirer writer John Corr pointed out a quarter-century ago, to get any news in Cape May (and this week, that would mainly be outrage over police cutting locks on the promenade and confiscating bicycles) requires a spot of sitting - on a porch or, perhaps, a bar stool.

The imperative appears to survive into the distracted cellphone age. To drive around town at peak porch times - early morning, late afternoon, evening - is to see the historic buildings animated on their perimeters, people rocking, reading, sipping, talking, those snippets of voices only occasionally carrying a bit loudly from people talking into cellphones. The chairs complete the color schemes: white porch, black rockers; peach porch, green rockers; purple trim, white rockers.

The day before, a man talking into a cellphone on the breezy Queen Victoria porch had soured the late-afternoon sit. People can forget their place. "This is a vacation porch," Gibson said. "You smell the laundry, but it's not your laundry to do."

On Tuesday, all was restored to its proper aesthetic. Everyone seemed at the beginning of a very long book: The Goldfinch, in the case of Joan Hodskins of Massachusetts. Hodskins had just dropped her youngest daughter off at Villanova University for freshman year, and she and her husband were on an empty-nest-moon. Which must be common because she ended up sitting next to Debbie Mouridy, who had done the same thing. (Hodskins will be forgiven for fielding a few incoming freshman texts from the Main Line.)

"We do love porches," Hodskins said. "At home, we have a deck. It's a reminder what life was like. People were close together; you'd talk to your neighbor on the porch."

In Cape May, those porchless at home are especially appreciative.

"I live in a condo," said Dolores Lanzaro, 81, of New York. Her room at the Queen Victoria leads directly to the porch, which allowed her to claim it, sort of, with magazines on chairs. (Gibson, nearby, was not sure whether to challenge that territorial porch grab.)

"I have a terrace, which I never sit on," Lanzaro said. "New York people don't really sit out. We're moving."

Queen Victoria innkeeper Doug McMain said his porch was totally rebuilt in the last two years by a master carpenter, including gingerbread trim and rails. The colors: rookwood red and dark green, terra cotta, Prince Albert Hall yellow. "It was a serious investment," he said. "Porches are important."

On a smaller side porch, Mary Widlicki, 33, of Princeton, rocked on a wicker swing. Halfway through a pregnancy, she and husband Nick were on a babymoon. They were enchanted by the porch lifestyle and, being younger than most of the others, could speak about the late-night porch scene, when the view back into the lit-up parlor is as fetching as the streetscape.

"The carriages, they turn the corner," Mary said.

"You see the chandeliers, the curtains - it's a great view both ways," Nick said. "It's busy after 10 p.m. The trolleys go by. It's, like, hypnotic."

"Like a call to relax," Mary said.

Teatime at the Queen Victoria meandered along, and Gibson's husband, Steve, reading the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, found himself in conversation with Ron Montefusco, sitting nearby, who, it turns out, had a lot to say about Grant's record.

"I'm interested in the book," said Montefusco, who brought his own bottle of Snapple to the porch. The conversation migrated to Harry Truman, who, Ron noted, was not a rich man and inspired a presidential pension system.

"The presidents didn't make money," Gibson said.

"Now they do," Ron replied.

There was a pause. This felt beyond the scope of porch patter.

"You can't get into politics right now," Ron said. Maybe better for a nighttime porch, with cocktails.

On Jackson Street, at Poor Richard's Inn, opened 39 years ago in the early days of the revived and restored Victorian town, porch space is limited to an upstairs and downstairs porch, each with four rockers. Spillover goes to the garden, where on Tuesday, Henry Yee, 58, said he was happy to sit on the bench. (Some hover and wait for a rocker to open up.)

Regular Harriett Cohen of Mount Laurel recalled the porches of her Strawberry Mansion youth as she and husband Al and friends Mitch Davis and Karen Liebman sat with their spread of wine and cheese and tiny travel cheese slicer. "We have met the most interesting people on this porch," she said. "You usually have to share it with a couple of cats."

Liebman says air-conditioning killed the porch as a daily ritual. In Cape May, it's eagerly embraced.

If porch culture survives in Cape May, the inns themselves may be endangered. Many have been converted to condos or weekly rentals. Poor Richard's itself is slated to be sold in the fall to a buyer who has not said what he will do with the property.

Innkeeper Harriett Sosson - an artist who in one work mischievously places Whistler's mother on the floor of the iconic Chalfonte porch with a cocktail - says her second-floor porch is the best in town - even without its dear porch cat, Ralph, RIP.

"You can see the people, and they can't see you," she says. "What makes me happy is walking back, and I see bare feet on the railing, and I think, someone is relaxing in my house."