The rental house belonged to all of them. Generations of friends had lived in it. More than a whole decade of them had called it home.

And their only requirement of it? The porch. A viewing post over their neighborhood, a bastion to watch the storms roll in, an oasis of cool breezes in the depths of summer swelter.

The walls could come tumbling down, the roof blow away, the kitchen utterly explode, the bathroom back up and vomit all over their floor, so long as their porch was safe.

And, for a while, that’s how their whole neighborhood was. Porch after porch after porch. Least, until the gentrification came.

It was the houses at the end of the block that went first. Zero lot liners went up, like zombies rising from the grave. Then from the other end of the block, condos were built on the graves of homes.

They grew like cancer, blooming and consuming until theirs was the only dwelling left without a keycard entry or private off-the-street parking. Growing until their bronzed cowboy boot ashtray was a point of contention rather than a point of conversation.

But, by that point, all was lost.

Memphis Note
We’re very bad when it comes to reviving low rent artist communities into cool, several hundred grand elite communities. It happened in Cooper-Young, it happened Downtown, and it’ll happen again in the Broad area in a decade. Memphis is a profiteering community, it’s why we were founded in the first place, but, it lends to very bad habits. Habits that are best broken.

The storm had ripped through the city. Trees were down, power lines strewn across the ground like spaghetti, roofs, if they were missing, could probably be found a block or two away. Near as anyone could tell, the whole city had gone dark in the storm’s furious wake.

My father immediately organized a round-the-clock neighborhood watch. Drafting my brothers and I, as well as our rather militant neighbor and his massive pickup truck.

The truck was used as a make-shift roadblock into our neighborhood, with a fallen oak blocking the other street in. Camping equipment was pulled out of storage, and in no time, there was an outpost in the middle of our street.

A cooler of beer followed shortly. Then some curious neighbors, and then their beer and ice from rapidly warming fridges. Grills were wheeled out from backyards, charcoal fires making the summer night even hotter.

I grew up running through the yards of some of these people, yet this was the first time I’d spoken to them.

And as my younger brothers ran around zapping each other with barcode scanners they’d scrounged from the militant neighbor’s things, I almost felt thankful for the storm.

Memphis Note
Hurricane Elvis is what they called it. If you ask anyone who’s lived here their whole lives, they’ll tell you it was probably the worst storm they can ever remember. Parts of the city were without power for days.