Boy on a porch covered with Dutchman's Pipe vine by Jack McConnell

This first image from the Sit Down collection begins with a B&W photo of a boy on a porch, sitting on time-worn, wooden steps with a screen door behind him. The front porch is tightly encased in a vine-like plant called Dutchman's Pipe, so overgrown that you can't even push open the door. The boy is killing time, lazy, bored, waiting for the next great thing to happen in his life. The porch belongs to Mid Hale, an elderly woman who has spent most of her life in that house, where she raised five daughters, fed her family franks'n'beans every Saturday night, baked her famous yellow jello cake with cherry icing for after-church receptions every Sunday afternoon. Lately, she sits on the porch and knits sweaters for her great-grandkids, and watches the world pass by. Neighbors are forever taking her to task, "Mildred, cut down that vine. We can't see in." "No, but I can see out," she replies.