The Science of Purple Porches

February 28, 2015 – Key West, Florida, USA

"In addition to our wild chickens, the Conch Republic is special because of our architecture," said the tour guide from the front of the bus. "We've got some special touches. If you look toward the right, at the ceilings under those porches, you'll notice they're painted sky blue. Any idea why?"

Sasha Sybrowski was listening intently from inside the bus. She whispered to her husband, Jeff, "Do you know why?" He shook his head like he did not know or really care.

"They're blue to fool the bugs," continued the tour guide. "Insects think they're looking up at the sky, so they don't want to crawl or land on that ceiling."

"Oh, isn't that clever?" Sasha said to Jeff. He tried not to react. He could already see the wheels turning in her head and did not want to encourage her.

"This is a great example of using science to work with mother nature instead of against her," continued the tour guide.

While Jeff remained quiet, Sasha talked excitedly about the porch surrounding their new house back in Indiana. She was suddenly concerned about the bugs they might expect crawling around every inch of the porch.

When the tour was over, Jeff expected to visit the Key West butterfly museum and find the six-toed cats which hung around the Hemingway house. Sasha had forgotten all about those highlights, which they had read about in their tour book. All she wanted to do was walk up and down the residential streets, admiring the porches.

"I like the columns on that one," she said to Jeff, after pointing out fifty other porches. "And look at the blue on the ceiling. A little paler than the others. Really charming, don't you think?"

Sasha had used "charming" to describe all fifty-one of the porches she had seen. Jeff already knew what she was planning.

Their trip to South Florida was to celebrate their joint retirement as school teachers. It was the first February they could remember in which they were not in school as teachers or as students. They wanted to get out of the cold of Bloomington, Indiana and enjoy the Florida weather between the Christmas and Spring Break crowds.

Miami had felt too bustling but they had loved their stops along the Florida Keys. They unrolled the windows and drove slowly over the ocean on the Seven Mile Bridge. They stopped and sampled every key lime pie they saw advertised along the way. Compared to the slushy roads and frozen air in Indiana, it was easy to fall in love with the mild sea breezes.

Jeff bought a conch shell to remember the trip. He knew exactly where he was going to put it. The couple had moved into a new downsized house as part of their retirement and the shell would sit on a shelf next to the much reduced collection of books he had decided to keep.

Jeff tried to talk Sasha into buying some kind of souvenir. He thought maybe it would dampen her new obsession with porch ceilings and the inevitable painting project that came with it. No such luck. Sasha was not interested in trinkets to help her remember the trip, she wanted to recreate the little piece of Florida she liked the most.

Sasha's interest in porches was not new. When they had shopped around for their retirement house, she had insisted on a wraparound porch on at least two of the house's sides. She envisioned it as a place to sit in rocking chairs on a summer evening and watch kids chasing fireflies. It would also be the perfect spot for sipping lemonade and reading romantic novels.

When the Sybrowskis made the return trip to Bloomington, a wet and gray March storm surrounded their little house. Sasha stared at the house's gray exterior and was dismayed by how closely it matched the clouds. At least the railings and support posts for her porch were painted a bright white. It was a shade that matched the posts in Key West, but she felt more sure than ever that a more drastic change was needed to capture a breezy, laidback, Florida porch ambiance.