Come and knock on our back door
By Burton W. Cole
Rich people get it wrong when they greet friends at the front door but send common folk around back.
Life seems to be a fight to get to the front. But we plebeians know we’ve made the inner circle when we’ve attained back-door status.
TV programs show visitors in gleaming cars pulling up smoothly to a rich person’s mansion, parking before massive, flashy front doors that open into a cavernous foyer.
Butlers point dinged-up, dull and noisy 12-year-old rust-and-duct-taped vehicles to the rear, where servants clomp through a humble, unadorned back door.
At least, that’s what I learned on TV. I don't know any rich people personally. I thought I did, but those I suspected of the smell of money assured me that they're not rich.
All I know is that for me to have an annual income with six, seven or eight figures, I have to count the numbers on both sides of the decimal point. And borrow a number or two from the next line.
Showy front doors installed by seven-figure income people are meant to impress strangers. The somewhat messy back doors and cluttered breezeways of us lesser paychecks welcome friends. Sometimes even when you’re not home.
You walk in your house, bags of groceries clutched in your arms, to find Cousin Clem or Aunt Bonnie sprawled on your couch, munching a sandwich.
“Hey, you're home. Cool. I used your hidden key to let myself in. I sure hope you've got more mayo in one of those bags. I used the last of yours making this cheese and pickles sandwich. Oh, you're out of bread too. And mighty low on pickles.”
Not only do I have back-door friends, I may have just figured out why I'm not rich. And why I need a new key hidey-hole.
Rich people’s butlers herd elegant visitors into great halls or giant dining rooms.
Back doors tend to open into kitchens. We blue-jeans-and-flannel-shirts folk may not know which fork goes with which dish over which course, but we know the kitchen is where we’re likely to find freshly baked cookies and warm conversation.
Same for our garages. No chauffeurs lurk in the corner polishing carburetors. No gardeners alphabetize the rakes and hoes on proper pegboards.
We just mosey over to the workbench, next to rickety chairs in the to-fix-someday pile and discarded cuts of plywood leftover from some project or other, the air permeated with the invigorating ambience of motor oil, WD-40 and paint thinner.
Perched on sawhorses and unopened packs of roofing shingles, we swap tall tales, ogle the latest tools and gadgets or figure out how to make things go “vroom” as loudly as possible.
Garages and kitchens are where friends congregate, not in a formal den that requires jackets and ties and discussions of the stock market. Not unless there's a 75-inch HD TV screen on the wall showing the playoffs.
Maybe back-door status is a country living kind of thing, like where I grew up. Driveways tend to lead to the back of houses with decks, picnic tables, fire pits and grills. And a wandering yard with cornhole boards and horseshoe pegs — or maybe corn cribs and actual horses — all set up and ready to go.
If you visit a friend in the country, you go to the back door. If you stumble upon a burglar, kick him out. After he finishes his sandwich.
Anyone out front is either proper Aunt Edna who never got the hang of informalities, or is selling something you don’t want, like a subscription to Etiquette Quarterly.
If you stop by Stately Cole Manor someday, remember, we’re not rich either. Use the back door. You can’t get open the front door anyway. The long couch blocks it, because we don’t use it anyway.
Knock on Burt’s back door at burton.w.cole@gmail.com, the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook or at www.burtonwcole.com.