Fences
Recently I helped my son Tim build a fence to enclose a
backyard. The owners had started the project by setting the posts but decided
that it was beyond their skill level to complete. When I arrived on the scene,
the job looked ominous because the posts were not set correctly. As we screwed
on the boards you could easily see the horizontal and vertical bends over the
length of the fence. When completed we dubbed it the Wave Fence.
Fences are so commonplace that we hardly take any notice of
them. Out here in the rural West most fences are barbed wire with some split
rail and jack fences thrown in. In different parts of the country fence styles
change: bamboo, chain link, wrought iron, electric, vinyl, picket, pig wire,
and many more. When I was in Great Britain, many of the rural fences were made
of fieldstone.
Why all the fuss about fences? Well, while I was helping Tim
with the wave fence I kept thinking about a poem I read long ago by Robert
Frost. At the time all I could recall was that it was about a dispute he had
with a neighbor over the need for a fence. Looking around the subdivision where
we stood I saw backyard fences of all
designs. I wondered what people were trying to fence in and what they were
trying to fence out.
Here’s a little of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”: “Something
there is that doesn’t love a wall….I let my neighbor know beyond the hill and
on a day we meet to walk the line….He only says, ‘Good fences make good
neighbors’…Why do they make good neighbors?...Before I build a wall I’d ask to
know what I was walling in or walling out and to whom I was like to give
offence. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.”
Instead of building a neighborhood of families, it appears we
are building a neighborhood of fences. I hope Robert Frost will forgive me for
butchering his poem.
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