My little gulag

I live in a new and relatively upscale, high-density community. It is marked by single family dwellings with footprints approximately the same size as the properties and by multi-unit dwellings on even smaller spaces. I'm from the country: this is not enjoyable. Because my neighbourhood is so new, though, the backyard area has been generally open. A few neighbours have gotten together in little pockets and fenced themselves in (more below). And in the safety of their cages (or, as some prefer) within their "defined spaces," they have everything they need . . . except sun, breeze, 25-foot depth of field . . .

Anyway, this summer appears to be the summer to define one's space. These things tend to go like dominos as a result of economics, peer pressure, and God knows what other psychopathy that informs the need to imprison oneself. One "good neighbour" (who hasn't spoken to anyone . . . well, ever . . . and rarely if ever uses their exterior space -- probably because there's no fence, I guess) will get a quotation to build a fence. The fence builder then points out that if the adjoining neighbours all participate, the cost of the fence gets cut in half because everybody shares. (For all I know, a crafty fence builder will give the first guy a commission of some sort to get things rolling.) So it begins, and ripples outward with each committed neighbour seeking help from the other side of his/her yard.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to fences. Not at all. Robert Frost said it all:

Mending Wall
by Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built 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.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

What I do disapprove of is being under house arrest, which is the feeling I get in a walled garden (literally) that is so small. What's with the six or seven-foot "privacy" fences? Nobody in this neighbourhood is going to put in a pool of any consequence.

I wonder if, assuming nobody comes outside into their yards because there's the possibility of others seeing what they're doing -- maybe eating or bar-b-queing or just sitting with their friends and enjoying the oppressive heat -- given that they don't have a wall around their yard, these same people have a challenge eating in a restaurant or going to a beach or park or shopping mall. It's all very peculiar to me. But then again, I kind of like the sentiment here:

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses
And I can't look at hovels and I can't stand fences
Don't fence me in

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies, Don't fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love, Don't fence me in
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please, Don't fence me in

Anyway, I took the trouble to document the process.

It starts

It was amazing. People who hadn't come outside -- ever -- were talking to their neighbours, fondling the pressure-treated posts that had been dug into but not yet cemented in the ground. . . .

Fence-builder games

Busy days for fence-builders with all the new communities that have been created from farmland in the past five years or so. I have no doubt that they've got more jobs than crews going every day of the week. One of their tricks is to cement the posts into place and then take off for several days while the cement sets. They get to do another set of yards and this guy has to cool his heels a little bit more.

When one fence isn't good enough

I'm sure there is good cause for it -- like making sure that one's fence is one's own and nobody can ever violate that right -- why somebody would pay to have a wall of fence built up against another wall of fence. Maybe the yard just didn't seem secure and safe enough without dual walls. City code prohibits the use of barbed wire or razor wire in fencing.

The necrotizing spread continues

Look at all the kindling.

to be continued . . .

Posted by Grayson at June 26, 2005 02:30 PM