Fencing lessons

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.

— Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”

Ihave been thinking about fences. We will have one soon that circles the perimeter of our little community. (The plans for the fence sound great, a little bit of the old Broadway Bridge fencing is to be incorporated into the design.)

The fence will provide a little more peace of mind when we let our dogs out into our common area to play with the neighbors’ dogs. We don’t want any of the dogs to run into the street. We don’t want one of them to go charging off into the woods after a squirrel. I want the fence to contain their enthusiasm; it was one of the selling points of our new community.

But fences don’t just keep things in, they also keep things out. Or at least they present an obstacle to things that want to get in. Fences aren’t necessarily hard to defeat—I’ve gone over a few in my day—but they make you stop for a moment and consider your options. Do you really need to go there? Maybe not.

Karen grew up in a Cleveland suburb where fences were rare, a land of run-on backyards and invisible borders that allowed children’s games to migrate and expand, just as Frederick Law Olmsted imagined. Originally these open unfenced areas were thought to provide security; you could see out your windows, and your neighbors could see in. It was thought this long unobstructed view would deter burglars.

I grew up in places with privacy fences and a few chain-link jobs mixed in. Mostly these were concessions to the neighbors. Backyards were more relaxed spaces than front lawns, which were typically curated and landscaped, an advertisement for the taste and civic conscience of the homeowners. Meanwhile, in the backyards, teenaged daughters sunbathed and fathers battled charcoal grills. It was business in the front, party in the back.

Nobody wants their parties to be public. Hence, the fence.

I took them for granted, which is to say I didn’t take them all that seriously. We all knew the spots in the air base fence that prepubescents might squeeze under, saving us the time and bother of actually going in and out through the main gate and showing our IDs to bored MPs. We climbed the six-footer that surrounded the junior high basketball courts routinely. We trespassed like crazy.

I don’t think much about trespassers these days; it used to happen occasionally at our old house where you could move through our side yard and have a short cut from the Riverdale side of our hill to Hillcrest. Enough people knew this so that it became annoying late at night (we have fierce terriers who will kill you if you come unescorted into their territory), so we put locks on the gates.

Word got around that our side yard was no longer a viable route and the foot traffic stopped, though on a couple of occasions neighbors saw people climb over our fence (which wasn’t actually our fence but belonged to the homeowners’ association of our condo-dwelling neighbors) and call the police.

Like almost everyone else we’ve been burglarized a couple of times over the decades—usually a car got rifled through on a night you forgot to lock it, but once, at about 10 a.m., our front door got kicked in and stuff carried away. It’s jarring and you feel weird, and in our case, oddly grateful that the burglars didn’t do worse than they did. (They didn’t hurt the dogs. They didn’t trash the house.)

You live with this and consider ways to make your house less attractive to the criminals desperate enough to bust down doors. You trim back hedges, you put out alarm company signs to signal potential thieves that your house

presents more challenges than the ones on either side of it.

Then you pay your insurance premiums and go on with your life.

I don’t think fences fix serious problems; they just clarify things. They say this is the line and cause us to think about crossing it. So maybe in some ways they do make good neighbors. But there’s some part of many of us that doesn’t love a wall.

We practically have no backyard in our new house; our garage opens a few feet from the street, while the front opens into a common area, a space that will eventually be enclosed by the above-mentioned perimeter fence. You can look at it as a friendly gesture; the houses’ front doors open into the same green space. It is imagined that this might build community, that we all might come out onto our porches in the evening and interact in ways that Americans need to interact with one another. We might let our dogs mix and tumble, have some wine and conversation. There is talk of gardens, of neighbors gathering around a blazing fire pit.

It is a pretty thought, especially for an introvert like myself.

Yet I am self-aware enough to understand how others might perceive those new houses all turned inward to huddle together. Fenced off from the world that surrounds it. A space you need a code to enter.

That’s not us, we think. We aren’t the sort of people to retreat behind gates and locks. We aren’t paranoia or overly suspicious.

But we aren’t naive either. When someone steals your lawnmower from your garage—or a can of bug spray off your porch—your first thought isn’t necessarily about how blighted the life of the opportunistic thief might be. I want to decide what and to whom I’ll give things away.

Those of us who live in enviable ways should always consider how we live in proximity to poor folks, and that transients wander our streets. This is America, and all of us live next door to human suffering; we have plenty of opportunities to be kind to the less fortunate.

Fences provide clarity and deflect; they help with impulse control. Still, in the long run they solve nothing. They might be laid siege to, pulled down or toppled by those envious of what’s behind those fences. They’re walled out. We’re walled in.