Neighbors and Fences

I've never been much of a Robert Frost fan. In fact, I have little use for poetry. I'd rather read the sports section.

But Frost's work, "Mending Wall," has been on my mind ever since Hurricane Rita drop-kicked and bludgeoned Southeast Texas fences about a month ago. I didn't know the name of the poem and was unsure of its author until I typed "Good fences make good neighbors" into the Google search engine.

Here's a snippet:

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."

The work is about New England farmers who built stone walls separating their properties. In the winter, the frozen soil would push up the stones. In the spring, the farmers got out there and stacked the stones into a wall between them. Had there not been a wall, perhaps the farmers would have gotten into a rake fight over something silly.

I suppose the poem underscores the human need for walls or boundaries.

I need a fence to keep my young kids from wandering out of the back yard. It also provides a burglar barrier. There is security in knowing that in that split second when you're not looking, a curious toddler will not venture out and do things that can become a parent's worst nightmare. Or that a burglar can't get into the back yard without making himself noticeable by scaling a fence.

Ever since Rita's winds sent a neighbor's pine trees crashing into my house and fence, my wife and I have felt a sense of vulnerability and insecurity. I'm not going to fix the fence until the building contractors repair the house. If nothing else, the breached fence allows them easy access to the back yard.

Despite it being my neighbor's tree, we are responsible for the damage, according the insurance company, which calls it an "Act of God." The insurance company will pay for the home damage - minus the deductible - but not the fence. Other insurance companies do cover fences. I wish I had known that earlier.

The same thing has played out throughout the storm-smashed region. Everyone I know who has a smashed fence says it was a neighbor's tree that did the job.

This introduces an interesting dynamic to neighborly relations.

One co-worker told me yesterday that a neighbor whose tree obliterated his fence is harassing him, demanding immediate fence repair and not offering a penny to help pay for it.

In my case, I'm not getting harassed, but the neighbor hasn't offered to help pay for fence repairs. She might believe that my insurance covers the damage. I haven't approached her yet. Like everyone else, she probably has buffet line of problems.

The tree dudes who got the pine off my house cut the tree right to the property line, so the neighbor had to take care of what was left on her land, including a massive stump that required a crane for removal. That cost hundreds of dollars.

Other than the neighbor's heartfelt apology the day she came home and discovered the tree on my house, we haven't spoken. I know she felt bad, because she stood there in the street looking like the frightened figure in that portrait "The Scream."

< : - O

Meanwhile, the back neighbor offered to help pay for the damaged fence section between us, even though it was pine owner's branch that inflicted the damage. So I made a new friend, one with whom I had never spoken until I recently poked my head through the gap and said "Hello there!" while he and his wife were toiling in their back yard.

It raises interesting questions about how to be a good neighbor. The neighbor with the pummeling pines has no liability for the damage to our house, yard and fence. But what would you do if you were her?

Had it been our tree on the neighbor's house, I'd probably help clean the mess, from hauling away logs and debris to rebuilding fences and Herculean raking. I would have offered to split the material costs for the fence and erected the sucker myself. My wife would have made a pie.

But I wouldn't have offered to pay for her insurance deductible.

Maybe the neighbor doesn't have the means to fix my fence, be it physical, emotional or financial. Maybe she's mad at me for some reason. Maybe she's scared to talk to me. Maybe she has troubles beyond my imagination and just can't handle a new hassle right now. Maybe she's waiting for me to talk to her. Maybe she just doesn't care.

Either way, there will be an invisible, unspoken wall between as long as the partition of non-communication remains in place.