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Along Life’s Way
Porches,
Fences, and Neighbors
By Lois E. Wilson
In the 1980’s John Culhane wrote about the slow demise of porches: “The
front porch wasn’t an outdoors room and it wasn’t an indoors room; it
was a bridge between the family and the neighborhood. It was where the
transactions of life took place—not big social occasions, just the
sweet civilities of life that keep neighbors close.”
In my childhood, I sat on the porches of my two grandmothers. My house
had a front porch with a glider swing, a couple of chairs, a table with
a plant on it—all sitting on a woven fiber rug. Houses didn’t have air
conditioning then, so the porch was a refuge where one could catch a
breeze. We watched the activities of the street. Neighbors walked by
and we would ask them to come up and sit for a while to share the
latest news. You didn’t have to worry about them seeing an untidy
living room.
In the years that have passed, fewer and fewer homes have been built
with front porches. If they have an outside area, it is usually in the
rear of the house. There may be a patio or a deck, but people walking
by are not visible to the residents.
On the topic of fences, Robert Frost stated: “My apple tree will never
get across and eat the cones under his pines,” I tell him. He only
says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” My view is that if you have
good neighbors, you probably don’t need fences.
After the early stockades, home and farm fences were constructed to
contain livestock, and to protect it, the people, or garden from
predators and danger. They have evolved from rope to split rail, barbed
wire, picket and ornamental fences, to chain link and other man-made
materials.
Fortunately, I have wonderful neighbors and don’t need fences. Some
erect them for privacy and many with pets install the invisible
underground ones. However, years ago we had a neighbor who made us wish
for a fence. He held some rank in the community we were living in and
seemed to believe that rules and boundaries didn’t apply to him. He
would borrow tools and not return them. Once without notifying me, he
took a young paid worker of mine out of my yard to do a chore for him.
It was more luck than foresight that when he asked to plant a boundary
hedge partly on our property, we told him “no.” Our underground utility
lines went along that course of the property. The hedge would have made
our backyard inaccessible to maintenance vehicles. One time when he
removed a bush from the boundary line, he moved the survey marker into
our yard. He installed an invisible fence along his new larger
boundary. A survey revealed a good portion of it was in our yard over
the utility lines. We didn’t make him remove it.
As I look back on our experiences with him, perhaps I could have fenced
him in by purchasing one of those collars for him to wear that shock
dogs when they try to leave the yard to do their business. But we all
know—he wouldn’t have worn it!
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