The house is on the market but there are still things to be taken care of - mending fences, the kind Robert Frost rhymed of, not those of the inter-personal type, although there are several of those that are also suffering from neglect. Or were those bridges?? Anyway, the poet says "Good fences make good neighbors." That may have been true in Frost's long ago New England, but here in our community of large homes on tiny lots good fences insure privacy. They guard against the co-mingling of dog poop, too. We don't own a pet but those as yet unknown folks we hope will buy the house may.
So I spent the holiday weekend rebuilding our back fence. One of the posts had rotted out and the fence boards themselves were cracked and buckled and broken. Luckily the bones, except for the one post, were pretty solid. I've only spoken to our neighbor once or twice, quite understandable since he has lived here for less than five years. But he wandered out around noon on Sunday to see what the commotion was after I had been demolishing the mess for a couple of hours. He was pleased that the finished project would keep his four tiny dogs from escaping but seemed a bit miffed that his macho image would be tarnished if he didn't jump in and help.
It took Michael half an hour to drag out his construction radio, 100 feet of cable to power it, two saw horses and a chop saw. Then he fiddled with the radio until he tuned in the Daytona 500. NASCAR racing may be the most popular spectator sport in America but it loses something listening to a race on radio. Once he settled in, though, Michael cut up all the old fencing, tied it into bundles and set it out for the trash. But when I returned with more fence slats, (you can only carry so many at a time in a Subaru) he was gone!
I finished up on Monday afternoon as the temperature dropped to freezing and the wind picked up. All that's left for me is to paint our side and see if Michael will pony up his half of the cost, his chance to prove a good fence can make a good neighbor
