2003-05-04 - 6:18 p.m.
Along with everything else I had to do this week, I decided to tear down a fence. There has been a tall wooden fence across the front of our yard for as long as we have owned it, and according to our neighbor, for at least twenty years. Which is exactly the problem. A twenty-year-old wooden fence. It was beginning to list a little bit last fall, and by mid-winter all the posts seemed to be rotted off at ground level and the only thing holding it up was a couple of guy wires I staked to the ground. Then this spring a big wind separated a section of it and sent it flapping in another direction. Suddenly I was embarrassed to be living in "the house with the fence."
So this week, I got out there with a hammer and a crowbar and began to dismantle it. And I'll tell you a little secret: It was fun. I kinda like to tear things up. The old rotten boards break easily under the hammer and crumble away from the rusty screws. In one evening I had reduced our front fence to a big, ragged pile of lumber. And worked out a lot of frustrations. Stupid co-worker? CRACK Piper's evil boss? WHAM
The next big thing to worry about is what to DO with a truckload of rotted lumber... when you don't have a truck. It is always so hard to figure out how to get rid of things. I wish that old guy with the gold tooth would come up and knock on our door and offer to take it away for a price. He is always around, trying to talk me into letting him haul my lawn bags away, but now that I actually have something to get rid of, he is nowhere to be seen. I'm ready to pay.
It is weird how not having the fence has changed our relationship to the outside world. This is a lightly packed little city neighborhood, and the fence always gave us a feeling of privacy, even though the gate couldn't be locked and it wouldn't have kept out anyone who wanted to get in anyway. It was just a symbol, a way of marking off the boundaries of our little world and defending them, kind of like a dog pees in the corners. Now suddenly the house seems exposed, and when people driving down the street stop and stare, I feel a bit uneasy. I know it is just because most people have never even seem this house (actually WE'VE never even seen this house from the street) but I still feel kind of naked.
Sometimes working in the yard reminds me of all the "secret hideouts" I had as a kid. I was always building some sort of shaky little lean-to out of scrap wood, and decorating it with signs that said "Keep Out--This Means You." Only later in life do you learn the disillusioning facts of human nature-- telling people to keep out just makes them want in even more.
Needless to say, another fence it going up. Yesterday my son came over to help with the hard part: digging the holes and setting the new posts in concrete. He has helped us with the fences on the sides of the house, and built others as well, so he knew exactly how to go about it. We marked the location of seven new posts along a string stretched across the yard, and he dug the holes. I thought I was going to help and I got out my post hole diggers and began stabbing and pinching the dirt out of one of the hole sites. When Cary had finished the other six holes, he came back and dug out the rest of mine. (I am always amazed at the upper body strength that men have.)Yes, my contribution to the digging effort was half a hole! The concrete goes fast. I'm good at holding the post level while he shovels it into the hole. Amazingly, the whole process just took about five hours.
And now we are ready to build a fence. I like outdoor carpentry even better than destruction. It is satisfying to hammer and saw and fit boards together, without having to worry about making a mess or being too perfect. Building something is good for the soul, I think.... kind of an antidote to most of what we do in life that has to be done over and over again, with nothing to show for your efforts.
I had thought I might begin today. But this morning I woke up with such sore arms and shoulders. Apparently digging half a hole called upon muscles my body forgot it had. There was a big rainstorm during the night and the skies have been threatening another all day. The tornado sirens keep going off. So I guess I won't be building fence today. The posts look good, though, standing tall and strong.... announcing to the world that a new fence is on its way, if not immediately.
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