Fence Fallout  


            

            

            

Fortunately, my fence-fight had a splendid outcome. Even events that at first seemed negative turned out positive in the end. I predicted to my friends that we would, inevitably, have vandalism on the fence. I was right, but even I didn’t anticipate the level thereof. 

 

 

 

Yes, naturally, there was graffiti, but there were also theft of a few of the PVC-strips, and even an attempt to bodily knock down part of the fence, resulting in a temporarily saggy section. However, said section was promptly straightened, the stolen strips were recovered (the careless offenders had simply slid them under some bushes at a next-door-neighbor’s), and the graffiti worked to my advantage. First, it attracted the attention of the local press (granted, a bit sooner than I would have liked, as I was not yet ready to present my articles for publication in the newspaper, since I was determined to wait until the Bureau’s signed legal document was in my possession before telling-all publicly). Second, the nature of the graffiti enabled me to turn it to my advantage. The writer had used black spray-paint to announce, “A crazy lady lives here.” With electric-blue spray-paint, I was easily able to transform “A crazy” to “An angry,” thus illustrating and reinforcing my fury at the nosy neighbors who had perpetrated such interference in my personal business in the first place. True, I learned through the inevitable grapevine that a few of the original trouble-making upstarts had managed to actually misinterpret my message, “An angry lady lives here,” as being aimed, not at them, but at the very minor-player graffiti-cretins, but (sigh) one cannot seem to easily get through to the determinedly obtuse. In fact, I also heard that some of the busybodies had actually (before my articles went public in the newspaper) had the impression that my intentionally gaudy red-white-and-blue fence was just an aberration on my part, and not a punishment of their intrusion at all! Extraordinary! I suppose that those of the mob-mentality-persuasion just can’t manage to conceive of those of us who are still the individualistic-type thanks to whose efforts this country was founded. At least I eventually had the joy of hearing, again through said busy grapevine, that an uninvolved neighbor who just happened to be well acquainted with the original busybodies, had scolded them, “See?! This is what happens to you when you go through life trying to lord it over other people; it’s a wonder that nobody clobbered you long before this!” Ah, hearing that news did my heart such good! I was also thrilled to hear that, in contrast to the prediction of a rather pessimistic friend, the Bureau of Permits, far from being oblivious to the brouhaha, was indeed stung by my efforts as well, inasmuch as bitter comments were often heard in their office for months afterward by an anonymous ally. Oh, that was worth waiting for, throughout those abysmally offensive ten months! In any case, as soon as we had erected security lights, surveillance cameras, and beautifully-gaudy signs announcing, “Warning! This property under twenty-four-hour video and audio surveillance,” predictably all of the vandalism instantly ceased. As I had surmised, immature cowards of this nature don’t want to land their irresponsible carcasses in jail where they belong; they simply wish to create mayhem with impunity. Take away their opportunity to do so, and the petty inanities vanish.

 

 

 

The applause that I received was extraordinary. And that I did not anticipate. It started even before the harassment began. Several people phoned my fence contractor immediately upon the appearance of the original transparent chain-link-fence to say that they wanted a fence just like it. Evidently, I was not the only one who’d long been plagued by intrusive neighbors. But the true deluge of phone calls, this time to me personally, occurred after my articles appeared in the newspaper. The typical caller said something like, “Here is my name; here is my number; if there’s ever anything that I can do for you, you have only to call; you’ve done a world of good for me, in your campaign for property rights! It’s about time that someone stand up to these pushy primadonnas!” The caller who was the most in-sync with my viewpoint declared, “You chose the best possible punishment for that type! Those people labeled your chain-link fence an eyesore, so you gave them something that you knew that they would consider an even bigger eyesore! Patriotism is a fine thing, but that sort of person doesn’t see it that way: to him or her it’s a gaudy eyesore!” The most entertaining caller was the one who informed me that I’d positively made his day, his and his wife’s. They’d read my articles out loud together, laughed uproariously at the poetic justice that I’d wrought, and then spent the rest of the day occasionally, spontaneously laughing all over again, just after exchanging a telling look between them. But the caller who moved me to tears was the one who eloquently stated, “What you have done is empowered a lot of people who’d thought that they were powerless.” Up until then, I’d had no real appreciation for how desperately this sort of message was needed. Obviously, this was an idea whose time had come.

The accolades were not confined to the phone. A local candidate for county commissioner escorted me as his guest to a political rally, where I received nearly-finger-breaking handshakes and even a few hugs. Even my car insurance agency and my pest control company got into the act. Both offices informed me that their entire staff had read my articles out loud together and laughed uproariously and unanimously, and that the only naysayer in either office was one woman who was so outraged on my behalf that she declared that I hadn’t done enough to punish the nosy neighbors and the Bureau of Permits! Apparently, a wildly gaudy fence, full-page, full-color newspaper articles, and a spot on the nearest-city TV news were still not sufficient revenge for their sort of offense. While I certainly appreciate her enthusiasm for my cause, I have to wonder, though, just what else she would have liked to see me do to them. Additionally, the TV news reporter who interviewed me made no bones about which side of the issue he occupied. At the conclusion of our interview, he shook my hand vigorously, and declared, “I’m going to remember you! Because you have spunk! And I like spunk!”

Additional praise for my efforts appeared in that same newspaper as well. A very supportive freelance reporter compared me to “Cool Hand Luke” in my stand for individualism. A lady wrote a letter to the editor detailing how she and her husband had used a similar solution against one grouchy neighbor who’d been a constant complainer; only they’d put up a wooden fence, and painted it red-white-and-blue. But I must confess that I laughed aloud at the only detracting letter to the editor. She wanted to know why I hadn’t commissioned a split-rail fence instead! Firstly, she was so out-of-touch with reality around here that she’d somehow failed to notice that we’d had one for decades, erected by my late father. It kept out nothing and no one. And when I hung “No Trespassing” signs on it, the trespassers stole the signs. They made a mockery of the law. Secondly, she’d still somehow missed the entire point of my articles: that individuals must make individual choices according to their own tastes, on their own private properties. Frankly, I don’t happen to like split-rail fences! To me, they are the eyesores. They are a primitive mélange of the two most dismal colors in existence: brown, the color of mud and crud, and gray, the color of a dreary day. Further, though poorly conceived, designed, and constructed, they are well-named: split-rail: yes, the rails split, the posts split, everything splits; an owner is no sooner paying to have one end fixed, until the other end is collapsing. Out of love and respect for my dear father, I paid to have the useless monstrosity continually repaired for a foolishly long number of years. But finally I learned, and commissioned a real fence: one that does keep out intruders and most litter, and one that is rated to last for fifty years. I suppose that I must surmise that the writer of the detracting letter is one of those peculiar people who, rather than acknowledging that people have different tastes, instead commits the ultimate arrogance of proclaiming that only those preening primadonnas who agree with her even have taste, and that true individuals have none, thus making her letter worthy only of contempt.

 

 


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