Fences

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I’ve been doing some fencing around our place. The old privacy fence was at the end of its life. It died a few years ago and I just now got around to putting it to rest. Then, there was the chain link fence that bordered the driveway that I removed a long time ago intending to put up something nicer. I finally got around to that project too. I wanted to wait until the prices of material tripled before getting started (sarcasm alert).

While setting the posts, I began reflecting on my long and storied history with fencing. After I had set several posts and gotten to the corner post, I stood looking down the line of posts, assuring myself that they were all straight and in a perfect row. I learned how to do that from my dad when I was a boy. I think I was around eight years old when we built a fence around our property on 104^th East Avenue outside of Brighton, Colorado. The fence, wood posts, and wire attached with fencing staples nailed one at a time, went around, and divided the land into two halves. In one half was the house, the front yard area, and the garden out back. The other half held the barn, pig pens, chicken coop, and pasture where Lucky, mom’s horse, ruled and held sway.

Dad had us kids out there helping. He and my Uncle Raymond ran the auger, but we still had to learn how to use a hand-operated post-hole digger. We learned that the posts need to be level and in a straight row. We learned how to tamp the soil down around the posts to ensure they weren’t going to move. We learned how to drive fencing staples around the fence wire. We learned how to hang a gate. A lot of what we learned wasn’t through lectures, it was watch and then do it instruction.

I still remember those lessons. I eyed my fence posts like my dad would have done. I think he would approve if he were still here with us.

After I got the fence up I went to work staining the posts and slats. It was tedious work. And if it is any consolation to my siblings, I did it by myself and it took me a long time and I was really tired when I finished. Why, you might wonder, would my siblings find any comfort in that? Good question…

You see, way back in the early 70s, one fine day toward the end of summer just before Colorado’s cold and snowy winter arrived, my older brother, Charlie, and I got into a confrontation. He, for reasons that can only be explained as spite, took a baseball away from me. Being larger than me, I was at his mercy and unable to get it back. In anger, I stormed into the living room of our home. My mom’s cowboy boot was sitting on the floor, strategically positioned for me to give a boot to the boot.

I was never a great kicker, but this was a superb strike. Mom’s boot sailed end-over-end, hurtling through the air, exiting the house through the large picture window in the front of the house, and landing unceremoniously in the front yard. Of course, everyone forgot about the incident that put all of this in motion (my brother’s thievery) and turned all of their attention to my upcoming funeral service which would need to be planned after Dad got home from work.

Mom sent me to my bedroom in the basement to await my fate. I knew when Dad got home because I saw the feet and legs of my siblings running by the basement window as they escaped the coming wrath by fleeing to the barn. To my and everyone else’s surprise, Dad was relatively calm about the whole matter. There were no spankings, no yelling, and no major recriminations. Dad came to my room and explained my punishment. That following spring, when school let out for the summer, I was going to have to paint every fence post on the property by myself.

That was going to be a long, hard summer and I had the whole school year to think about it. A funny thing happened though between that fall and the next summer. We moved. We left Colorado behind for Nevada. And as we pulled away, the fence posts were still unpainted. There was never any replacement punishment for my crime. Therefore, my siblings have always felt that I got away with something and that I should have paid my debt in some way.

So, maybe this will do. Fifty-plus years after my act of malice, and after having escaped my punishment for decades, I stood outside all day with a brush and a bucket and stained a fence. I hope they’re happy now and I can have some peace about the whole situation.

Photo by Eduardo Taulois on Unsplash