FENCES

Growing up in eastern Idaho I had miles in which I could roam without ever encountering a fence...and so I did...it was my habit to wake up with the birds,,,make a lunch of peanut butter and honey on white bread that promised to build strong bodies in twelve miraculous ways...and head into the hills behind the house before the sun had broken the horizon. I was almost eight years old and there wasn't a fence that could stop me.

There were eventually five of us kids and so to help my mom get through the next pregnancy and just "cuz they love havn' us around" my grandparents would take each one of the older three in for a couple of weeks each summer. My mom's folks were very self sufficient people... raising their own chickens and a pig each year...early on they had a cow for milk...fruit trees for canning...and a garden that supplied everything else a person could need except fish!

Fresh fish were a necessity in my grandmother's eyes and so we stalked them with a passion...you didn't walk up to the stream and cast your line in...you crawled the last fifteen feet and peered between the tall grasses into crystalline water where you could see the brookies pulsing in the current.

But first you had to get there...and the better the fishing the more fences there were and of course the more gates involved. My favorite was Ching Creek which boasted eleven gates to open between the little town of Kilgore and the secret camping spot. Then, as now, the treasured spot to be in on the ride anywhere was "shotgun"...on the door in the front seat...where you could hang you arm out the window...fly your hand like a kite...and feel the warm summer air on your face....that was the coveted position to be in unless en route to Ching Creek and the eleven gates!

Each gate had a different and increasingly more difficult mechanism involved to open it....they were all made of posts and barb wire...which once released from the grasp of the fence as a whole....would fall limply onto the ground where the strands of wire would enter twine into a mess that usually took at least two people to untangle....therefore it was "shotgun's" job to get the gate loose from the fence and while holding it taught...swing it aside to allow the car to get through...and then position your body on the other side of the gate and reattach the gate to the fence..."and hurry up about it...the fish are bittin'!!!"

The fences in those days were made to keep things in...yes there were gates but all that was asked was that you closed them behind you "please"...but otherwise one seldom saw a NO this or No that posted on a sign and I don't recall any NO TRESPASSING...ever. The only signs I can remember were notices posted...on a post...(I wonder if that is where the word posted got it glorious start)...these were often notices warning us of the dangers of the dreaded Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or informing us of an upcoming rodeo in the next county but you never came across one warning of litigation if boundaries were ignored...no... these fences kept cattle and sheep in their respected places and gates allowed us fisher persons to hunt and gather.

As I recently found myself contemplating fences I realized just what an important role they have played in my life...as a boy I could jump most of them and of course it became a competition. I got my first job because of a fence. Our neighborhood had lots of fences to keep the dogs home and most were of the four inch square wire kind and then someone invented chain link...but the one that landed me my first job was a brand new picket fence of red cedar with numerous knots in each plank...each knot looking very much like a bulls eye on a target and when you eleven years old and there is a bulls eye in sight and a rock within reach and a friend to complete the term "friendly competition"....then trouble can start itself... as it did that day. There were three of us and lots of rocks and at least one hundred feet of new fence with bulls eyes "abeggin"!! I was the first to hit the target...which to our surprise knocked out the knot...which of course raised the stakes and caused the size of the projectiles to increase to meet the challenge and before you knew it we had ventilated that brand new fence to the point that a gentle breeze was now able to move through the owners back yard. But that's not exactly what happened next...no... the owner...a really nice lady who was "oh so proud" of her new fence came around the far corner with tears in her eyes caused by our friendly competition followed by blood in those same eyes as she asked us "What in God's Good Name do you think you are doing?!!!"

Now at eleven a boy is extremely intelligent....but to a question of this magnitude his natural reaction is RUN...which my two friends did...being just that much more intelligent than I...but I knew and respected this distraught woman...so I stood there and in those next few milliseconds as she covered the distance between the corner of the fence and my skinny eleven year old body...I have my first epiphany...realizing what a horrible thing we had done in destroying her fence in the pure joy of target practice. Hence I got my first job as a shoeshine boy in my great uncles shoe repair shop and it took me most of that summer to pay for my part of the replacement cost (my friends folks coughed up their share) but I learned how to shine shoes and remained a good neighbor to that poor woman...although I know to this day that those tiny hairs on the back of her neck came up a bit when I came around! Sorry.

Today, I am again faced with fences playing a part in my life. They say a good fence makes good neighbors and I suppose that's true. I had started one at my place in hopes of putting some critters in to keep down the summer grass. Our neighbor brings in a couple of horses or a cow or two each year to keep the field grass down and had offered to put them on my property for the same reason if I had some way to contain them (I think mention of a steak barbecue had come up when the cattle were there) so I had started a fence before I decided to visit Minnesota...so in this case a fence truly could make good neighbors. But occasionally good neighbors and more so good friends...make a good fence....and while we are stuck out here "puttin' up a fence" around something that has gotten out of bounds within me...some good friends took the time to finish that fence I started at home... and this...like the other fences in my life...will change and shape me for years to come...because of that...I and Elaine would like to say "thank you" to each one of those involved...with all our hearts.