Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Robert Frost's Wall

The Great Wall of China - did it really work?

Our cracker-jack congress is again pushing the great wall of Mexico as a prerequisite to any immigration reform package.  There, of course, is a need for some bright idea to control folks who just want to wander into the country. No one denies that.  There is also an equally compelling need to figure out a way to handle the millions who are here now; certainly an equally tough nut to crack.  All the school buses in the US couldn't handle the load so that may not be the solution. Our jails can't hold them. Our courts can't try them and, frankly, it is a hot button issue mainly for those who like to push buttons.

Berlin Wall - didn't last

I'm kinda fixated on this wall thing though. How someone came up with the idea - well I'm willing to be a fence manufacturer with a PAC is the fox in the hen house.  Walls and fences remind me of the Frost poem.  I'll give you a few illustrations.

Mending Wall
By Robert Frost 1874–1963 Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

Our Great Wall of Mexico

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."