Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?

Jess and Pat (or Pat and Jessie) were our neighbors. Their modest ranch style home sat on a hillside at the end of our long driveway in a narrow Western Pennsylvania valley just outside the tiny village of Taylorstown. Pat and Jess had a chicken coop behind their house, a swing near the little stream on the east side of the lawn, and a garden near the road on the west that often got pummeled by Western Pennsylvania thunderstorms. As with many homesites in that part of Appalachia, Pat and Jessie’s short gravel driveway jutted straight toward the sky—so much so that visitors had to gun their car engines for the steep ascent.

Jess always knew the valley gossip, but never used it in a malicious way. And I can still remember Pat saying, “Is that right, Jess. Well, I’ll be damned.”

Although Pat and Jess were our neighbors, that didn’t mean we neighbored. That is, we seldom visited one another’s homes. Few people in those rural “hollers,” as they were known, thought being a neighbor meant visiting one another’s homes. We followed Robert Frost’s adage that “good fences make good neighbors.”¹ We lived in the country because we valued our space, respected one another’s privacy. Yet, Jess and Pat were the best neighbors anyone could have wanted. They certainly weren’t rich even by rural standards, but they took special pride in their “place.”

Pat had a Sears Roebuck riding tractor that he used to mow the few flat spots in his lawn. To mow the hillside with that machine, however, would have been pure suicide. So, that meant Pat periodically scythed the hillside to keep it neat and tidy. And Jess? Well, she planted flowers every spring using seeds from the previous year’s crop. Those plants often included ageratums and marigolds bordering her steep walkway. They’d bring forth blue and gold blooms (colors representing the local high school) and they never competed with weeds, thanks to Jessie’s constant attention. Every Memorial Day, 4^th of July, and Veterans Day those flowers would be interspersed with small American flags. You see, Pat had been a gunner on a World War II bomber.

But it wasn’t the neatly mowed grass or the decorations that made Pat and Jess such special neighbors. It wasn’t what they did but who they were. Take that Halloween when our three and four-year-old sons’ trick-or-treat experience consisted of two visits: one to Pap Pap’s house and one to Pat and Jessie’s house. As these two masked strangers (the only little ones in the valley at the time) knocked on the door, Pat answered with the loudest greeting possible. “Jess, look here. Did you know there was a circus in town? There’re a couple clowns at our door. Now where do you suppose they came from?” Then he and Jess took what seemed like twenty minutes to figure out just who these little clowns were.

I think that Halloween experience defines being a good neighbor. Being a neighbor doesn’t require neighboring, and despite Robert Frost’s suggestion that “good fences make good neighbors,” no fence ever marked our property line. Pat and Jess’ “place” wasn’t where they lived. It was how they lived. And I don’t mean keeping a neat lawn or decorating for holidays. Pat and Jess were there in little ways that said, “I feel your presence. You belong in this world.”