"Something there is. . ."

 

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.

Thus begins one of America's all-time favorite poems, "Mending Wall," by one of its all-time favorite poets, a New Englander named Robert Frost, who wanted to sell an image of himself as a country bumpkin, when he wasn't an "awe-shucks" sort of guy. He was cagey as a red squirrel, tricky and quick enough not only to take on something as formidable as a stone wall, but wily enough to start with a dorky pun.

"What, pray tell, "doesn't love a wall" but "sends the frozen-ground swell under it"?

Why "frost" of course, as in upper case "Frost." Not funny? Okay, but maybe the most beloved pun in American literature.

Neighbors get together annually to rebuild the stone fence that separates their yards, to replace the stones that have fallen throughout the last year. The teller of the tale, Frost, can't help but wonder whether the world wouldn't be a better place without fences, while his neighbor stoically repeats a maxim he likely inherited from his grandpa: "good fences make good neighbors." If we don't know where you start, and I end, we got trouble in River City --"good fences make good neighbors."

Stone fences are a rarity in our neighborhood. About 150 years ago, barbed wire became all the rage--no annual rock replacements had to be made after all, and once the barbed wire is up, that's it--aside from occasional repairs. A bundle of barbed wire isn't all that comely, but the lousy stuff did more than its share to win the west, even though it didn't show up until after the Civil War. 

Not until 1874 did an Ohioan named Joseph Glidden patent an invention which became the industry standard, twisted wire with locked in barbs. Barbed wire made it possible to section off the unending cattle range the Great Plains once were, a space so wide-open cowboys used to wonder whether the world had an end. Barbed wire kept cattle and the neighbors both in--and out. 

A barbed-wire fence gave the property dimensions and kept the sheep out of the tomatoes and raspberries. During World War I, barbed wire demarked those bloody trenches in France. Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belzen, Dachau--they were all drawn and quartered by barbed wire. 

Today, it's coming down. Confinements and feedlots have replaced pastures. Sioux County, where I live, is the #1 hog producing county in the U. S., but you could take an all-day ride around here and not spot a pig even though there are as many as two million.

Robert Frost was right about there being some ambiguity. This morning, as I sit here over the keyboard, the wind is howling. The sun is shining, so there's no blizzard a'comin'--not right away at least; but I just finished reading David Laskin's The Children's Blizzard, a painful recitation of the stories of the children caught in crisis in a monster blizzard, right here, throughout our very region in January of 1888. Hundreds of children were out in that blinding blizzard. Many never returned home.

But some of those that did, like their parents who went after them, stayed upright and kept chugging through impossible winds and snow because as they crossed their fields to find their kids, they kept hold of wire, of barbed wire, confident that if they held fast to the prickly stuff they'd often enough strung themselves, they'd eventually stumble their way to something that offered safety. Gives new meaning to "Good fences make good neighbors."

Dang Frost doesn't tell you what he thinks. He follows these two gents as they repair their stone walls, while arguing--not strenuously or angrily--about limits, about traditions, about the privacy of private property. 

Something there is that doesn't love barbed wire--it's ornery and prickly and twisted, but once upon a time, in a storm, it was a blessing.