Robert J. Chassell wrote:
Robert J. Chassell wrote:
> ... By the way, speaking in defense of Aristotle, I can tell you
> from personal experience that heavy stones stop moving when you stop
> pushing. Worse, dropped stones seek the center of the earth, even
> if your toe is in the way!)
Julia Thompson,
I'm wondering, now, if you have any first-hand experience to
support or refute any of the ideas put forth by Frost in "Mending
Wall".
Err ... yes. How did you guess? We had two stone walls around the
house when I was young. I helped fix them ...
I know at least roughly where you live (I sent a book to you a number of
years ago, and got your address for that), and from various things
you've said over the years, came to the conclusion you were living on a
large enough piece of land that there was a good chance of there being
stone walls to bound your property.
When I was 8, we moved to a piece of land that had been part of a farm
at one point. (A good chunk of our back yard was dying peach orchard.
We got a few peaches before all the trees were totally dead.) There was
a stone wall marking the boundary between our land and the town's
right-of-way on the road; and a stone wall between our property and the
neighbor on one side. I'm familiar with the walls. We didn't mend
wall, though, but we probably should have some years.
By the way, the poem, which my father read to me (at another time):
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html
MENDING WALL
Robert Frost
[much snippage]
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 neighbors."
"And on a day we meet to walk the line": my father did that.
I think that part of the problem is that the water in the ground below
the wall freezes, expands, then subsides in the spring, and all that
shifting under the wall loosens the stones to where some roll off. It's
the same sort of thing that happens with the roads in some spots, to
where you'll see signs in New England reading "Frost Heaves" to warn you
about it. (And that was the punchline of a joke my senior English
teacher told me once, making reference to the poet. And to the best of
my knowledge, there is no direct connection between the poet and the
Frost Free Library somewhere off Rt. 101 in New Hampshire....)
One day, as we were waiting for the school bus, the stone one of us was
standing on rolled right off the wall! Whichever one of us it was, me
or my sister, was not hurt, but it startled both of us badly, and we
stopped standing on any part of the wall that was on top of another
stone. This was in March, IIRC, as things were starting to warm up again.
And in 1957, during such a walk, he hurt his left knee. More
recently, I had trouble with my knee and my cousin, a geneologist and
at that time in his 70s, said, "I bet it is your left knee." I said,
"Why yes, how did you know?" He said, "I have a bad left knee, your
father had a bad left knee, you aunts had bad left knees, your
great-aunts had bad left knees." ...
(By the way, when my father was on his death bed -- not a good time
for me -- I had to threaten this neighbor with a court case before he
admitted and compensated for what would have been obvious to a judge,
that his tree cutters had made a road on our property, inside our
boundary marker. Good fences do make good neighbors.)
Good fences *do* make good neighbors. At the very least, they'll keep
your party guests from littering on the property of the neighbor that's
already annoyed that the party is as noisy as it is. :) (A situation
I've only heard about second-hand....)
Then again, if there's a clear demarcation other than a fence, and
everyone respects it, the fence may not be necessary. And if the
neighbor enjoys the touch-football game spilling into her yard, that can
be a win-win situation. (Another situation I've only heard about
second-hand, and that family moved away from the delighted next-door
neighbor, who spent the next year going on about what nice neighbors
they'd been.)
Julia
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