Perhaps I am most sensitive to this notion of using fences to keep people out because at one time in my life, I would have been one of those whom many neighborhood watchers would have watched excessively and probably excluded. My well-educated, gifted parents had made some very bad choices, thus getting all seven of us tossed out of our lovely home and into any rental that would accept no down payment and bad credit. Thank goodness there was a house in Decatur, Mich., whose landlord would do just that. And triple thank goodness that when we entered school there, people didn’t seem to care if we owned a home or rented. We were welcomed, elected to school offices and chosen for athletic teams. If there were fences in Decatur, they served no purpose other than to enclose small gardens.
Nationally, we engage in debates over what to do about illegal border crossings, NSA wiretaps and congressional intrusions. But locally, I see more and more of my friends embarrassingly eager to describe how their homeowners association polices garage doors that are left up, clothes that are hung on “illegal” clotheslines and houses that violate the “approved colors” code. “The association doesn’t approve of that,” they say. Though people can argue that we have the freedom to choose whether we live in those communities, I am concerned that we too quickly hand over our personal choices to the sanctimonious marshals of the homeownership associations. In making sure the rules are obeyed, we are eschewing personal freedom. It’s a micro-stamp of approval of the Big Brother threat most of us struggle against. We are acquiescing too easily to the idea that others have every right to determine our every right.
Don’t get me wrong. I like my neighborhood and wasn’t delighted when I drove down our street several days last week and noticed that a neighbor had parked his van on the front lawn with a big for sale sign on it. And yes, I admit that every time I drove by, I was nagged by that insidious thought: “Is our neighborhood slipping?” But on the weekend I passed the van and noticed that it had been moved to the street. My guess is that one of our kind neighbors talked to the van’s owner and asked that he move it. Isn’t that better than some “member of the association” writing a letter?
When our new neighbors moved in across the street, I was stunned as they tore the siding off their house and nearly destroyed a window in order to get an oversize mattress into an upstairs bedroom. My husband, too, was edgy. I could sense his concern about what kind of people our new neighbors were and what their long-term effect on the neighborhood might be. I reminded him that though we live in a lovely middle-class area full of interesting and kind people in well-appointed houses, we came from a small town in which a lavish Victorian was situated next to what would generously be described as a fixer-upper.
This reminded me of two pieces of writing I used when teaching English. There is that hideous moment in Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun” when the head of the homeowners association arrives to not-so-gently let the black Younger family know they are not wanted in the white neighborhood. And I will also never forget Robert Frost’s line “Good fences make good neighbors” from his stirring poem “Mending Wall.” Before we turn ourselves over to the homeowners association, we should determine what it is we are so desperately working to hold on to by creating barriers to protect our homes and lifestyles. We must also determine what–or whom–we’re trying to keep out.
