Fencing

Last week I wrote of the halfway feral cat who takes refuge in my fenced in backyard where he can catch a nap while letting down his guard inside the fencing. My townhouse was built in 1989 and the wood fencing looks like an original install. It is weathered and worn, just like me. 

A few years ago a neighbor down the way had a full-size trampoline for his daughter go airborne in a storm, crash through my fencing, and come to rest upside down in my backyard. At 5:00 AM before work looking through my kitchen window, I saw something that looked like a crashed UFO in my backyard. East Coast Roswell I was thinking. I was like, "What the hell is that?"

The owner of the trampoline came over that afternoon to make amends and restitution. He had a friend make the repairs so it worked out fine. I appreciated his active ownership and taking steps to remediate. It wasn't a pretty repair but again the fencing is hardly in pristine shape. I like living in a neighborhood that is showing some wear and tear. Less pressure to keep up with the lawn-gods who establish their upper middle class cred by how green their steroidal grass is. Nothing worse than stressing about something that really doesn't matter.  

So, the fence is decaying. Each major storm accelerates the decay and entropy and after the last go round  over the summer, the far side of the fencing with the gate was unmoored from its left post. It leaned in or out, was no longer upright entirely. Last Saturday after months of watching it list towards the house or away, I decided to really examine the structure and what could done to shore it up. I had my hammer,  I had my nails, I had my eyeglasses. I noticed my left neighbor's fencing had crossbeams going across horizontal at three different places. High, Medium, and Low. The crossbeams are anchored to her posts. Very stable. Very stable fencing. Extra points if you caught the Trumpian reference, redeem at the front desk.   

So, I pounded nails at said locations on several of the vertical slats of my fencing into her crossbeams.  And it worked. The fencing straightened up smartly and I assume the fix puts my fence back into commission for the time being.

I had  a strange but interesting thought as I pounded the nails into the wood. This is probably how the Roman soldier felt when he pounded the nails crucifying Jesus. Time to assert Rome's authority over this seditious Judean province, that leaning fence of a peculiar people clamoring for the death of one of their own. All in a day's work, nasty as it is. Restoring order is not always pretty.  The Jewish leaders who orchestrated Rome to do its dirty work thought it was over. 

Truth can be killed but it always rises. That is not only a physical reality but a moral necessity.