Good Fences

I'm sitting here looking out my front window at a tree. It's a nice tree but it looks a little odd stuck there, in the middle of the tar. Notice I didn't call it a lonely tree. It was once lonely, all last fall and winter, spring and summer, sitting there in the middle of the tar, alone, in front of my window. It's not lonely now though. It has two friends. Two more trees, lined up along the side of my house. I guess this is my neighbor's tribute to Robert Frost's "good fences" line.

The once lonely tree sits on the neighbor's side of my property line. Property lines are funny. Some of the ancient lines have zigs and zags for no apparent reason. Mine does. The neighbor's does too. The older neighbors and I got along just fine with the little zigs and zags. I had some, and they had some. I used theirs, they used mine. We were neighbors after all. The current neighbor, well, not so much. He likes to piss out his territory like a coyote. So last year he bought a big tall tree in a pot and stuck it out in front of my window. Just so I'd know where his property line is.

I kinda felt bad for that lonely tree, stuck out in the middle of a bunch of tar. The other neighbors on the street laughed at it all year long. They said things like, "What the....??? That looks pretty stupid." The snow plow guys swore at it, swore at the neighbor, and eventually ran into it a few times. I felt bad for the tree.

At least the tree has some company now though, sort of. The trees aren't very close together though. Just a couple more trees strung out in pots sitting on tar. The people on the street are laughing three times as hard. The kids have three trees to run into with their bicycles. The wind has three trees to blow over. Those poor trees. They look a little embarrassed to be there, stuck in pots, on a bunch of tar, in the middle of nowhere.

The trees are tall, sort of skinny, and pointy on the top. They actually look a little obscene. A friend of mine said they looked like some kind of libidinous symbol that my neighbor might feel the need to display, for some weird reason. I thanked him for that vision. He kept pointing his finger at me saying "stick 'em up!" Anyway, I feel bad for the trees, people snickering at them and all.

I think he wants me to ask him to move them. He likes to come up with something a couple of times a year to irritate me. He used to be quite successful at it until I realized that I was better off letting him make a jackass out of himself. The other neighbors like it better too. They are amused with new and improved displays of pettiness twice a year. I guess it doesn't bother him that he's become a joke.

I hope the snow plow guys don't run over the front tree again. A careless turn of the plow would cause a chain reaction of timbers timbering. That would be a mess. The people on the street would like it though. They chuckled all last winter when that one lonely tree tipped over and froze that way. It sat there most until we had a slight thaw. Then it got plowed up on to the neighbor's front lawn. Poor thing. The tree, I mean.

Oh, there's the door bell. Gotta go. Fed-Ex just arrived with my 15 foot seagull feeder. You can bet I won't be putting it out in the driveway anywhere near those sad trees. I found just the spot for it. As it turns out, the neighbor's second story addition is just a tad over onto my property line. I think his bedroom is up there. And as luck would have it, his kitchen is there on the ground floor. Hope he likes hundreds of screeching birds and seagull poop.

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