Postcards from the Funny Farm

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I try to walk every day. The walk I take is a big circle through High Desert Suburbia. Our neighborhood is about as plain as it gets, which leaves the mind open to wander and imagine all sorts of off-beat things. Such as: “Why is ‘Murder She Wrote’ always playing on the Biography Channel?” But something I noticed today was the fences I walked by; they vary quite a bit.  Seems like the worst fences are the ones with barking dogs.  They snarl and it scares me out of my shoes every time. I guess that’s their purpose, to protect the home.? There are cement fences, brick fences, even plastic fences.  Some appear stock, like they came with the home new while others look like they were made afger a few trips to Lowe’s.  Robert Frost wrote in his poem ‘Mending Wall,’

I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.

I don’t know my neighbors.  That’s one thing I regret about myself, I’m not very outgoing that way.  I’ve seen them coming and going, but never had the time or get-up-and-go to introduce myself.  I’m sure I will sooner or later.  Maybe that’s a good New Year’s Resolution.  We’ve only lived here since February. But fences are aplenty in Suburbia.  good fences make good neighbors I guess.  My son was excited to show me the place where a dead crow was.  Apparently all the kids walking home have made it a landmark of sorts.  I beheld the crow . . . yep there it was.  Funny how kids and grown-ups landmark locations in life.  When the crow is gone it will be just another line of sidewalk, but he’ll never forget the dead crow all the kids shouted about on the way home when he was in 3rd grade.  I remember when I was about his age, a bunch of mean kids tied a living frog to the top of a sewer pipe and shot at it with pellet guns.? Horrible.  that always disturbed me.  That was also in a Suburban neighborhood.  Today it’s just me . . . walking to reduce my blood pressure, get inspired, to write, lead a family, teach.  I feel the crisp cold December air and check my nose to find how cold it is.? I’m pushing my 2 year old in a stroller and decide to turn back into the heated house.  That’s where I am now.  There are new toys in use all over the carpet.  We’re out of food so I’ll have to take the kids to the supermarket.  We’ll probably have stew.  Still in the final afterglow of Christmas, I’m blogging and watching the Blues Brothers.? There is a sort of Suburban Blues . . . maybe I’ll write a song about it . . . I wonder if my neighbors would relate . . . on the other side of the fence.