Tolerating thy neighbor isn’t easy

Everybody’s got a story about a neighbor, whether the extent of community living is an apartment building, two houses with a shared driveway, or rural properties hundreds of yards apart. You live in proximity long enough, and irritants crop up like weeds in the sidewalk cracks.

I have been mightily irritated by a neighbor who decided to put up a chain link fence around the entire perimeter of his property. Among other reasons, he said he was fed up with people letting their dogs use his yard as a toilet. I guess this has irritated him for years.

Now I have been plagued with irritation because I have to look at his ugly fence every day. The compound-like look of it has changed the open, sweeping aspect of the neighborhood. And, I am annoyed that my dogs have lost a prime pooping spot. (Just kidding!)

When I saw the fence going up, I shared my concern about it with my neighbor in a civil, kindly way. He seemed quite surprised that his fence impacts me at all. He smiled and shrugged it off. After that, there wasn’t much more to discuss with him about it, really. It is his property, and he can pretty well protect it how he sees fit.

I thought there might be some sort of code or covenant governing fences where I live because we are in a National Historic District. Turns out, in my neighborhood, like most of the rest of the city, there is only a height restriction. Aesthetic considerations do not matter one whit. Theoretically, he could have built his fence out of old tires if he wanted, and he could paint them pink.

The erection of the fence has inspired all sorts of confab in our little community. Whenever somebody does something big and visible like that, neighbors talk about it. It’s similar to when somebody paints their house. Neighbors weigh in on the adequacy of the prep job, how long it’s taking, and the merits of the color choice.

Here’s the funny part. Discussions about this particular fence inspired neighbors to discuss all manner of things that bug them. Turns out there is a proverbial daisy chain of irritants, and no one is without sin.

When I talked to one neighbor about my dismay about the fence, she promptly let me know how much she is bothered by the view of our garage from her back yard. She invited me over to take a gander from her patio so I can see just how ugly it is. I did, and it is. Chagrined, I told her we’d do our best to get it sided this summer.

We got to talking about tolerance and living in community. I thought about all the ways my neighbors have been tolerant and gracious to me over the years. I began enumerating my family’s sins as neighbors, and the list is long. Perhaps most amazingly, we have been harboring a rooster that has crowed morning, noon and night for the last four years, and no one has ever complained.

My neighbor who complained about the garage allowed as how she might be guilty of doing something on her property that bothers someone. Bingo! Turns out, her sin is to have torn up some sod in her sunny front yard to make a space for a vegetable garden. Another of our neighbors confided to me how offensive it is to her that anyone would put tomato, pepper and bean plants in their front yard. Herbs might be all right, she said, but not leggy legumes.

In another turn of the screw, it turns out that the neighbor who objects to the veggie garden is the subject of noise complaints by another neighbor. And that neighbor is accused by several others of habitually driving too fast down our street, talking on her cell phone. And on it goes.

Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, has that proverbial phrase about how good fences make good neighbors. It’s an adage with rural roots, and is supposed to convey how good farmers maintain their fences in order to keep their animals from wandering onto neighboring properties. It does not mean, as many people think, that having a good fence keeps people sufficiently separated so they don’t come into conflict.

Irritants and conflicts are inevitable. A big dose of tolerance will probably serve community harmony better than a good fence.