Good Friend Builds Case for Mending Fences
The world beyond my front yard was always strange and mysterious, teeming with industrious folk who are constantly mending, building and tinkering.
The neighbors to the east fix their own cars, make their own radios, even build their own computers. Mention to them that you pay someone to tune up the old Ford and they slap their sides and whoop and howl with laughter, as though you just admitted you can’t make toast or open mail. When they pull out their lug wrenches and oil pans and offer to show you how to be your own mechanic--”It’s simple, any idiot can do it”--you are forced to admit that you’d love to learn, and plan to, once you figure out how to get the hood open.
Halfway down the block is a guy so handy that his house bears no resemblance to the one he moved into eight years ago. He has added two decks, a brick facade, landscaped his hill, erected several fences, a treehouse and an arbor, built a barbecue and spaded up a vegetable garden. He is working on his third patio. He scrapped the first two--the concrete and the wood--and is now trying out brick. Frankly, my house would be lucky to have his discards.
As one who comes from a venerable family in which ham-handedness is coded into our genes as deeply as hair color--my father’s frequent attempts at household repairs would invariably end with objects that were supposed to stay up on the wall falling down, often with dire medical consequences--I have always known that home improvement projects, like magic, are an illusion.
In my world, people don’t make or fix things. We pay, whether we have the money or not, professionals with supernatural skills and special hats to do that for us. Scanning the Ventura County yellow pages, I know I’m not alone. Ads for carpenters, heating repairmen, bicycle mechanics and dog washers fill page after page.
This was the philosophy I lived by until the paid professionals, in the form of tree trimmers, hacked and marched through my backyard, laying waste to the few sections of fence that had been spared the wrath of winter storms past. The yard, once a verdant paradise, at least to me, was now matted and sparse, as though it had gone to the backyard equivalent of a discount hair salon. The once charmingly rustic fence was mangled, as jagged as a broken smile. We were now at the mercy of the elements, the local marauders, if any should arrive in my Santa Barbara neighborhood, and the neighbor’s weed-, rat- and dead appliance-infested yard.
“Don’t worry,” said my husband, “we can get a new fence built. How much could it cost?”
Good question. How much could it cost? The answer came while my husband was out of town, and it was so shocking I feared repeating it over the phone, lest he keel over and have no one to revive him. Let’s just say the cheapest quote was comfortably less than a new subcompact car, but much more than a washer/dryer.
Despair set in. I wanted Paradise Regained, but not on credit. Over dinner one night, after I finally mustered the courage to break the news to my husband, I discussed our dilemma with my close friend, Cathy. “What’s the big deal?” she said. “We’ll build it ourselves.”
I was too surprised to laugh. It was as though someone had blithely suggested we make a B-52 or replant a national forest. It was best to pretend she hadn’t said anything.
“Really, it’s easy,” she said. “You pour some concrete, drive in a few poles, make a frame and then pound in the stakes. I mean really, we can do this.”
“What will we build it with?” I asked in a small, pitiful voice.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll bring all the tools.”
This is how I found myself, on the hottest weekend of the year, building a 24-foot-long, 6-foot-high fence.
On Saturday, with the help of a hapless friend-in-transit who made the mistake of seeking shelter on the night before a home improvement project was commencing--we tore down what was left of the old fence. We then perused some manuals and spoke with Roy, our building and engineering consultant (and husband of Cathy). He told us that the retaining wall, on top of which the fence was to reside, would first need reinforcement, since it was bulging and threatening to spill into the neighbor’s yard.
Two hours and four trips to lumberyards and hardware stores later, we found ourselves back at my house pile-driving three 8-foot metal poles deep into the ground, using a device that looked like a giant metal condom with handles. Kuthring! Kuthring! It made a loud ringing sound that I hoped the entire neighborhood could hear. We were building. I was handy.
By the end of the day, we had all seven poles--three to support the retaining wall and four to hold up the fence--buried in the earth.
By the middle of the next day, we were wielding metal saws with the best of them. By sundown on Sunday, we had built a massive frame made of 2-by-4s bracketed to the poles.
On Tuesday night, we whipped out our plumb lines and power drills and secured the grape stakes to the frame. Over the next few weeks, I’d have to stain it, but otherwise the fence was done. It was beautiful. And it cost less than a discounted dryer.
I have to say I’m a changed woman, and I like it. With some of the money saved I’m getting my own power saw. The world keeps breaking and I want to be ready to fix it.
Wendy Miller is a Times staff writer.
