Good Fences make Good Neighbors

My neighbor tore down his chain link fence and put up a white vinyl picket one. He rebuilt his park bench replacing and varnishing the wood. This summer he painted his multifamily apartment house by himself and with help from the neighborhood kids. He is from Taiwan and LOVES WOONSOCKET as do the small handful home-owners on my street. We love the energy of the street. It's a main artery.

On weekends the storefront on my street has a choir of singing churchgoers and we often hear the tambourines and drums accompanying them.

Elbow Street got rid of their chain link fence on the former granite river wall and the whole neighborhood is united again. Little did we realize how hostile and ugly the fence was until it got removed. The former Brunetti's Bakery house has sunflowers and vegetables thriving in their front yard. They want to form a neighborhood organization like they had in Appanoaug.

I love picket fences but our neighborhood has a lot of chain link fencing which can be sturdy and reliable for keeping dogs in yards but in other ways it is like razor wire. The kids get cut jumping over them. They are durable except when cars and snow plows drive into them, which they do every winter. Chain link is at least friendlier than stockade fencing which is completely hostile and sterile and prevalent in middle class, and upper middle class neighborhoods. That style is building a room with walls. I like permeable boundaries. I like people, I like city living. I like smiling at my neighbors.

We let our evergreen bushes and bittersweet create a natural privacy fence along the parking lot and the front of our house but in general I like to see what's going on around me. I like to know all of the kids in the neighborhood by name and their parents. They like it too. It takes a village and we are building a great one here in Woonsocket.