A Country Gent's Note

Fencing Ins and Outs

- Barclay Rives

The course taught by Professor J. B. (John Brinckerhoff) Jackson (19091996) had an official name: The Manmade American Environment. My fellow students and I called it Gas Stations. Many enrolled because of its reputation as an easy way to fulfill a distributional requirement. Jackson was a World War II veteran who alternated semesters teaching on the East and West coasts. He crossed the country by motorcycle and by jet, accumulating photographs to accompany his lectures. His aerial shots revealed grid development patterns imposed on Western states. Shopping strip malls and trailer parks received as much of his attention as grander architecture. Describing colonial landscapes early in the course, Jackson said Northern farmers built fences to keep their farm animals in, while their Southern counterparts built fences to keep their wider ranging animals out. Pasture fences keep my horses in their fields. My garden fence is less successful at keeping varmints out.

When I was in high school, my first horse, Tim, presented a fencing-in challenge. Tim objected to my parents’ post-and-rail fence because it stood between him and sweet, luscious, honey locust seed pods fallen from nearby trees. Tim was either smart or roguish, depending on one’s point of view, and he brought down rails by leaning and rubbing against them so he could exit the field and have his fill of the pods. To redirect his attention, I raked up the fallen pods every day and scattered them around the pasture. My mother said this made Tim enjoy himself like a kid on an Easter egg hunt. Tim continued to drop rails periodically but part of the problem was the fence’s age. Gravity alone pulled down rails even after I moved the horses to my place after college.