Fences come in all shapes and sizes - wood, steel link, barbed wire, stone. However there is nothing nicer than a well-laid stone fence. Its symmetry is pleasing to the eye and it represents the painstaking care of the farmer who laid it. How many times in plowing a field did he stop to pick up stones and put them at the end of the furrow. That was only the beginning. Think of how each stone had to be placed so that the fence would stand. How many times it may have collapsed, but he still persevered. We see very little of these stone fences now, barbed wire strung between wooden posts or perhaps chain link depending upon what is to be confined.

It wasn't always that way. A fence had many purposes but mainly either to wall something in or wall something out.

Once upon a time a fence was a barricade, a line of defense to stop the advance of marauders from overwhelming a site.

A stockade fence surrounding property insured privacy. It also put a message - Keep out, world, do not encroach upon me!

The white picket fence of Tom Sawyer invited the world in. There was hospitality and neighborliness beyond the swinging gate.

On the highways, there are guardrails, a type of fence, to avert accidents.

Very interesting are the sound barrier fences erected between the highway and a residential are to minimize the noise of traffic.

Consider the plaint of the cowboy who warbles "Don't Fence Me In." It's the wide open spaces he seeks. To him, the fence is a prison.

There are those who imprison themselves in the intangible fence they build around themselves. Why?

I would refer you to the poem of Robert Frost, "Mending Wall."

"Good fences make good neighbors."