Good fences make good neighbors.
The first time I saw my friend Dale, he was going down the middle of a busy street in Valdivia, Chile being followed by a whole mob of kids chanting “el Americano, el Americano.”
“Who’s that” I asked the lady next to me. She couldn’t believe I didn’t know.
Picture an Abe Lincoln look alike, wearing a long trench coat and a Pilgrim’s hat with a shiny silver buckle, riding a pink banana bike down the middle of a busy street, while throwing hard candy and the occasional coin, right and left. Of course traffic was at a standstill in both directions: everyone stopped to see Dale and the kids loved it.
“He’s an American” informed my uncle, “and not just any American. I think he’s one of a kind. All descriptions are too mild for that jasper, or you would find his picture in the dictionary by the word ‘eccentric’. And he just got out of jail.”
True: he had served seven years for the equivalent of 2nd degree murder, and had been out for a week.
Over the next few days, I learned that he had a neighbor whose pigs kept getting into his vegetable garden. This went on for ten years, with Dale fixing the fence, the pigs destroying it and the neighbor not caring, until one day Dale got fed up and shot the biggest pig with birdshot. Which didn’t even scare the creature, or make a dent, but it did bring the neighbor jumping over the fence with an axe. So, Dale shot the neighbor in the leg with the same birdshot. The neighbor didn’t think much of it either, but unlike his swine, he died of lead poisoning a few days later.
All Dale had to do was tell the judge he acted in self-defense, and cased dismissed, but for some reason he refused. He never talked about it.
I met him a few weeks after that first sighting at an estate sale where he bought all the boxes of books sight unseen. Later he explained that he liked all books and preferred not to show favoritism.
We became good friends and were best friends for the next two years. Dale showed me how to improve my chess game and introduced me to Russian writers. He spoke six languages, read ten and was learning Hebrew at the time.
Dale was also a professor of veterinary at the local university and the only professor that had standing room only lectures. His classes were so much fun that even guys from the economics or chemistry department attended. His farm was also the place where all the stray dogs went for rehab and if you were an owl with a busted wing and a cat didn’t find you first, you probably ended up at Dale’s.
He was a great American, a true enlightened person: knowledgeable, caring, generous, the kind of one person ambassadorial taskforce that makes America look great in other parts of the world. Unfortunately, he died when his neighbor’s son surprised him near a bus stop and fired point blank into his chest.
I miss Dale and think that, had I known him earlier, I could have built him a better fence.
17 thoughts on “A good reason for good fences . . .”
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