Dear Hearts and Gentle People
"Good fences make good neighbors."

The proverb alludes to the poem "Mending Wall," by Robert Frost, but from what I can gather Frost had little sympathy with the proverb's sentiment. In his poem he was simply trying to show the futility of erecting walls which separate us from our neighbors, his point being that we complain that we need walls as barriers to protect ourselves from other's intrusions into our lives yet when the walls are erected we complain that we are unable to interact with our neighbors.

An additional irony of Frost's poem is that the only time the narrator sees his neighbor is when they go out to repair the wall that divides them.

We are like the people in that poem. Nowadays, if someone speaks to his neighbor on a regular basis it's probably because he's related to him. Otherwise, we sometimes go months, even years, without so much as seeing our neighbor, let alone speaking to him. What has happened to us and why are we not neighborly any more?

I remember back in the fifties when people spent as much time in their neighbors' homes as they did in their own. I remember when borrowing the proverbial cup of sugar was commonplace among neighbors and many times was an open invitation to stay for supper. Go next door and ask to borrow a cup of "sugar" these days and you're liable to be turned in to the authorities for trespassing or worse yet, be locked up for drug trafficking.

Then again, do we even use sugar any more? I suppose the correct term would be to borrow "Splenda" or "Equal."

Walk next door and ask to borrow a cup of milk and you're likely to get some wide-eyed stares, as well. After you've knocked on the door or rung the bell and waited several minutes, you hear this:

"You need to borrow what?" "A cup of milk."

"Just one cup of milk?"

"Yes." (Voice from the kitchen) "Who is it, hon?"

"It's the guy from next door. He wants to borrow a cup of milk."

"Don't let him in. Tell him there's a Bells just up the street."

I'm not kidding. If you don't know your neighbor there's a good chance you'd be treated just that way.

It used to be that everyone knew his neighbor and borrowing food and other items was common practice. Not much anymore.

I miss close neighbors. For twentyfive years hubby and I lived all over the southeast and without any family close-by our neighbors made good stand-ins. Most of us in our subdivisions were transients whose husbands worked with large companies that moved its employees every couple of years so with every move we got a brand new set of friends.

There was no familial history among us so there was no perceived social hierarchy to divide us, no old skeletons rattling in the family closet waiting for discovery.

I did, however, get tired of rehashing my life story with every move to a new town. I considered writing it down, making copies, and passing them out every time I met a new friend, thereby leaving lots more time to cover new and interesting subjects. But given my proclivity for exaggeration I usually ended up, as hubby calls it, "spilling my guts" anyway.

As much as I've enjoyed the last twenty-two years back home in Lincolnton I wouldn't take anything for the years we lived in other places, or for the life-long friendships that were formed along the way. It's comforting to know that wherever we go in the southeast or to other states scattered across the U.S. we have friends on whom we can call....and, trust me, we have.

Our first move out of state was to Florida in 1972. We made the trip by car from Blakely, Georgia on a Sunday morning, the moving van filled with all our earthly goods scheduled to arrive the next day.

We (hubby, me, and a three-year old) were exhausted when we arrived at our apartment complex in Winter Park and homesickness quickly settled around us like a fog. The three of us, with toothbrushes and one change of underwear a piece, sat down on the carpet in the empty living room and cried.

By late afternoon we had toured the apartment complex and the old cemetery that provided the scenic view from our dining room window, and had taken a long nap on the floor, huddled together like scared little pups.

We awoke to the sound of our little son's voice. "Mama, Mama! Come look!" he said, jumping up and down and pointing out the window. "Look! Look! Here comes Jesus!" he said excitedly.

"Oh boy," I thought. "As if we didn't have enough to worry about, now our three-year old is hallucinating. Or, if Jesus really is outside He picked a fine day to visit us with not a stick of furniture in the house."

"Jesus, Mama! Look! Look! It's Jesus!" he continued.

Hubby continued to sleep contentedly as I struggled to stand, wiped my sleepy eyes, and walked over to the window.

"Well, I'll be darned," I said, my little one pressing his nose against the window pane.

Outside, exiting an oversized van covered with peace symbols in psychedelic colors, was a tall, thin, darkhaired, bearded man who did indeed appear to be Jewish and who looked like every picture of Jesus I'd ever seen in Sunday School or in my Bible.

My son was still jumping up and down.

"Can we go see him, Mama? Can we? Can we? Can we go see him now?"

Well, long story short. The man was Jewish. His name was Bieberstein, Cliff Bieberstein.

He and his wife, Randy, were our neighbors across the hall and though Cliff was far from being Jesus-like, they would become some of the dearest friends we've ever had.

Randy was a hoot but she was as good-hearted as anybody you'd ever meet. She once got the landlord to let her in my apartment and she had ironed two baskets of clothes for me when I returned home from church one Sunday. You may think that strange. I call it thoughtfulness. She was always doing nice things like that.

It was not uncommon for her to whip up a casserole, knock on my door and say, "Set the table and let's eat."

Or to keep me company in the waiting room of the doctor's office when my son was burning up with a fever. It was not unusual for Randy to clean up my house when I was under the weather or for her and Cliff to babysit when hubby and I needed a night alone.

Randy and Cliff had a volatile relationship, to say the least. They fought like cats and dogs, and their rows were loud enough to wake the dead in the cemetery across the street but strangely enough they seemed to love each other immensely. I learned a lot living across from the two of them, including some adjectives I'd never heard before and don't dare repeat.

I also learned that neighbors can be God's angels in disguise. Randy and Cliff watched over my little one and me when hubby was away and made sure we were safe and sound. We shared food, ideas, lots of laughs, and a penchant for story-telling.

The Biebersteins adopted a baby girl while we were living there, a precious little blonde they named Monique and we watched them fall more in love with her every day. They were wonderful, if unconventional, parents.

When we moved to another state several months later it was like leaving home for the first time. I cried.

It was that way everytime we relocated. I hated to leave my neighbors....my friends, those folks who were at one time perfect strangers to me. Hubby always says, "Mickie cried when we moved to a new place, and she cried when we left."

I'm perfectly satisfied never to have to move again but there are many things that I miss about our life on the road.

I miss having close neighbors. I miss sharing hopes and dreams over a hot cup of coffee. I miss all the neighbors dropping by the minute we lit up the grill. I miss their stopping by unannounced, just to commiserate over the high cost of gas or the decline of morals in our country. I miss not feeling the need to gossip since we knew our time together was limited. I miss discovering new places with them and welcoming new friends into our homes regardless of the dust on the furniture or the dishes in the sink.

And yes, I miss neighbors stopping by to borrow a cup of sugar.

So, do good fences really make good neighbors? In the case of illegal immigrants, maybe so. In the case of nudists, maybe so.

In Lincolnton, Georgia? Probably not. I'm worried that in erecting those fences we could be fencing out people who might well become our very best friends. Fences, not in the literal sense, of course, but fences like prejudice, fear, hatred, snobbery, and apathy.

Call me old-fashioned but I'm ready for a move backward. Backward to a time when the word neighbor was more than a geographical reference. Let's tear down some fences. We've already banished our front porches. Let's not board up our front doors, too.

Cup of sugar, dear heart?