Fences—no steel bridge, but an electric pole, hedges, edgers, rocks, flowers . . .

Electric pole "fence"--Couchwood

 

I have always been interested in the steel bridge that used to be on Boone Road in southwest Bryant. My Grandmother Couch, so family lore goes, was walking a footbridge across that part of the Hurricane River when she fell, an accident that crippled her for life. I haven’t researched the bridge across that body of water—nor the one we traveled over as a family of eight farther up in the county that we knew as Steel Bridge or North Fork (Saline River.) That was our "swimming hole."
 

Several years ago, both bridges were cut away, hoisted to nearby roadsides and replaced with nondescript spans like oblong cake pans. How nice, I thought, one of those bridges would look on my south property line. The state bridge official I called knew nothing. Now, I realize it would have been too large, and besides, the scrap metal thieves would have cut it up in no time.

So when First Electric changed out the poles in our neighborhood one year, I asked if I could have the old one. The man seemed delighted and laid it where I directed. What to do with it? Oh, I'd think about that tomorrow.

Soon after that was Mother’s Day, and I’d asked my children to give me—not gifts to hold in my hand or place on a table—but a Saturday-before or Saturday-after workday around the outside of the home place.

A huge branch of a huge, poison-ivy-covered hackberry had cracked off and fallen into the north yard. One young sassafras in the small grove had died.

So one day, Son brought his chain saw and started in. He cut the pole into 12, 14 and 16 inch segments, which Daughter helped space every six inches on the south property line. They remain there to this day.

The south roadside "fence" is a hedge-like morass of privet, saw briars, japonica, yellow bell, ivy, euonymus and wild cherry saplings. The one youngish willow oak met Asplundh’s saws this year because of new, stronger power lines being added. Eventually, it would have grown into them.

Along the road in front of the house, "fences" are concrete blocks filled with flowers, and white rocks. Beyond the mail and paper boxes are more rocks, a yucca-and-iris bed, a deutzia (I think) and a long row of buttercups. Then a sassafras grove (which, luckily, was reprieved from the electric company’s saws because of the small growth patterns), a japonica and privet. Recently, we added a huge quartz rock dug up from what used to be our hayfield. The foreman on the subdivision being built brought me several loads of similar rocks that had been given to me by the builder, Dee Fiser.

Other fences on other sides of the acre? I’ll tell you about them soon. First, there’s Mother’s Day, then Friday, the 13th.