What is Your Picket Fence?

Along Park Blvd there is a stretch of houses that I would deem “Picket Fence Lane”. In a car driving along Park Blvd you may not particularly notice all the picket fences as many are covered with greenery, flowers or far enough off the path that they aren’t visible to the unnoticing eye. Yet as you take a stroll along Park you find yourself on Picket Fence Lane, each stroll you find yourself noticing a new fence, a new color, blooming roses poking through, purple vines traveling along the fence line. You’ll find the traditional white wooden picket, the brown oil-strained picket, the vinyl white picket, the green metal picket (my least favorite), and then of course the hybrids (a white wooden picket gate and a light wooden fencing). Your first assumption may be that “Picket Fence Lane” must be residentially zoned to make it mandatory to have a picket fence. Mine was.

For weeks I’ve been strolling along PF Lane and pondering the picket fences, the variety, the similarities, and the question keeps coming to mind: What is it that makes everyone want the picket fence?

We have been hearing the familiar phrase of a “green house and a white picket fence” (or was it a yellow house or was that just my preference?) for years as the “dream”, the crowding jewel that you’ve met the American dream or hope. We all at one time or another have wanted the “white picket fence”, had a dream. Maybe you don’t want white anymore, maybe you want a vinyl one or a natural wooden fence, or even a chain linked fence (however ugly it might be)? Preferences change, people change, needs change. It doesn’t matter what kind of picket fence you want, what dream it is that you want, so as long as you still have a dream; a picket fence that you are hoping for and working towards. Even once we have obtained that “picket fence” we find ourselves looking towards the next “picket fence”. My “picket fence” has changed multiple times throughout my life as I’ve changed. While I may not want a traditional white wooden picket fence like I did when I was say, 13 years old, the hope for a picket fence is still burning within me. My picket fence may have orange daisies poking through or bluebells at the base, with a swinging gate. Your picket fence might be vinyl with a green hedge around it. The varieties, the similarities, don’t matter as long as you have a picket fence.

What is your picket fence?