Fences, Not Walls

Robert Frost, in his famous 1914 poem “Mending Fences,” tells the story of two neighbors who, every year, walk the stone walls that divide their adjacent properties and replace stones that have fallen or have been carelessly removed by hunters and other trespassers. Each owner replaces whichever stones have fallen on his side of the wall. Although Frost’s neighbor opines that “Good fences make good neighbors,” Frost wonders, in return, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.”

I suspect that Frost would not be welcome at a Trump rally, where the shouts of “Build the wall! Build the wall!” echo through the night, right after the obligatory chants of “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

Many of our “good neighbors” have wanted “that wall” for a long time, and I have never understood their slavish adherence to Trump’s xenophobic screed. Until, that is, I had the idea that maybe “Trump’s Base” wasn’t worried at all about keeping “undesirables” out but wanting to keep themselves locked in. The great American Heartland is the “castle,” the Rio Grande River is the “moat,” and “The Wall” is the castle-keep, and from the ramparts we are supposed to cast aspersions and denials of asylum down on the heads of those who wish to gain safety inside the castle walls.

As Robert Frost proposed, fences might be okay: At least you can shake hands over a stone wall and look the other fellow in the eye. You know who owns what, and every once in a while good neighbors get together and agree, jointly, to mend their fences.

Walls, not so much.

Frost also is right in that “something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” and that “something” is democracy and the Constitution. The people who are screaming now, “Build the wall!” seem to me very short-sighted. Don’t they know that the next president, no matter who he or she shall be, will stop building the wall? Don’t they understand that great sections of wall will be torn down?

I see a day in the near future when there will be a dedication of a new museum to “Trump’s Folly, or How We Built a Wall of Shame Before We Regained Our Senses.” Inside the museum will be examples of the metal cages in which children were kept, sample aluminum blankets, cold concrete floors, rusty concertina wire, used tear gas canisters, and, life-sized wax figures of Donald Trump, Kirstjen Nielsen and John Kelly high-fiving each other while wearing red “MAGA” hats.

Just imagine what our community might look like if there was a wall that effectively kept out the rich diversity of all the cultures that have found paths to our East End. Who would harvest the grapes and trim the vines of the dozens of wineries that now provide such a fruitful bounty in terms of both wine product and oenological reputation? We need a cascade of H-1 visas every year to provide enough able-bodied workers to fill the agricultural requirements of East End farmers. These people come from myriad countries but many from Central America.

What would our East End be like without the hundreds of Brazilians who have migrated here? Industrious, artistic, generous and loyal, many Brazilians have contributed great art and music to our local scene. Who hasn’t enjoyed the drumming of Samba Boom, on the beach, on a summer evening? Brazilians have become electricians, plumbers, painters, teachers, ESL instructors, and much more. One friend we have, from Brazil, is house manager for more than 30 East End properties.

We have hard-working and spirited friends from Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Costa Rica, and many other countries—perhaps more than most, given that The Muse used to be the director of continuing education and ESL at LIU-Southampton. In that role, she saw hundreds of students arrive from all corners of the globe, with not much more than a smattering of English and a lot of dreams.

Zach Erdem arrived from Turkey with not much more than a suitcase and a few dollars, and spoke no English. Soon, he was through the ESL program and into the restaurant and entertainment business. Today, he is the owner of several successful properties, including 75 Main, which he hopes to turn into a nightclub in Southampton Village. At the rate at which storefronts are disappearing on Main Street, perhaps this will create a boomlet to draw visitors back to our local businesses.

The Gulsen family from Istanbul has started Turkuaz, a wonderful and very successful Turkish restaurant in Riverhead. Their son Unison is good friends with our son, Pierce, and both are part of the championship Robotics Team at Westhampton Beach High School.

Tony Liu arrived from China not speaking a word of English until taking ESL lessons at LIU Southampton. If you have ever eaten at Tony’s Asian Fusion restaurants, or any of Tony’s other properties, you will understand how much he has contributed to the community and how successful he and his family have become. His nephew Nick Chen plays varsity tennis with our son, Pierce.

Outsiders think of us as “The Hamptons,” a rich and spoiled community of McMansions. We are depicted as having more money than common sense. Perhaps a piece of that is true, but in reality we are a polyglot community that has a great deal of diversity, and it works pretty well.

But even beyond what we have here, we are not a community or a nation of walls and exclusions. It’s not how we were founded, and it is not our purpose. We’re off track now with Trump and his shameful immigration policies.

Someday soon, however, all of that will be swept away into the dustbin of history. We will once again take our rightful place, as President Ronald Reagan believed, as “that shining city on a hill.”

I can’t wait.

And you know, of course, that I am mostly right.