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There’s an invention for today’s dog owners called an invisible fence.It’s basically a radio signal around the perimeter of the yard, and if thedog steps too close to the signal, it triggers a device in the animal’scollar and delivers a small electrical shock. Perfect Pavlov conditioning, just like I learned back in ninth grade psychology class. But it seems abit cruel to me. The dog’s bound to be zapped a few times before it
catches on. Dogs aren’t always as quick as we are. Hell, growing up wehad a mongrel lab that would probably never have figured it out: Atlaswould have barked at air, then -zap!-. Another bark and charge then -zap!- again. I loved that sweet, dumb animal.Still, I guess for most dogs the gadget would work eventually. Inflict alittle pain and terror at the start, and then you’re forever spared theeyesore of a chain-link fence around your front lawn.#“The Big Street”When I was growing up, my parents invented their own kind of invisiblefence for me and my sister. All parents build some version of this fence—never talk to strangers, keep close to home after sundown, that kind of thing. But my parents had a gift with words and storytelling that zappedthose lessons into my young mind with a special permanence.My father taught Shop—excuse me, Industrial Arts—at KensingtonHigh School, so I guess that’s where he built up his skills with thecautionary tale: don’t feed your hand into the disc sander; keep your un-goggled eyes away from the jigsaw blade, and other Greatest Hits. Butlisten to his rendition of that old stand-by, “The Big Street”:He walked me and my sister Pam to the divided road on the north end of our community. I was six, and Pam was three years older. He stopped usat the curb of McNeil Road, just close enough where we could hear thecars zip by, feel the hot wind of exhaust or maybe get hit by a strayspeck of gravel tossed up by a rear wheel. A half-mile down, on theother side of McNeil, was a small shopping center: a single screenmovie theater, Safeway grocery, People’s Drugs, and a Dairy Queen,among other highlights. In the other direction visible from the top of thishill was Strathmore Park, with swings, monkey bars, and a fiberglassspider with bent-ladder legs. We could visit these wondrous places
anytime dad drove us there, but we were never, ever, to cross the BigStreet on our own.“Now, let me tell you about a boy who used to live the other side of theroad,” our father said. “About your age, Nathan. He crossed back andforth over this Big Street all the time.” He swung his arm in front of him, parallel to the road. “Looks like a pretty good view of the road inboth directions, doesn’t it?”We both craned our necks and followed the swing of his arm. Pamnodded first, and I did the same.“Well, you’d be wrong. Some of those cars come up faster than youthink.” As if to confirm his point, a blue truck rattled past. “When youdo something a lot, you get pretty confident. Over-confident. This boy,he’d run across early that morning without a hitch, like usual. On hisway back, he was standing right where we are now. Looked both ways,I imagine, or maybe he forgot that one time—we don’t know for sure.What we do know . . .”Dad dropped to one knee, the toe of his right sneaker perfectly alignedwith the edge of the curb.“See right there, where the gutter doesn’t quite match the road? Not tooclose, now, Nathan.” He stretched his arm out like a guard rail, and Ileaned against it to peer over. The blacktop of the road had a roundededge, about an inch higher than the cement gutter, but the asphalt wascracked or split in a few places. One spot, it looked almost likesomebody’d taken a bite out of it. I guessed that was where Dad wantedme to look.“His foot likely got caught in that niche, and the boy tripped into theroad. The black van might have been speeding, might not. But it wasn’tentirely the driver’s fault, was it?”
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