LARGO - Life is filled with large and complex questions. Yet it can be the small and middle-sized issues that cause us the most difficulty.
Which way, indeed, was toilet paper meant to hang? How should a polite person pronounce Uranus? What's in non-dairy creamer, precisely?
Now the city of Largo has reopened a question that - even if you have not previously pondered it - you will instantly agree is one of the classics.
Which way should a fence face?
Naturally, the question does not apply to fences that look the same on either side. We are talking mostly about wooden privacy fences.
There's the so-called "good" side, with its smooth and unbroken facade of pickets.
Then there's the "bad" side, revealing the rails and posts.
In some cities, there is no debate. You are required as a matter of law to put your best face forward.
In other cities, the fence question is barely enforced, if at all. There is anarchy, fence-wise. Society becomes a Wild West of pickets. Civil order breaks down.
Lastly, there are places like Largo, which split the difference between these extremes. You are required to put the good side facing out in the front yard or on the street. In the back yard, your fence can face either direction.
Last week, as part of a larger discussion of development rules, the Largo City Commission confronted the issue of fences anew. Should Largo follow the path chosen by many other cities and require the "good" side to face outward no matter where?
Mayor Bob Jackson objected.
"In April, it will be 30 years that my stockade fence has been up," he said, according to an account of the meeting filed by Times reporter Lorri Helfand. "The good side has always faced me."
Commissioner Pat Burke agreed. "You're going to put a $10,000 fence up, and you're going to put the good side of your fence toward your neighbor? I don't think so."
They did what any self-respecting city commission would do - they agreed to study it.
City Manager Steve Stanton says this issue can actually bring neighbors to blows. For neighbors already predisposed to dislike each other, being forced to look at the back of the fence is as insulting as getting the back of the hand.
"For some people, it's the last straw in a neighborhood dispute," Stanton said. "Fences can take rational people and make them very nasty neighbors.
"Like any other government body deliberating mighty issues of the day," he concluded in the deadpan tone of a veteran city manager, "we will conduct exhaustive research on what every other city is doing in the area."
Steven Dickerson is a salesman for Sommers Blue Ribbon Fence, located on Clearwater-Largo Road. He says that there's no question that most people prefer the "good" side facing inward: "Their attitude is, they're paying good money and they want to see the pretty side.
I have a minority opinion. I don't mind the "bad" side.
On the contrary. Rails and posts are necessary parts of the deal - indeed, they are the essentially defining components of fence-hood itself. A person who demands fences with unseen posts probably also wants a weedless garden, and a newspaper that contains only agreeable things. Gardens got weeds. Fences got posts.
Anyway, putting the rails outside makes it easier for bad guys to jump over the fence.
In the greater sense, this is a sad commentary on our modern times. The social code of earlier American generations - summed up nicely with the phrase, "What would the neighbors think?" - would demand that the "good" side of the fence be put outward.
Viewed in such a context, the eagerness of Floridians to turn the backs of their fences to each other speaks volumes. We remain a state of strangers, even now, concerned not with how others see us, but what is most pleasant to our own eye. Can such societal dysfunction be cured by a mere city ordinance? It will not be for want of trying, certainly.
