THE FIRST FEUD

                                                                     
            Good fences make good neighbors.

Jenny had heard her parents tell that, long ago, when her parents had first moved to the farm, even before Margaret was born, Hank had driven by with his team and wagon and had hit and killed a pig that had gotten into the road, damaging the wagon wheel. When her dad, Warren, heard the squealing of the pig and the loud cursing of Hank, he went out to investigate the cause of the commotion.

“Keep your Goddamn pigs out of the road,” Hank swore at him.

“That’s your own Goddamn pig that slipped through the broken fence. Why don’t you keep your shabby fences repaired?”

Hank drove on home in a snit and Warren promptly butchered the pig. He wasn’t going to let perfectly good meat rot in the road. He and Mae ate well that autumn.

Hank wouldn’t speak to him for two years, then one day the two men were working in adjoining fields and Hank came over to the fence to ask if a machine part that he had found close to the fence might have fallen off a farm implement of Warren’s. Congenial conversation followed and they were friends once more, doing neighborly favors for one another.