Photograph by Max Sarosi
The Ripped-Up Fence
Deep in the Marin Headlands, overlooking a jagged coastal precipice, constantly under siege by salt laden winds, exists a ripped-up fence. Said fence is in charge of guarding a World War II era bunker, a concrete edifice once occupied by paranoid young men on the lookout for Japanese invaders. Paranoid young men that would spend their days watching the sea through the wedge shaped window on the westward side.
But back to the fence. The ripped-up fence. While it may look as old as the stronghold it so desperately safeguards, it cannot be so. Why would the paranoid young men want a fence around their bunker? Especially one that is so demeaning, so repulsive in all its barbed glory. It seems a little overkill to have such a fence around such an establishment. Surely the soldiers had guns...did they really need a fence?
Regardless, the days of paranoid young men who were promised the suburban-living-car-owning-wife-having-lawn-watering-TV-dinner-eating American Dream GuaranteeTM upon finishing their duties on the lookout for Japanese invaders, are far gone.
Now has come the days of teenagers egged on not by a duty to country but rather a duty to rebellion, the need to break rules and break things. You see, the fence was not always ripped, no it was not always so. The fence was ripped because in order to subvert the presence of lock and lack of key, one must gouge holes in the fence’s iron fabric to serve as footholds. Footholds that allow one to scale the fence. Footholds high enough that if both feet are securely planted, one can simply swing their legs over the rusty barbed wire that crowns this out-dated symbol. Footholds to conquer the fence.
It’s ugly, it’s old and it’s broken, nevertheless, the fence still stands as the graffiti soaked bunker that sits inside its borders crumbles in the sea air. The fence still hurts if you don’t swing your legs properly, for with age, the rust has come to sting flesh with an added ferocity. The fence still smells, not of New Deal era iron, but of years. Years of ocean, years of spray paint, years of failed deterrence, sure these things don’t smell like anything but they do, they are the smell of grit, a fence with grit, years of it. And while it’s hard to imagine one tasting the fence, one can imagine it tastes like...like a fence. It would most definitely hurt your teeth. Perhaps the best part of this fence, aside from its footholds, though, is the fact that this fence still smells. With a hint of confused and convoluted history, the fence still smells of pride despite having its innards so carelessly ripped out, afterall, that’s something to be proud of.
I’ve always wondered what the fence thinks, though, that ripped-up fence. Perhaps it thinks the thoughts of a man cast away on an island, left to admire sea and sky. Or maybe it just thinks like a ripped-up fence. Think of such thoughts. Yes!
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