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Fine Homebuilding: The Magazine

Caught in the Crosshairs

Robyn Doyon-Aitken, producer

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by P.J. Tallman

I thought only one word could incite fear and loathing in my neighbors. That word is fence, especially when used in the same sentence with share the cost. But I was wrong. I've found another, even more insidious word: theodolite.

Theee-oh-dough-lite. It rolls off the tongue so pleasantly, sounding like either an Alpine yodel, a small, fossilized sea creature, or a lost tribe of ancient people, the Theodolites. And though it's none of those things, this deceptive word does have two meanings:

1. Surveying tool for measuring horizontal and vertical angles by means of a rotating telescope. 2. Instrument of the devil.

But I jump ahead of myself. Let me backtrack. My husband and I planned to remodel our house, so we hired a surveyor to verify our property lines. That was the logical first step, right? But the moment the surveyor arrived with his theodolite, it became a scene out of an old western movie. The stranger comes into town carrying an odd contraption. Suspicious townsfolk line the street and stare at him. A woman grabs her small child and hides him behind her skirt: "Billy, don't look at that thing. It's the instrument of the devil!"

Minutes after our surveyor set up his theodolite, grumbling neighbors surrounded him, pelting the poor man with questions. The last time I'd seen a crowd this large on my street, the house on the corner had 20-ft. flames shooting from its roof.

There's nothing like a good inferno to bring the neighbors together.

As the surveyor focused his crosshairs on our property lines, the neighbors turned and focused their crosshairs on me. This situation was not good. I'd already endeared myself to my immediate neighbor when I asked him to split the cost of a new fence. I still remember the look on his face. You'd think I'd said, "Your baby is ugly and your dog has worms." After that, I was disinvited from all neighborhood functions and was also bestowed with the coveted title of Block Ogre.

It was years before the neighbors spoke to me again, but it could have been worse. A friend of mine told me her own fence horror story. It seems termites were feasting on the fence between her property and that of her neighbor, an aging Mother Earth, free-range hippie. The woman would not hear of replacing or even fumigating the wood. "Termites have a right to live a full life," Ms. Earth said, adding, "Even termites deserve their place in the sun."

Although my friend is a lawyer, she felt unable to argue this point and ended up sneaking out armed with a can of Raid and spraying the fence under cloak of darkness. I wished I could follow her lead, but an old-fashioned theodolite must be used in the light of day.

"What are you doing?" my neighbor asked me. His question didn't sound curious, but accusatory. Uh-oh. It's the fence fiasco all over again.

I smiled nervously. "Umm . . . just having a little work done."He eyed the surveyor as if the man was an urban cattle rustler.

"What kind of work?"

"Oh, you know," I said. "After a house turns 50, it's just patch, patch, patch." I checked my watch. "My! Would you excuse me? My cookies must be burning." My ears certainly were. Back in my kitchen,

I wondered why surveying my property lines stirred such animosity. Then I realized that whether it's a fence or a theodolite, it all comes down to one thing: holding on to what's yours.

When a theodolite appears, people believe that they're going to lose something. Would the surveyor discover that my neighbor's driveway was encroaching onto my property and that I actually owned his flower bed? Would we find that the shared fence was placed a foot onto my lot, requiring it to be torn down and moved?

Later, when I received the surveyor's report, I learned that my property line did indeed extend into my neighbor's yard. But I also learned that, once established-even if they're wrong-property lines are best left untouched. For the sake of neighborhood harmony, I took the report, put it in a folder, and filed it under F: not for Fence, but for Forget About It.

Maybe now my neighbors will forget that I'm the Block Ogre.

—P.J. Tallman, who is not an ogre of any kind, lives in southern California.

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