Happy Junior Fence Day

(Originally published on June 28, 2016)

Today is Junior Fence Day. It is indeed and has been since I recorded the date on a piece of loose-leaf paper chronicling the noteworthy events of 1978’s spring and summer. On that June 28th—a Wednesday by the way—I found myself reading the novel Jaws 2 at a front window overlooking the sidewalk below. I spied two youths—who shall remain nameless—run past and didn't give it a second thought, because in those days kids played outside all the time and did a lot of running. However, several seconds later, I saw a fellow whom we knew as “Junior Fence”—son of "Mr. Fence"—race by. This running game assumed new meaning now because the boy and girl in question were thirteen and ten, respectively, and Junior Fence was a grown man in his twenties. He was a scary dude, too, with—the preponderance of the evidence concluded—a serious drug and/or alcohol problem.

I subsequently uncovered the whole truth and nothing but the truth concerning the “Great Chase.” The two youngsters had been tossing rocks atop the Fence family back porch awning, which was made of aluminum. One stone, apparently, missed its intended mark and crashed through a glass door leading into the Fence family kitchen. And the fleet-footed Junior Fence was out for blood—for justice—in a New York minute. The boy in question laid low for a while because the Fences were vigilantly on the prowl for the guilty party or parties. The little girl had been promptly exonerated when her father told Junior Fence in no uncertain terms that she was a good girl and to bug off. Fortuitously for the boy, his family went on vacation for a couple of weeks beginning on July 1st. By the time he returned to the neighborhood, the manhunt had pretty much been called off and life returned to normal.

While making my appointed rounds today, June 28, 2016, I was reminded of Junior Fence Day when a car pulled up alongside me and an angry young man got out. Coincidentally, he wanted to know if I had seen a couple of kids run past me. Evidently, they had thrown an egg at his car in the vicinity of Ewen Park, which isn’t very far from where the Junior Fence incident went down. He pointed out the splatter as Exhibit A and said he was after the juvenile delinquents. I hadn’t seen them, but a couple seated on a nearby bench had and told him as much. Like Junior Fence thirty-eight years earlier, he was hopping mad and intent on exacting justice the old-fashioned way.

Returning home after this encounter on this solemn day, I passed a couple of school kids—a boy and a girl—and overheard a snippet of their conversation. Girl to boy: “Genesis don’t like you no more because she thinks you like Chase.” Why would anybody name a kid after a bank? Let there be light on this Junior Fence Day.

(Photo from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)