Fences divide Northwest and unite us.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

Like Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, of the old "Home Improvement" TV show, I came to you, dear readers, over the back fence, with questions.

Specifically, why, I wondered, does the Northwest seem to have so many residential fences when other regions of the country, particularly the Midwest, do not.

And like Wilson, Taylor's philosophizing neighbor, you responded with profound answers, your faces, of course, concealed by the cyberfence between us.

"After living in Oregon for 10 years, I think we have fences because we are possessive," Heather Hicks of Springfield wrote. "It's ours, and no one else is allowed to walk through, see in or otherwise invade our territory."

She recently returned to the Midwest, where she grew up, for a visit. "We landed in Kansas City. No fences. Took a three-hour trip to Kirksville. No fences. Drove 12 hours to the wedding location in Michigan. No fences."

So, among other things, I confirmed there's substantiation for my low-fence view of the Midwest.

While some former Midwesterners suggested it was considered disrespectful to have a fence, most pointed to more practical reasons. "I was told that in order to build a fence in such a cold climate, you needed to go down 3 feet to below the frost line and it was just too costly," Pat Kirkpatrick of Eugene - and a former Wisconsinite - wrote.

Lot sizes in the Midwest tend to be larger. "Indianapolis is the least dense city in the country behind only Jacksonville, Fla.," Jim Lavagnino of Eugene - who grew up in Indianapolis - wrote. "Churches often sit on 40 acres. If you have a whole acre, it is expensive to fence."

Wood, of course, isn't as available as it is in the Northwest. Brick abounds.

Then there's the Midwest weather. "The Midwest experiences a high rate of windstorms, from mild to intense," Sharon Hahn of Eugene - and formerly of Wisconsin - wrote. "We all know what a windstorm does to wooden fences."

And, of course, there's the snow. "The day we left Minnesota there was 15 feet of snow," Lorraine Dunnihoo of Eugene wrote. Snow is tough on the fences. And fences lead to mounded-up snow.

But if such explanations help us understand the Midwest's lack of fences, what's with the Northwest's abundance of them?

One reader suggested a link to the California migration north, specifically to the "territorial imperative (rats in the cage) syndrome that makes people in overcrowded environments like L.A. desperate for relief from that sort of pressure. And, perhaps once those people develop that sort of aversion to throngs of humans around them, they take the feeling with them when they move to Eugene or other less-populated areas."

Another reader suggested that more Northwesterners have dogs than do Midwesterners, thus the need for fences. But Kaethlyn Elliott, a Eugene woman who's actually filming a documentary on fences, thinks it goes deeper than that.

"We're more homestead-minded out here," she said, "wanting to make our claim. We're very earthy here and want to feel like we have a piece of the country, even if it's in the city."

We are, she also suggests, products of our pasts. "If you grow up with a fence, you feel naked without one."

Helene England of Eugene believes that Northwest fences, in essence, began replicating those in California developments where backyards are virtual extensions of the houses. "And so, naturally, we'd want privacy."

Me? I believe Northwesterners are friendly, private and fiercely independent; all that genetic carryover from the Oregon Trail. We might pass our neighbor some late-summer tomatoes across the back fence, but that doesn't necessarily mean we want him on the front row at our family barbecue.

And so we become, in essence, a region full of Wilsons: willing to share with each other and be friendly, yes. But always obscured by the fence.