Mixed Metaphors

At the top of the hill there's a large parcel of land surrounded by a tall stone and ironwork fence. It's the old Longyear Estate, at one time the home of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science church. The tale goes that back in the days of the Robber Barons, the original owner made it big in Railroads and had his fifty room dream mansion built somewhere in the Midwest, only to have the local politicians levy an onerous property tax on his new home. Mr. Longyear's response was rather unique in that he had the building disassembled, packed into 100 railroad cars, and shipped off to Massachusetts to be reassembled far away from their larcenous clutches.

The fence around the entire property came into being as part of that reconstruction, perhaps in the hope it would hold off another wave of tax assessors. It consists of a row of thick stonework pillars, connected by stone walls topped with iron jail bars. As a concession to civility, the bars are topped with decorative finials in the traditional New England pineapple motif.

Why pineapples? Well, in the days of the China Trade (a.k.a. "seafaring New England Robber Barons") a fresh pineapple was quite the stylish hostess gift, combining just the right mixture of gourmet rarity and social one-upmanship. Over time, that affectation mutated into pineapple-shaped door knockers, stylized pineapple carvings in the dining room woodwork, and iconic pineapple spearheads on the top of iron bar fences. All proclaiming "Come in! We've got pineapples (and you don't.)"

Most of the fence is too tall to climb, but as the lower wall follows the terrain parts of it dip low, requiring the builders to double the bars to prevent the riff-raff from hopping through. The added bars are sharpened and bent down at the top, creating a row of pointed teeth like a nineteenth-century barbed wire fence. And to my constant amazement, the pineapple theme is also maintained, alternating the welcoming symbol of hospitality and the sharpened spikes of isolation.

Walking along this stretch of wall, I wonder about the other mixed messages we send and receive in our daily lives. At work, we puzzle over emails wondering if we should interpret their contents as congenial humor or pointed bitterness. We're asked to create presentations for projects about to be cancelled, to be given to customers who have already bought from the competition. We know everything and nothing about our co-workers, our conversations a blend of conspiratorial familiarity and arms-length formality. "They had a nice weekend; they went skiing with the kids." No mention about the wife who moved out months ago, or the hours they spent staring at the sad unfamiliar face in the bathroom mirror.

Is the root of the problem that we're all unknowable, or that our culture steers us away from knowing? Is this all protection from some Vonnegut novel alternative universe, where we're all driven mad by the constant chatter of the minds around us? Or, are we too clueless to notice, too unsophisticated to understand someone so profoundly different as the person next to us on the bus?

I've never been much of one for pineapple, I'm more of a potluck dinner person myself. Care to join in?