WISHING WELL MANIA...
Long ago, while driving home from work, I created and then self-administered a one-man survey. I'd been silent witness to the bizarre proliferation of wishing wells in the front yards of people, in and far beyond my neighorbhood, and I had begun to wonder: just how many wishing wells there might be per acre in the town I live in?
The result of that survey, taken nearly two decades ago, was astonishing: Along my six-mile commute from the town center to my home in the country, I counted no fewer than 26 wishing wells, standing like proud, inoperative sentinals on the well-manicured lawns of the residents who either built or purchased them for display.
This phenomenon befuddles me. I suppose I should wish them well, but I find that I simply cannot. To me, the wells -- well, not REALLY wells, just oddly designed pretenders to that designation -- seem like utterly senseless monuments to a long-gone past. If they actually worked, I would understand. But what good is a wishing well whose practicality one can only wish for? What are we to learn from the presence of these contraptions, popping up like mushrooms on steroids on the lawns of hard-working Americans, not just in New England but from Sea to Shining Sea?
Of course, a wishing well is mighty swell if you like having one, and I'm fully aware that it is our constitutionally guaranteed right, barring municipal laws against them, to have 50 of them waterless little buggers on our lawns if that's what will tickle our fancy. And in a part of the country where zoning is often seen as Public Enemy No. One, I can assure you that the wells are here to stay, probably for more centuries than I care to think about. Indeed, I have no doubt that visitors from distant, yet-to-be-discovered planets will study them and try to understand them.
Some communities are far less tolerant of such practices. There are suburbs in America whose residents are so upset about the intrusion of certain objects in their midst -- laundry actually hanging on clotheslines, for instance (tsk-tsk: I hung mine out just this morning!) -- that they've mandated government appointed lawn-and-laundry cops who travel about in funny little vehicles, lights spinning in distress, and actually levy fines on the miscreants for failure to honor the local statutes.
Now, having to live with that kind of municipal anality in any community would in my opinion be a dreadful development. I'm philosophically dead-set against the encroachment of such foolish, control-freak thinking into any neighborhood.
Indeed, I want the people in my town to be happy in every way that doesn't compromise either my rights or theirs. So bring on whole wooden armies of those wells if that's what lights your fire!
But consider the possible reasons for this inexplicable eruption of wishing wells across our fair country. One can only theorize, and I have done that on many occasions.
Possibility One: What a resident sees in a lawn-and-garden book becomes what he or she wants for her lawn. It may be a matter of keeping up with the Joneses. It looks so charming! The neighbors will love it!
Possibility Two: It reminds one of a simpler, more agrarian life, with less stress, less regimentation and more time to ... well ... lay in a hammock and admire all of the necessary monuments, so well designed and so delightfully reliable, performing their critical duties entirely on their own bucolic initiative.
But a wishing well that does nothing? I wish I understood why they're so popular. Sure, it's all well and good to have a wishing well, but then what? Just what is the appeal? There's the mystery, and I don't expect it will ever be solved.
Possibility Three: For the resident who covets a wishing well, it may very well be a work of art -- a found object of supreme beauty, bereft of any obligation whatsoever to explain itself, to be of any practical use, to justify its existence or to adhere to any extant theories of what constitutes beauty.
Now THAT argument I'm hearing, loud and clear!
For my money, though, one can only be thankful that someone has yet to ignite a craze for failed refrigerators -- or perhaps porcelain-deficient commodes -- planted majestically in their front lawns as the crown jewel of proud Queens in their Castles.
When one considers those possibilities, then a few wishing wells here and there -- perhaps sharing the lawn with a sprinkling of those plywood farm women, bending over to pick up God knows what from their yards, their solid wood husbands beside them proudly puffing on their imaginary pipes (sounds dangerous, doesn't it?) -- seems a harmless enough fetish for the culturally fulfilled.
I'm seeing fewer wishing wells now in my travels. Perhaps their diminution is telling me something. Might this be a sign that another, equally befuddling front yard fad is just around the corner?
I think I need to look on the bright side. What's coming soon at your favorite front yard might just be a fad that I'll fall head-over-wishing well in love with, and the neighbors be damned! One must find his happiness, and if that is a wishing well that doesn't work -- or a six-foot high plywood woodpecker or a parade of 13-inch plastic bears with cubs running behind them into the woods -- who can complain? The purpose of life is to experience pleasure, and there are infinite, entirely harmless ways to achieve that state of affairs.
You know what? I think I'll just stick with my trees and flowers, my birds and raccoons, and the poetic glint of a setting sun on the well-less little patch of lawn I call home. It's all well. And it's all good.
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