Rarely does all good sense dwell on one side of a fence.

From Alfred’s journal

Two men argued across the Pell fence for most of the afternoon, one about a walnut tree and one about the shade it threw, and I sat on the wire between them where the sound was best. For years I assumed one of them had to be the fool, and I spent a good while deciding which. Today I could not. The one who wanted the tree down had been pulling roots out of his drain line since April; the one who wanted it standing planted it the year his daughter was born. Rarely does all good sense dwell on one side of a fence, and I was on the fence itself, which gave me no view at all, only two voices at the same volume. Switch came by at dusk and said the walnuts were better on the shady side, which neither of them had mentioned once.