The Death of the White Picket Fence—and What It Says About America

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Michael Smerconish** (0:30)
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**SPEAKER_3** (1:05)
Ditch the clowns on the left and the jokers on the right and join Michael Smerconish right here in the middle.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:11)
This is The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (1:16)
Danielle Paquette joined The Washington Post in 2014, has been the West African Bureau Chief, and now is the national correspondent for The Washington Post. I caught my eye with the story. I wasn't the only one because I read this and I was totally taken with it. It comports with something that I have seen. And then I paid attention and I noted that at a certain point within the last 48 hours, it was one of the most widely read at The Washington Post. The headline, Desire for Privacy, is slowly killing this symbol of the American dream. Dateline, Southington, Connecticut, Chip Paint and Mildew be damned.
The first job of the day was still a rare treat. Check out those New England style postcaps, the fence salesman thought, that classic mortise and tenon construction.
Yes, he'd be thrilled to restore an icon of suburbia, the white picket fence. I live for this. Mike Dominique gushed. This is Danielle Paquette. Danielle, thanks so much for being here. Who is Mike Dominique?

**Danielle Paquette** (2:24)
So Mike owns a small fencing company in Southington, Connecticut. Before that, his dad owned it for decades. And Mike got into the business mostly because he loves working with his hands. He loves wood. He loves cedar. He loves assembling these projects he told me were majestic to him.
And in his dad's days, tons of buyers in the area wanted the classic white picket fence. But this spring, Mike has noticed this troubling pattern, troubling to him, that nobody has ordered one yet. That's where we were when I met him. And he wondered if that's because appetites have shifted toward a desire for taller fences, more privacy.

**Michael Smerconish** (3:07)
Quote, even in the ample historic districts of Central Connecticut, more buyers sought hulking vinyl barriers.
Danielle, there's a particular subdivision that I drive by. It's part of my weekly routine.
And I have noticed these fences going up in this one particular community. And you can't see a damn thing. And I guess that's the appeal for some people, is they want total privacy in the backyard. And of course, that's their right to put up the fence that they want if it meets with zoning. But something gets lost, right? It's unneighborly. It makes it more difficult. I'm going to use my favorite word, to mingle. And I see this as a sign of the times. So I've watched this go on on the side of the highway. And then I read your piece and I'm like, this is a thing.

**Danielle Paquette** (4:00)
Right. Well, Mike was kind enough to let me ride around with him in his pickup truck, going from customer to customer. And most of those customers, yes, wanted those tall vinyl plastic privacy fences. And they told me a variety of reasons. One woman wanted to contain her kids. She was worried they could dash out into the street. She also worried that they'd sometimes wandered into their neighbor's yards, that it could create issues for her. She wanted everything contained. That's the word she used. And another guy just simply wanted to smoke marijuana in peace.
That was a fun conversation. He told me he was designing his own cannabis quarter, so he'd be removing his white picket fence in favor of one of those hulking barriers we described.
Mike, the fence salesman, when he was growing up, he had so much lumber in his shop, he would climb it as a kid and reach the ceiling of the warehouse his father owned. And today, there's just a couple dozen logs laying around, planks, if you will. Mostly, he works in vinyl.