“Good fences make good neighbors”

“Good fences make good neighbors” is invoked to describe a guarded local peace that accepts Black neighbors conditionally while treating their separation as a virtue. In the history of Sara Tidwell and her community, the proverb’s fence is less a guarantee of mutual respect than a boundary drawn by white residents—and a measure of what happens when a Black woman is seen to cross it.

A Local Formula for Peace

At the turn of the century, more than forty Black people settled on land that became Tidwell's Meadow. Most were related, many were talented musicians, and many belonged to the group first called The Red-Tops and later Sara and the Red-Tops. They bought the meadow and a substantial tract of lakeside land, saving the money over ten years. The purchase provoked an uproar in Castle Rock, including a protest meeting against what its participants called the arrival of Black people in a horde.

The feared shantytown did not appear. Neat white cabins instead stood around a larger building that may have served as a meeting place, rehearsal space, or performance hall. Sara and the Red-Tops played throughout western Maine for more than a year, perhaps nearly two, and their posters remained in circulation decades later. In retrospect, the narrator says, the band got along at home on TR-90 much as the local proverb suggested: neighbors could coexist so long as each remained within an accepted boundary.

That peace is described as miserly rather than generous. Residents might say that Black neighbors paid their bills, kept to themselves, and did not require charity; the last claim is presented as the defining local virtue. The apparent praise depends on isolation: being accepted means not asking for help, not disturbing white expectations, and remaining legible to the community as separate.

The Fence and the Street

A later account of Sara’s life makes the boundary more concrete. In the remembered perspective of Jared Devore, Sara is warned to stay off The Street, yet walks there in a white dress, sometimes with her son, Kito. His narration is saturated with racist contempt: he objects to her presence, her independence, and the fact that she moves through a shared space as if entitled to it. The exclusion is not merely a matter of neighbors living apart; it is a demand that Sara accept a restricted place.

The narrator challenges the claim that nobody spoke to Sara. He imagines men discussing crops with her, women showing her their babies, girls seeking advice about boys, and boys watching her. The contrast exposes a contradiction in the boundary: Sara is not simply ignored. Her laugh and presence draw people toward her, but that social contact coexists with resentment at her public confidence and freedom of movement. The proverb’s orderly picture of neighboring thus masks an unequal rule about who may occupy common ground without being treated as an intruder.

The Past Beneath the Saying

When Bill Dean later calls Sara and her companions wanderers from away, the narrator hears the racial slur Bill has stopped short of saying. Bill also distinguishes their history from the story of local tragedy: the past, he says, dies more slowly in small towns, and old wounds remain connected beneath the surface. His hesitation shows how the community’s exclusions persist not only in explicit hostility but also in the language people avoid and the histories they decline to tell.

Contemporary newspaper clippings do not supply a neutral corrective. They describe the Red-Tops in patronizing racial caricatures, presenting them as genial entertainers and Sara as an exotic spectacle. Their favorable tone does not undo the contempt built into the descriptions. Read beside the protest meeting and Jared’s account of Sara on The Street, these clippings reveal a community capable of applauding Black performers while still policing Black presence and dignity.

Irony and Significance

The proverb’s irony lies in the difference between neighborliness and mere noninterference. The cabins and the band’s popularity suggest that coexistence was possible, but the conditions remembered around Sara—racialized praise, demands for self-isolation, and the effort to keep her off The Street—show how fragile and conditional that peace was. The fence protects the white community’s preferred order more reliably than it guarantees reciprocal respect.

As a recurring interpretive lens on the TR, the saying also helps connect individual prejudice to collective silence. The town can congratulate itself that its Black residents pay their bills and take no charity while disregarding the limits imposed on them. What looks like a settled arrangement is therefore not proof that the boundary has disappeared; it is evidence that the boundary has become ordinary.