Barbed Wire

As a fashion accessory?

My social media feed seems to have been filled with advertisements for a ‘barbed wire choker’ necklace the past few days. If you want to get one, you can find em here.

Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash

Now, honestly, I can’t be in favor of the idea. I figure it is true, if Mrs. Bailey were wearing a barbed wire necklace then my bossing her around would probably be more effective, but of course then she’d murder me for tryin’ and I’d have my next few decades cut short.

Plus, you know, really old and rusty barbed wire would look a lot cooler than the gold and silver colored stuff on offer at the link above. Rusty stuff like we have big coils of in barns, kept for fixing fences. That would be snazzy looking.

In reality, the advertisement for this necklace probably doesn’t pop up on my social media any more than the others. Most likely it just catches my eye because I spent my life around barbed wire fences. Building them, fixing them, climbing through them. And I’ve accidentally torn my share of clothing doing the latter.

My dad was what you would call a hands off parent. He always supported whatever we wanted to do, but he didn’t interfere. He let us make our own mistakes. He was never one of those who believed that we kids would be instantly kidnapped, or die, if we weren’t constantly in sight. So, we were roamers.

And I figure that was a very good thing, because it made us resilient, and probably smart.

He just figured that he didn’t need to be afraid for us.

Except for one time that I remember quite well.

My brother and I were quite young, and my dad and some other men were building a new barbed wire fence. Enclosing a field that had never been fenced before. The field was to hold cattle, so he wanted that fence really strong and tight. They were stretching the wire with a hand operated winch.

And that’s just about the only time I actually saw my dad worried for our safety. Worried that if a flaw in the wire caused it to break while under such a load it could whip and kill us. He sent us a safe distance away, that’s the only time I ever remember him doing that.

Of course even if they are well built, barbed wire fences don’t remain that tight for very long. The ground shifts. Wooden posts rot. Cows push against them. People climb through them. The wire loosens over time. A small steer finds a really loose spot to exploit. More wire gets added to close that hole, hence the big coils of left over and now rusty wire in the barn. Maybe stick another metal post in the ground to help block that hole too.

This isn’t all just rambling memory without purpose though, for barbed wire was instrumental in building the West as we know it today.

Without it, cattle and crops couldn’t coexist, for there would be no way to keep the cattle out of those crops. Here in Western Washington, where I grew up, the grass doesn’t grow in the winter, so the cattle always had to be fed through it. That meant, and means, growing grass for hay to feed in winter, and corn for silage to be fed in winter. Without barbed wire, neither the grass nor the corn could be grown.

Barbed wire, a humble invention, first patented in 1867. Life here would look an awful lot different without it.

And today, in New York City, it’s apparently become jewelry.

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