The Chain-Link Fence Nation
When we moved to Payson about five years ago, it felt like a clean start — a new home in a new neighborhood, the kind of place where everything still smelled like lumber and fresh paint. At first, we stayed in our little bubble, going to the same stores and driving the same roads. But as time passed, we began to wander — and what we saw painted a different picture of this town and, really, of America itself.
The symbol of that quiet struggle is the chain-link fence. It seems to whisper, “I don’t have much, but you’re not getting it.” Drive a few miles in any direction and you see them — small fortresses guarding tired trailers, rusting cars, and hope that’s gone a little thin.
Years ago, I asked a young woman from New Zealand what she thought of America. Her answer stuck with me: “People here don’t have much house pride.” She was right. Too many yards are filled with junked cars, plastic debris, and half-collapsed dreams. The Walmart parking lot tells another story — shiny new cars, people with jobs, people who clearly have some money. So how do those same people end up living behind sagging fences?
Maybe the answer lies in the choices made along the way. The casino instead of the savings account. Tattoos instead of a retirement plan. The mindset that tomorrow would somehow fix today. Then one day, the mirror says you’re sixty, the bank says you’re broke, and Social Security says “that’s it.”
And right on cue, along comes Trump — the master of misplaced blame — offering absolution. It’s not your fault, he says. You’ve been cheated. And so the people who spent a lifetime being sold bad deals buy one last one: the idea that the man who built the casino is somehow their savior.
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