Suburban life ain't what it seems

Maybe I have been lucky in my life but minus an evil lady when I was in high school, I have always had nice neighbors.  Or at the very least ones that kept to themselves and let me do the same.

Day one in our new home almost went off without a hitch.  We began demo of the flooring and kitchen.  Jess found a love for power tools and new respect of what I do for a living.  Our fencing materials also arrived.  See, we live on a corner lot where our house is set back.  This gives us a large front yard but a smaller backyard that corners up to the backyards of our side neighbors.  Since one of our biggest draws of moving to the burbs was having a fenced in yard for our dogs, I planned to waste no time on building one in our backyard.

While the fencing was being unloaded I got to meet my first neighbor.  Out of the corner of my eye I see a man walking up to me.  Mid 40's with signs of oddness in his eyes.  I turn to look at him with a smile on my face only to hear "Let me see your permit".  Point blank.  I respond by saying "Hi, my name is Mark and I am your new neighbor".  Thinking that he may just assume I am the contractor and not the owner.  He looked shocked at first.  Shook my hand, said nice to meet you and then said "I need to see your permit for this fence."  Against my instincts I calmly state I don't need a permit to have something delivered sir but when I get my permit I would be happy to show it to you if it would help you sleep at night.  This seemed to appease him so we moved on to regular new neighbor small talk/interrogations.  Me being the criminal in this scenario.  

After some discussion I learned that he likes the "country" feel of our backyards.  Country feel?  Oddly enough this is the very feel we want to block with our fence.  We just didn't have a name for it yet.  Apparently "country" means unkept yards, broken down above ground pools, a blue elephant statue laying on its side and moomoo's drying on a cloths line.  For the most part, although odd, our remaining talks were fine all things considered.  But I have a feeling this is the calm before the storm.  And this calm kinda freaked me out.  

This fence would be for our dogs more than us, so after discussions with Tank and Sneaky, majority rules. Its 4-1 and a fence WILL be erected!  Regardless of it being a Beverly Hillbilly's ambiance killer.