Good fences makes Jim Nabors

I was thinking about Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall" (not that I remembered the precise title b4 googling) last night in connection with the development across our fence out back. I decided to call up the poem and read it, and did so. But before getting there, a Google on the trademark line "Good fences make good neighbors" led me to this entry from The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, the number one search response for the line. Here's what this "reference book" has to say:

Good fences make good neighbors
Good neighbors respect one another’s property. Good farmers, for example, maintain their fences in order to keep their livestock from wandering onto neighboring farms. This proverb appears in the poem “Mending Wall,” by Robert Frost.

So the frickin "cultural dictionary" gets it backwards, as do most people who cite it. Frost and his narrator are ironic. Not for nothing does the poem begin with, and repeat, the phrase: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

Well Gaaaaaaalllleeeeee. This is what we call cultural literacy? It can kiss my white ass.