The Nation: Hello in There

"Good fences make good neighbors," says a figure in Robert Frost's poem Mending Wall. Frost's character would make an ideal resident of Leisure Village, a 600-acre Lakewood, N.J., retirement community of 5,000 residents. The homes are guarded by a 24-hour security force. The community is bordered by a 6-ft. chain-link fence, and four years ago residents reluctantly topped one section of the fence with barbed wire after a rash of invasions by pranksters. But a mugging early last summer and recent car break-ins and gasoline siphonings have frightened the village's board of trustees to finish what they started. Now they...