A white picket fence might seem as genteel as tea at the Ritz but actually it's a fiendish thing loaded with meaning, the Jekyll and Hyde of the streetscape. You only have to look back at the genesis of its name — from the French piquet, meaning the pointed stakes that would be erected around archers back in the middle ages to protect them as they went about their business of killing people. The plain wooden fence has been around for much longer, of course, but who decided to make something prettier?