My wife and I live on the edge of town, near Salem Willows, and when I walk into Salem, I like to carry two empty kitchen-sized trash bags, one for the trek into town, one for the trip home. I need them because I pick up litter. Perhaps you’ve seen me out there, a gray-haired guy in his 70s bending to the curb, patrolling for plastic bottles or cigarette butts. I’ve been at it for years, and the bags get filled.
There’s nothing like a mile-long walk to get you thinking, and I think about littering. Why is there so much trash along the road? and what sort of person litters?
The items in the bag suggest answers. Take cigarette butts, the most common find: No one is going to stash the burning end of a smoke in their pocket. Most smokers, I’d bet, don’t even consider butts to be litter — just a natural, inevitable part of the smoking ritual, like exhaling smoke. Maybe they assume their filters are biodegradable? I wish they were — or at least camouflaged.
Common too are nips, the plastic bottles holding 1.7 ounces of booze that sell for a buck. These turn up everywhere but especially along roadways. The culprits: Folks who drink and drive who want to get rid of the evidence lest they get stopped and charged with breaking the state’s open container laws. Given the littering problem, I’m all for banning nips, although what if our tipplers began tossing out half-pint glass containers instead?
Ever seen the remains of fast-food meals strewn around your neighborhood — the wrappers, bags, cups, and straws? The perpetrators here, I conclude, are not the selfish pigs I once imagined. Rather, they’re the most fastidious of neatniks, people who can’t bear the thought of trash in their cars, not for an instant. Once the Big Mac is consumed, it’s clean-up time — and what’s the car window for if not that?
I wonder about their lack of civic-mindedness. My space is pristine, they think; my trash is someone else’s problem. At least they wait until dark and no one’s around to see them do it.
More puzzling are the neatly tied bags of dog poop. Why bother to even scoop the poop if the plan is to leave it behind? My thinking: After Rover does his thing, observers watch approvingly while the owner bends down with the blue plastic bag — that’s virtue-signaling at its best. But once the owner is out of anyone’s sight, it’s bombs away!
Other items are harder to solve: Soiled pampers, electronic devices or their broken components, eyeglasses, cardboard containers of all sorts and sizes, plastic wreaths and flowers, even unused plastic trash bags. Go figure. As for all the loose papers and napkins — even newsprint — I blame the wind.
Litterers aside, there’s another question: Who made me the trash cop? Why am I out there with the garbage bag, bending down to the ground or the curb a hundred times before I make it to the coffee shop or the drug store? and I’m not alone: I’ve seen other old-timers with their trash bags, some with picker-uppers in hand to cut down on all the bending over. Why do we do it?
Maybe our sense of personal space extends beyond the insides of our cars to the whole neighborhood. It’s about aesthetics: We like the world to look good. We like our nature unsullied. When you’re in the woods and spy a candy wrapper along the trail, doesn’t that spoil it? We like our nature unspoiled.
And it’s a workout. Even at my age I visit the gym floor at the Y, but a walk to town and back collecting trash earns me full credit.
But maybe there’s more to it? Before I retired, I was an English professor — a teacher of writing and a sometime editor. Students understandably sprinkle comma splices, misspellings, and miscellaneous grammar lapses into their essays. Even experienced writers (me too!) occasionally slip up. I remember taking pleasure in tidying up such written output. I was good at it. Those days are over, but in removing trash I get something of the old editor’s pleasure. Maybe weeding gives gardeners the same satisfaction.
Will we ever be free of litterers? I doubt it. But I like to think anyone seeing me out there with my trash bag will be inspired to follow in my footsteps.
Rod Kessler lives in Salem and is about to celebrate a decade of retirement after teaching English at Salem State for over 30 years.