I suppose I should thank the person who threw out the plastic bag from Unclaimed Baggage while driving through the soccer park last week. As far as disposable plastic bags go, this was a nice one, the size of a kitchen trash bag, with handles — like those bags you get at the grocery. It was perfect for picking up trash, something I like to do when I walk. The bending is good for flexibility — a kind of tai chi on the go.
Guess I should also thank those considerate individuals who keep the uptown sidewalks strewn with litter, too. All except for the smokers; I don’t pick up butts.
Generally, I don’t carry a bag when I walk to the coffee house around the corner, but sometimes I need one. This is not only discouraging, it is perplexing; there are garbage cans at every corner downtown.
But, back to the bag from Unclaimed Baggage. You may know about that place; it’s in Scottsboro, Alabama. The late Dispatch photographer Joe Ray Robertson used to tell stories about the place. Seems I recall Joe Ray saying you could buy lost suitcases with all the stuff in them. Now, it’s more like an overgrown thrift store, and, according to the Huffington Post, one of the top tourist attractions in Alabama, drawing over a million visitors a year.
Printed on the side of the plastic bag I picked up Tuesday evening is “You Never Know What You’ll Find!” At the northwest exit of the park someone had tossed an LP out the window, a battle-scarred recording of ballet exercises: “Ballet Class with Roni Mahler, Advanced — Volume 5.” Grateful for small ironies, I put the LP in my Unclaimed Baggage bag.
Two nights earlier at a neighbor’s house, a proud father, who has just moved his family here from Mexico, showed me videos on his Blackberry of his 14-year-old daughter, an accomplished ballerina, dancing. She has been taking instruction for seven years, and he, an engineer with a local manufacturer, is looking for a teacher.
At the same gathering, a dinner featuring Indian food, a woman came up and introduced herself, saying she has been meaning to write a letter to the paper, “about all the litter on Bluecutt Road; it’s awful.”
“Please do,” I said, “though I’m not sure the people who are throwing stuff out the window read our opinion page.”
Maybe they do.
“Have you seen that ditch between Wendy’s and Walmart?” Another conversation about litter, this time in front of The Dispatch. The person posing the question said he used to take pictures of litter and people littering then and post it on his Facebook page.
That is until a follower wrote him asking, “Who are you bothering today?”
“I quit doing it after that,” he said.
Who are you bothering today?
We should all be bothered.
Our littered landscape conveys multiple messages, none of them good: that we’re ignorant, unconcerned about the appearance of our city, indifferent about the environment.
Your litter is a reflection on me. My litter is a reflection on you.
See someone throwing trash out their car window and want to do something about it? Dial *47 and give the dispatcher a tag number, vehicle description and location. They’ll get a nice letter from the Commissioner of Public Safety.
There was a time long ago when I threw trash out the car window, unthinking. When I went off to college and continued the practice, my friends called me “Mr. Ecology.” In no time, I changed my ways.
What can we do as a community to change our ways as far as litter? It’s a vexing question, one with no obvious answers.
Maybe we can come up with a slogan, something catchy and hip.
Don’t be a dip; litter is unhip.
Can it, dude.
Don’t be a butt.
Email us your ideas.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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