March 2023 “On Giving a Hoot”
On Giving a Hoot
As they sometimes do, the editors at The Register-Mail changed my original title for the sake of column inches which you’ll discover if you cli.
One thing winter exposes besides bare trees, ditches and broad dormant fields is the litter that’s been blown or dumped there. On a recent walk with Doc, we found a slew of beer cans someone had pitched out of their car window, presumably at night, so plentiful it was as if there had been a celebration. This happens way more often than I like, and I’m more than a little aggravated by people who pull these kinds of stunts. Here’s the grouchy old lady picking up behind you, waggling her finger.
I’m amazed that, in spite of my efforts to keep it tidy, my road never remains litter-free for long. Most of what I find looks to be the result of underage drinkers or open container rebels jettisoning incriminating evidence. I pick up beer cans, Twisted Tea cans, Fireball singles that no one wants to get caught with. Who wants to cart evidence home for mom or dad to discover in the morning? Pitch it out the window—problem solved!
Unfortunately, the trash I find and retrieve on my road isn’t always small and easy to cart home in grocery sack. The piles that really chap me are the big-ticket dumps that appear to be the result of someone who doesn’t want to handle their own business. Not long ago, I found a Little Tykes kitchen along with a toddler play table and a disassembled crib dumped into a steep ditch that looked as if it’d been scouted out for that very purpose. I returned home to get my truck and then slid into the ditch on my bum to drag the stuff back onto the road.
Just this week, as Doc and I crested a hill on our daily walk, I spied something unusual by the roadside up ahead. As we got closer, Doc went into defense mode, pausing to bark at it, hackles raised, but I could tell it wasn’t anything more threatening than a pile of boxes. Doc gave everything a good sniffing and again, I went home and got the truck. This pile was mostly empty boxes but also contained a few empty plastic oil jugs, a set of old brake shoes and some dirty shop rags. Who are you, trash dumper? And what goes through your mind that makes this the solution? Help me out here, because I really don’t understand.
I drive County 10 on a near daily basis and over the winter noticed five worn tires that suddenly appeared in an open field. Landowners don’t just drop a set of tires into an otherwise empty space. It had to have been some sneaky dumper who didn’t know what to do with their leftovers so they foisted the problem off on someone else.
Last year, I was heading to one of those water refilling stations in town with a truck bed full of empty jugs when the wind caught my cargo just right and blew several jugs into the air. I watched them flutter and descend to the ground by way of my rearview mirror. Back I went to find a place to park, and then I headed down the gully to retrieve them. What wasn’t as evident from the roadway that I travel daily was the garbage hidden beneath tall grass and prairie plants. There was so much trash that it was difficult to walk, and I felt a little foolish grabbing only my blow-aways when there was a practical landfill piled beneath my feet.
It’s been a long time since I saw an ad on television urging me to pick up after myself, but I’m old enough to remember the one featuring a tearful Iron Eyes Cody paddling a canoe down a river of trash and the one featuring Woodsy the Owl admonishing me during Saturday morning cartoons to, “Give a hoot, don’t pollute.” If those ads didn’t stop all the littering, did they at least slow it down?
I don’t know the answer, and I don’t think it’s a problem that will ever go away. But, ultimately, I believe it’s an issue of character. If you throw your garbage in the road for someone else to handle, then you must be the kind of person whose life, in general, isn’t one you take much responsibility for. If you’re faithful in the small things, you’re faithful in the larger. And if you’re pitching beer cans out the window under cover of night, you’re getting rid of one problem and creating another one. This is me asking you to cut it out. Your “solution” isn’t working but I have a feeling if you think it through a little more thoroughly, you can find a more reasonable alternative. Maybe even one that includes a trash can.