On My Morning Walk

As soon as it warmed up a tad, Maggie and I went for a walk down a country road nearby. We park at the back entrance to a cousin's property. People here are very observant about what goes on and when we go for a walk, I'm careful to park either on our own property or where we're known. All the same, when we started on our walks earlier in the year, I'd mentioned to the cousins' wife that we were parking up there, but she didn't mention it to her husband. One day, he spotted my car, and called The Man to make sure I was OK. "Yes, she's just going for a walk." Strolling around for no good purpose isn't a very common activity out here :)

In any event, I'm back to my old habits, which includes picking up garbage. I started it in Baltimore, where, I kid you not, I'd go every morning and pick up one to three plastic garbage bags full of trash. There were public garbage cans along the route, and I'd dump the bag out and start over, taking the final bag home. It was embarrassing, quite frankly, to live somewhere where people had no respect for their environment. What I picked up was a look at why we're so overweight as a nation - it was almost all fast food bags, soda cans, cigarette packs.

It wasn't so bad in Lawrenceville. Oh, the occasional blown bit of trash; but again, it was almost always food related. Weird, huh? I guess people eat in their car and discard the trash. I walked for 5 years in Cheyenne and never once was compelled to pick up garbage, there just wasn't much to speak of, which speaks well of the citizen's respect for the town, I think.

Here, I suspect some fellow who lives down this country road drinks cheap beer and doesn't want his wife to know - I pick up many varieties of cheap light beer cans, I guess what ever is on sale. Keystone Lite, Bud Lite, Miller Lite. At least he's watching his weight. Today, I found a carton of eggs with four eggs in it. Hm, I discarded the eggs, thinking a skunk might find them, and took the carton. No only do I pick up trash because I hate seeing it; in this case, we're saving egg cartons for when we get chickens. How would an egg carton end up off the side of the road, with eggs in it? What is that all about? If you lost the eggs by some fluke (wind blew them out of the back of the truck?) The next time you went down the road, wouldn't you see the carton, remember the missing eggs, and stop?

I think The Man thinks I pick up the beer cans to recycle, which we do, after carefully pulling off the little tabby things that open the can because he'd donating them to some charity. But I actually just don't like seeing the trash. In Baltimore, I used to give the grandkids each a garbage bag, with a promise of a prize for the one that picked up the most trash, and off we'd go. Paul is embarrassed by my efforts to pick up trash, but one day, even if I'm remembered as the neighborhood crazy, at least I'll be the neat crazy one :)