I usually keep one or more plastic grocery bags in my pocket.  On my daily walk around the neighborhood, I pick up trash.

I got started in a big way more than ten years ago when I would use big garbage bags to collect trash around my neighborhood every few months.  I would then circle back in my pick-up to take it to the recycling center. In the last few years I have started picking up trash each time I walk.

I think I first began this habit in the 1970s when my son was a child.  I would pick up trash but concentrate on aluminum cans.  I needed money to supplement my teacher’s wage and we had fun being outside.  He would trail along on a bicycle.

Now I pick up trash out of habit.  I have formed a kind of need or compulsion to do so.  At times I have photographed outlandish juxtapositions of items.  I once found a hundred dollar bill.  I have picked up cartoons of bullets and various electronic devices.  Maybe six or eight times, I emailed photos of my trash finds in an attempt to amuse or astound people.

Motorists do not understand the volume of trash along our roads.  What you see at road speed is just a tiny fraction of trash.

My far neighbor on Ragin Lane is in a wheel chair.  Once he and his wife stopped to thank me.  No once else has.

Yet I do what I do because it satisfies me to see a clean shoulder.  My dog Sun accompanies me on most walks, and we sometimes have short walks when we do not pick up anything.

Today I read letter in The Charlotte Observer about David Bradley.  He is moving from Charlotte to Brevard; the letter writer thanked him for picking up trash in his neighborhood.  He keeps a blog entitled pickupyourpath.com that details his walking work.

He plans to transfer that work to Brevard.  I checked his blog and emailed him to say he had a twin of sorts in Rock Hill.  I like knowing that I am not the only crazy old guy doing what I do.

My friend Barry Neal does what I do on his road along Lake Wylie.  Maybe there are more picker-uppers than we know.

January 12, 2018