I spent time this week picking up trash. We all have trash. Most of us have too much trash. We could certainly be more thoughtful with our purchases and how we purchase to avoid having so much trash. I probably buy too much stuff from Amazon but I use the excuse that given where I live buying online is just so much easier and I have so many more choices. I do my best to recycle all the packing material that comes with my orders. I think the energy used in having the orders delivered to the house or my going to town in most cases is pretty much a wash. Generally, I only drive about 6 miles to the store to buy things. Most of what is delivered comes through the US Postal Service and the mail carrier is on the route 6 days a week whether she has a delivery to my house or not. But I’m is deviating from the topic of trash.
The trash I pick up is of two kinds primarily, Trash for which I am responsible (even if indirectly) and other people’s trash. The trash which I say I am indirectly responsible for has been thrown out in various places around the property by my family over the years. When I was growing up and even for much of the time after I was grown no garbage pickup existed in the rural parts of the county. We burned much of trash but of course not everything will burn and while I’m sure some people still burn trash I don’t even know if that is even legal anymore even out here in the sticks. (By the way the garbage company did not pick up my trash this morning. They may come tomorrow or I may have just been missed this week.) The trash I was picking up earlier this week was some that had been thrown out in years past by my father. I am certain my mother was never involved in trash disposal, especially not throwing the trash out behind the house. Yesterday I picked up such thing as what was left of an old BBQ grill, some glass bottles full of dirt (which would not be welcome at the recycling center), even parts of a slot car track that I had as a child. Part of why I am picking this up is to simply make everything look better. I have much more to pick up but I don’t do it every week. I probably should but I don’t. I could do most of it at once but that would require me getting a friend with a truck and going to the dumb. Last year I did enlist the neighbor with the truck and we picked up at least 4 old hot water heater tanks and took them to the landfill. Just for your information the landfill in Wilkes County doesn’t charge for old hot water heater tanks. I guess they must sell those to someone rather than just adding them to the landfill. I can really only do one large garbage bag full each week because the disposal company won’t pick up more than the large bin will hold and I do have at least one fairly small bag each week. Besides picking up the trash for beautification reasons is an actual concern for pollution. Much of where the trash is located is behind the house where when we have a heavy rain we get considerable runoff. In fact it looks like another creek behind the house. This runoff then does flow into a branch behind the house which flows under the road into Hunting Creek. Hunting Creek downstream actually becomes the water supply for Mocksville, NC.
I know it took me awhile but I did make the connection between trash and this being a nature journal. Despite the trash not being something you associate with nature around here trash and nature meet all too often. Many people simply find it cheaper and easier to dump their trash off the side of some road and down a gulley rather than make the trip to the landfill. Where is Sheriff Opie of Arlo Guthrie fame when you need him? The people who dump whole pickup loads of trash where it doesn’t below certainly deserve all of our scorn. Fortunately, I don’t have to deal with that problem for the most part.
The other people’s trash that I have to pick up are those thoughtless inconsiderate people who throw trash out of their cars into the yards and fields of other people. I have my share of that kind of trash and I really do not enjoy picking it up. I have to wear work gloves and walk around with a garbage bag. I have to pick up mostly cans and paper. However, I do have to pick up fair number of glass bottle which are frequently broken. I have even have had to pick up used diapers. I will just allow the reader to think of the appropriate circle of hell for whoever decided to throw a used diaper out their car.
So while I think Sex on a Beach is fine cocktail and intriguing idea, I don’t want to pick up your Sex on a Beach out of my yard. Don’t be a litter bug.
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Your memories brought back my own childhood experiences from another rural part of Wilkes. Like your family, mine used to dispose of solid trash in the edge of the woods. Come canning season, one of my grandmothers and I (and maybe a first cousin or two) would pick through the reusable discarded mayonnaise and other jars (they were all glass then). Those that made the cut would end up in a huge pot in my grandmother’s backyard, where they would be boiled within a minute or two of their crystalline lives–twice. Ball jars were comparatively expensive, so the rescued jars would end up holding canned vegetables of myriad varieties for the coming winter.
I had a deputy sheriff uncle who was too kind hearted to be Sheriff Opie, but I’m sure Aunt Bea would have admired my grandmother’s resourcefulness.
Thanks for the message and the memories.
P.S. By the time I discarded my slot cars, we had garbage service, so they are probably in landfill dirt beneath the Wall-Mart on 421 or the newer county airport just outside the southeastern edge of Hays.