I WAS DISGUSTED TONIGHT, AND THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN OFTEN

 

I drove to Lover's Lane & Brown and parked at the Dollar Store.  I saw a big plastic mess around the bushes at the edge of the parking lot.  I got out of my car to see what it was.  It was six trash bags ripped open with trash from the Circle K across the street everywhere!  

Now I know why there's so much trash here.  The homeless people are stealing the bags from the Circle K dumpster, dragging them across the street and rummaging through them to see if there's anything useful.  Can you believe that?

What a mess!  I cleaned all that up and headed to the Dollar Store dumpster, and look at the mess I saw!  I just cleaned this area a few weeks ago.  Again, it's not trash thrown out by a passing vehicle.  It's from many trash bags that are ripped open and garbage scattered.

I'm not cleaning this again.  I sent an email to my three councilmen, the Mayor of Akron and Keep Akron Beautiful.   Something has to be done to stop this.  It's not trash.  It's a dump site!

Had I not just cleaned it, I might have thought it was litter from the entire winter.

Can you imagine having a home in this neighborhood?  I'd move.  I would not live here.  There will be snakes and rats and the people walking around are angry.  Angry people do crazy things.

I headed to my car to leave, and as I turned the corner, I saw the area I cleaned yesterday, still clean and fresh looking.  

So I didn't leave. I continued cleaning the sidewalks where people are walking.  I cleaned south on Brown and up the other side, all around the bus stop.  There's a nice trash can here, and had recently been emptied.

I picked up 3,057 pieces of trash tonight.  So it was a good night.

However, something happened that has never happened before.  A heavy white woman driving an old pick up trash yelled out the window, "Look at you picking up trash!"  I smiled and gave her a thumbs up, but by the look on her face, she was not paying me a compliment.  She was making fun of me.  Luckily, I didn't realize that until I saw her face.  Best to play dumb, and I'm pretty good at that.

As I continued picking up trash, I was thinking I should have said, "Why don't you do something nice for your community too?"  But why would I even have a conversation with a mean person?  I know what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.  I'm working really hard to clean up the City of Akron, so it will be a safe, beautiful place to live, hoping to be an inspiration to others.