I MADE ANOTHER NEW FRIEND TONIGHT!!!

 

Tonight, I cleaned from the football field on Wilbeth Road to the Route 8 exit ramp, both sides.  I picked up 1,519 pieces, and I made a new friend!

I was on the sidewalk by the PNC bank, and I saw this nice-looking young man on a segway coming toward me.  I hurried up and moved my trash cart off the sidewalk so he could pass.  I don't know how those crazy things work, and I wanted to give him plenty of room.  When he got beside me, he said, "Thank you, Maam!"  I loved that!

Then he went into the PNC bank parking lot, and he found a yellow bag, and he picked up trash!  Can you believe that?

It was a like a circus act watching him pick up trash on that segway!  I never saw anything like it.  

When the bag was full, he came over to me and dumped it in my trash cart, and off he went again, and found more trash!  

He cleaned the entire parking lot, while I focused on the sidewalk and the bushes.  What fun that was!

Across the street from the bank, there's a Mini Mart.  I noticed that the owner put a really nice picnic table in front of the store so people can relax and sip their pop and eat their chips.  

Unfortunately, there's no trash can.  

I picked up HUNDREDS of pieces of trash under the picnic table, in the rocks and beside the building.  I guess this is going to be a spot I'll need to visit more often.  It looks nice now.

And right beside the Mini Mart, there's a brand new business going in that hasn't opened yet.  It's a car wash!  What a great idea!

I love it that all these businesses are trying to clean up this part of Akron.  It used to be horrible driving down Wilbeth Road with all the trash and broken glass.  Now I clean it in three parts, and the difference is astounding.

Beside the football field and across the street from the new car wash, somebody bought this building, and really dressed it up.  New parking lot, new fence, painted the building.  It's an event center, and I see them out in the parking lot picking up any new trash.  It used to be covered with broken glass, cigarette butts and pop cans.  Now it's always clean.

I don't know if my efforts to clean up Wilbeth Road have made prospective business owners see this area in a different way.  But something is going on.  And I like it!