NOW I'M MOTIVATED!!! JUST WATCH . . .

 

All day today, I kept thinking about Tom Shuster, the man who's making a difference picking up trash in Wadsworth, and I've been trying to figure out how I can make a difference in Akron.

At lunchtime, I got a call from the panhandler who sits at the Route 8/Wilbeth Road exit ramp.  He asked me to bring him a great big garbage bag so he could clean up all the trash.  How did he know I was disgusted with that area?  Or was it just a coincidence?

Because he asked nicely, I headed over there after work to pick up the trash, even though I said I wasn't cleaning here anymore.  This poor man can't walk.  There's no way he could pick up all this trash.

He was very nice, and I talked to him as I cleaned it all up, and it did fill my 45-gallon trash bag.  It was so heavy, I couldn't lift it.  I will ask Keep Akron Beautiful to pick it up.

While I was cleaning, a man in a pickup truck stopped and thanked me for cleaning up this mess.  Then he got really angry, and he yelled at the panhandler and told him if he was going to sit there, he should pick up the trash, and the panhandler started yelling back.

Whew!  That was a mess I didn't want in the middle of, but the guy was right.  If the panhandler would pick up the trash every day, it wouldn't get like this.

I left there and went to the dumpster where I throw all the trash I pick up on Wilbeth Road.

I couldn't even get close to it!  Wow.

I told myself, "I can't begin to clean all this."  But I decided to get rid of the big plastic sheets, and then I picked up a little here and a little there, and I didn't get it all picked up . . . 

There was just too much.  What a buffet for the wild animals!

I know how it gets this bad.  People throw their trash bags and dirty diapers and poop bags at the dumpster.  New people don't want to step on that, so they set their trash outside the dumpster too.  And the wild animals attack the garbage bags and rip them to shreds.  

And this is what is left.

I got most of it.  Some was frozen to the cement, and I couldn't pick it up.  It's going to be a work in progress.  I'll pick up more tomorrow.

While I was cleaning the parking lot, I saw four people take their trash to the dumpster and all four threw their bags inside.  Imagine that!  It can be done.

One woman thanked me for cleaning around the dumpster.  She said, "I was picking it up, but it got too much for me."  I replied, "I totally understand that." 

It kinda seems like she would have helped me, since I had most of it cleaned up, don't you think?

I made it to Wilbeth Road, and I cleaned the football field.  I carried all this stuff with me, back to my trash cart.  There's always so much more than I think there is.

It looks good now.

I found at least a dozen glass liquor bottles intact.  Yay!  I hate sweeping up broken glass!

I found a knife, and two giant bolts in the road.  That's a stabbing and two flat tires that aren't going to happen.

What a great night!  I'm going to clean all of Wilbeth Road and keep it clean all summer.  Just the little bit that I did tonight made a huge difference.

I picked up 2,003 pieces of trash tonight, and there's no way picking up two thousand pieces of trash isn't going to make a huge difference.

Just imagine how it would look if I didn't pick up trash anymore.

This summer, I'm going to have an army of people who care helping me keep our city beautiful!