WHAT A DAY ON HUDSON RUN IN BARBERTON!

 

This may be my funniest blog post yet!  Wow!  What a morning on Hudson Run!

I met a really nice young man who wanted to help me pick up trash.  (I'll come back to him in a minute.)

I started driving at the end of Hudson Run by the railroad tracks, and I looked for trash.  I saw a piece here and there, and a pretty big spot right here I must have missed the last time.   

When I got almost to the end, I saw two people picking up something with a trash bag.  

REINFORCEMENTS!!!  YAY!

I hurried and parked my car at the ice cream stand, grabbed my trash cart and raced over to them. 

When I got over to them, I said, "Are you helping me keep this road clean?"  They looked at me like I was speaking Greek.  I looked at their bag, and it had some green plants in it.  They were picking up flowers or seaweed or whatever grows in ditches!  Good grief!  I felt like such an idiot!

I went ahead and picked up all the trash I could reach over this muddy ditch.  My new shoes got broken in fast.  Ick!  What a mess!

Look at this bottle.  How many years do you think things have been growing inside it?

So, back to the handsome young man who raced over to help me.  He said he read about me on Barberton Neighbors Facebook page, and he wanted to help.

Yay!  He picked up a couple of things, put them in my trash bag.  Then he picked up a couple more things, put them in my trash bag, looked at his hands, made a face and said, "Well, gotta go now!"

I couldn't stop laughing!  Picking up trash isn't as easy as it looks, and you definitely need safety gear.  MUST HAVE GLOVES!  I wouldn't pick up anything without gloves.  MUST HAVE A TRASH GRABBER!  My back would break if I picked up a thousand pieces by bending over a thousand times!  MUST HAVE A REFLECTIVE VEST!  Can't possibly be on Hudson Run, so close to speeding cars, without being seen.

I'm thinking that boy looked at the next spot I was going to clean.  He said to himself, "Yikes!  No way!!!"

My friend, Caryl said Barberton Neighbors are saying Hudson Run is getting messy again.  Of course it's getting messy again!  All areas get messy again.

Keep Akron Beautiful has two big cleanups in the month of April.  They say thousands of people show up.  I went to one in 2023, one in 2024, and there were a lot of people there, but only a couple hundred at the ones I went to.

All these volunteers work really hard picking up litter together, and two weeks later, it's all trashed up again.  My friend, Tom, constantly complains about this pattern.  That's exactly why litter is such a HUGE problem.  We have to keep picking it up every week, or every month.  As much as the volunteers want to believe they're making a difference, once a year doesn't do very much good at all.

I was trying to figure out how to get a tote lid into my trash bag without getting hit by a car, and my whole trash cart fell over.  I scrambled to pick everything back up, and when I stood up, I had all these burrs on my pants.  How did that happen?  I hate those sneaky little devils!

There's a few pieces of trash near the railroad tracks, but unless somebody else picks them up, they're staying where they are until my next cleanup.

I picked up 1,081 pieces of trash this morning in three hours.  I filled three big bags, and I found lots of big car parts and a broken safety cone. 

Every time I think about that boy, I chuckle.  He had really good intentions, and I am so grateful he wanted to help me. 

I wish he would have stayed long enough to chat.  I'm guessing he won't pick up another piece of trash in his life!