Trashed

In 2000, I went to Hawaii to visit my lifelong friends living (and stationed) there. If you haven’t been, I’m sure you’ve heard its a beautiful place.  I felt like Rey in The Force Awakens…”I never knew there was so much green in the whole galaxy!”  Texas has a lot of green, but not like Hawaii.  This was where I began saving my butts rather than tossing them out the car window.  Seeing so much beauty made me think better of reducing it by so little as a cigarette butt.  When I got home, I decided to maintain the practice.  Why shouldn’t Texas (and even Houston) not be as litter-free as Hawaii?  Because its not paradise…yeah, I know.  But maybe it could be much better than it is. 

I think that’s what Texas had in mind when they started the “Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign back in the 80’s.  It was a pretty big hit.  Texan celebrities like Stevie Ray Vaughn, Willie Nelson, and Matthew McConaughey did ads to help keep litter off of Texas roads.  And I think it worked way back when.  Not now though.  There’s trash all over this joint.  Maybe the campaign needs an update.  Something like “Don’t FUCK with Texas, dick!”  Its an attention-grabber.

It’s a constant reminder how terrible some people are.  Everyday on my street I can find losing lottery tickets, potato chip bags, candy wrappers, beer cans, and a variety of fast food wrappers.  We’re a neighborhood which sees a lot of cut-through traffic and I prefer to think that’s where it comes from.  To think its from people trashing their own neighborhood is too much for me to fathom.

My daily walks on the hike/bike trail along the White Oak Bayou Greenway is pretty nice, but every so often I find a discarded bottle or can.  I’ll pick it up if its near a trash can, and sometimes its only a few feet away…the laziness is inconceivable.  One of the reasons I enjoy those walks is the (mostly) pristine beauty of the trail, so when I find trash out there, it kind of ruins it for me.  Overall, it isn’t too bad, but I suspect its only because the city maintenance crew picks up trash along the trail weekly.  Speaking of…

I’ve heard it said, “I pay taxes so someone will pick up the trash I throw out.”  Sonuvabitch!  No, that is not why we pay taxes.  Taxes are for things like education, police and emergency response, water and sewage, frickin NASA!  Its not a convenience tax so your lazy ass doesn’t have to walk to the garbage can!  Imagine if everyone who paid taxes felt they had the right to trash the roads.  What would that look like?  How much money would we save if no one trashed the road so no one had to clean it up?  According to the Don’t Mess with Texas campaign, we spend $47 million every year cleaning up Texas roadways. What could that money be used for instead?

The next time you walk out of a convenience store, or a drug store, or damn near any kind of store, take a look at the ground.  Those black spots you see on the walkway, that’s gum.  Gatdammit!  You can’t find a trashcan, or a napkin, or a simple scrap of paper to spit your germ-ridden cud-ball into?  Here’s a tip…when you stick it in your mouth, put the wrapper in your pocket for the three-minute span of time it takes to lose its flavor, then spit it in the wrapper and drop it in the trash.  Its pretty easy.  Or if there’s no trashcan around, put it in your pocket…at some point in your busy gum-chewing schedule you’ll be in fairly close proximity to a goddamn trash can!  I’ve seen walkways which looked like they were more gum than cement!  Say what you will about cigarette butts…they can be picked up.  Gum stays there forever…unless its fresh enough when someone steps in it. 

I mentioned this one in a previous post, but it needs a mention here.  Parking lots and shopping carts.  For some reason, this is a favorite place for assholes to leave their trash.  Used food containers and utensils, empty bottles and cans, food scraps wrapped up in paper napkins, and the ultimate “Fuck you” to any minimum wage earner working at a retail or grocery store…the used diaper.  Ugh!

I can hear some of you already (before this is even published), “But Big Steve, you live in a trashy area.  Its not nearly so bad in Cypress, or The Woodlands, or River Oaks.”  True, and that’s one of the reasons I’d like to move someday.  But the idealist in me says, “Why should I have to move because of other people’s nastiness?  Why should I change when its other people being filthy dicks?”

How to fix it?  I usually have disdain for people who complain about something without a solution in mind, but I’m stumped…mostly because I can’t even fathom why people would intentionally trash their own neighborhood in the first place.  I can understand renters not caring about property values but they should care about living in a slum, right?  I can’t even figure why they’d trash someone else’s neighborhood.  Is it really just laziness?  Are people really that shitty?  If so, I’d be in favor of public flogging…and I’d volunteer to be the flogger (from blogger to flogger).  But you’d have to catch ‘em in the act.  We’d need cameras everywhere.  We’d need a litter task force…litter nazis.  Generally I’d say that was going too far…nazis were total assholes after all. But extreme problems, extreme measures…so on and so forth.

If you recall, the original Lorax didn’t have a solution either.

-Big Steve