The Remains Of Independence Day

As a veil of smoke from the annual July 4 fireworks show mingled with the mist and expanded outward from Lakewood Park the night of Monday, July 4, some of those leaving the display cast a pall on tree lawns, sidewalks, and streets as they vamoosed from the show.

As cars crawled along Belle, Clifton Boulevard, and other arteries – and as people walked home, some of them forgot to think about others, flinging cigarette butts, potato chip bags, moon pie wrappers, plastic bags, Styrofoam food containers, and other detritus out their windows or in their wake. This thoughtlessness isn’t confined to July 4.

Maybe it was Lou in "Caddyshack" telling the boys “Pick up that blood” after they ganged up on Danny Noonan and broke the gumball machine. It might be from watching city workers cleaning sidewalks every morning in Amsterdam and Paris. Perhaps it’s a desire to emulate saint of the bike path Glenn Rasmussen picking up trash every morning while walking his dogs when we lived in La Jolla. Or at long last, possibly, I’ve become the officer and a janitor my shipmates and I grumbled about being while we waxed floors at Officer Development School.

But every morning Lucky and I collect a doggie doo doo bag of cigarette butts, napkins, food containers, candy wrappers, clothing, and other FOD (Foreign Object Debris) strewn across sidewalks and tree lawns. While we’re glad to do our part, it might be – as John the carpenter said – an absent-minded habit.

So for the smokers tossing butts out the window, please repeat for twenty-one days: “I will put my cigarette butts in the ashtray.” Why twenty-one days? That’s how long it takes to form a habit.

If you’re one of the choir who respects your neighbors, thank you and please keep up the good habit. If not, please observe: The world is your oyster, not your garbage bin. Please take your trash home and throw it in your garbage can, not our streets.

Bob Soltys is a photographer and writer, a former Navy officer, and the co-author of A Lucky Life.

Bob Soltys

Photographer, writer, campus radical, curmudgeon at large, former Navy officer, and coauthor of A Lucky Life.

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Volume 12, Issue 15, Posted 4:38 PM, 07.19.2016