The snows gone but the garbage remains

trash BDN photoRoad slobs had a busy winter. When I stopped my garbage walks, after snow piled along the roadsides and hid the garbage tossed out by road slobs, the side of the road from my house to the corner of the Blake Hill Road, and then up Route 41 past my woodlot, were clean.

So it was discouraging today to set out with two bags, one for bottles and cans and one for garbage, and fill both up on just one side of the road. Tomorrow I’ll tackle the other side.

On my last garbage walk of 2015, I found an anniversary card signed by Peg and Ray, and a receipt from the Waterville McDonald’s offering me an opportunity to buy one quarter pounder or egg mcmuffin and get one free. I couldn’t use that because I got so disgusted by all the garbage from fast food restaurants, especially McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts, that I now refuse to eat at either place.

Today my most unusual item was a brand new broom. Unfortunately, the metal handle was bent and rusted. I thought about cutting off the bottom and using the broom as a hand sweeper, but didn’t.

I did get a surprise when the first beer can I picked up was Rolling Rock. My experience tells me that road slobs prefer Bud Light, colored water in my opinion. Today I picked up quite a variety of beer bottles and cans, but I am pleased to say that I have never picked up a bottle of a Maine microbrew. Yes, those of us who prefer Maine microbrews are a higher level of human being.

The legislature enacted my proposal last session to create a new program at Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife called Keep Maine Clean. Tom Doak of the Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine helped me brainstorm the program.

Keep Maine Clean will build an army of folks who pick up trash along the roads and in the fields and forests of Maine, provide them with a regular newsletter, and sponsor programs like “Most Unusual Item of the Week” with prizes. My bill also reorganized DIF&W’s landowner relations advisory board into a smaller board, called the Landowners and Sportsmen Relations Advisory Board. I am hoping the Advisory Board will make the Keep Maine Clean program its first initiative, and actively engage in the creation and management of the program, in partnership with DIF&W.

Walking back toward home today, I admired the beauty of my woodlot, now free of garbage, but wondering how people can be so callous and inconsiderate, so uncaring about our beautiful state, that they toss their garbage out their vehicle window. Very sad.

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.