Starting a Big Job: Redwood Avenue

Sunday, February 16^th, 2014

A week or so before this particular weekend, I called our Assistant City Manager and told him that I wanted to clean up Redwood Avenue, but it was scary; there is too much trash.  I needed a place to put it.  So far, I was doing okay dropping grocery bags of trash into public cans, but this job would take big bags, there was so much big trash.  He said he’d call around and see what they could do.

A few hours later, a nice lady from Community Development called and said that they’d decided to give me yellow bags like ODOT uses, and I could leave them next to trash cans in whatever park is most convenient to me.  The special bags would discourage people from thinking that they could drop their household trash likewise.  I quickly realized that they could be used for advertising, and ordered some stickers to let people know who had filled them.  In the meantime, I’m writing GPgardener.com on them with permanent marker.

It took most of another week or so before they got the bags, but this day I was ready to really work Redwood Avenue.  ODOT bags are made especially for litter cleaning: they are square, not so long as to drag; and they are tough.  Recalling my work crew days in 2010, I took a 2-foot marking stake I’d picked up the previous week and rolled up one side of the bag on it for easy carrying and filling, right above “GPgardener.com,” showing it off to passing traffic.

That was after doing litter pickup along my dog walking route and cleaning at Schroeder Dog Park, as I’d done Saturday at Greenwood Dog Park before going to work gardening.  While at Greenwood, I figured out to blow the bark a bit further off the path, to keep it from being kicked right back onto the pavement.  I noticed later in the week that it worked fairly well; a lot less was on the path than ever before.  By the next Saturday, it at least had not spread all the way across the sidewalk to the gutter.

At Schroeder Dog Park, a gentleman complained about people who don’t pick up after their dogs and those who sit and watch their dogs dig holes that his show dogs trip and hurt themselves in.  He suggested security cameras and signs warning of fines and banishment; it works at the Kennel Club.  After picking up after such people and filling holes with loose gravel frequently, I can’t disagree.  That is, once I use up the large, loose gravel in the large dog pen and replace it with 4 x 8 sand, a much nicer walking surface.

Earlier in the week, I’d noticed a china plate broken in several pieces in the middle of Greenwood at Rogue River Avenue, while walking my dog just as it was getting light.  Since I wasn’t picking up litter, I figured I’d come back later in the day and get it.  I should have at least moved it out of the road.  I forgot to get it that day, and on my way home Friday, I saw that it had been run over, divided and multiplied all over the street for half a block, like paper under a lawn mower.  I couldn’t pick it up Saturday in the time available, but I went back Sunday and swept it off the street after working Schroeder.

I didn’t stop to pick up litter at the Intersection of the Redwoods with Petey in the truck as I had done previously, since I planned to come right back and start Redwood Avenue that day.  I took Petey home; had lunch; swept up the broken plate; and proceeded toward Redwood.  But the litter on the Caveman Bridge made me stop on the other side and pick up both sides of it and the area between it and my truck.

While I was doing so, I reflected that the Chamber of Commerce could sponsor weekly cleanup of the Caveman Bridge.  Or another business could; one $500 Super Sponsor should be enough for that landmark.  Another could sponsor the 7^th Street Bridge, or the Parkway Bridge, or the Intersection of the Redwoods for weekly cleanup.  Several could sponsor Baker Park, or the underside of the Caveman Bridge.  Ideas were really flowing, because I had gotten my first donation in the mail (as opposed to being handed to me) a few days before.  I needed to set up sponsor pages and places to sponsor, and then start personally asking people to sponsor my work.  People with money like to be asked personally to give it to good causes.

When I finally got down to Redwood Avenue, I started at the beginning, where the divider between it and Redwood Highway starts.  The north side was very dirty with mostly small litter, it being all pavement at that point in front of the county fairgrounds property.  There is a lot of dirt and gravel on the pavement in the area between the parking lots and street, which attracts small litter but doesn’t hold much big stuff.  People tend to throw their litter where it will not look out of place.  The divider on the south held mainly cigarette butts; I moved back and forth as the mood took me and traffic allowed.  Cigarette butts show up first and everywhere; tobacco smokers are naturally careless.

Larger litter started showing up more where there were plants like blackberries to hide it, which there are in front of the grandstands, where there is also long, white “saw horse” barrier left lying on the ground, too heavy for me to set up straight alone, so I left it.  In the wide gravel stretch just before the fence, someone had scattered what appeared to be a 500-piece puzzle.  I did not have the patience for every piece; I figure I’ll pick up a batch every time I start down the Avenue, and get them all sooner or later.

Yes, I intend to start from the beginning every weekend.  I hate to let a place I’ve cleaned get dirty.  We’ll see how long that lasts, or how far I can get.

Lots of big litter started at the fence, with shrubs and taller weeds to hide food and drink trash.  I got as far as the main entrance to the YMCA in the four hours I was working on Redwood that day, and collected only 2 big bags of trash, which I dropped off in the All Sports Park at the trash cans near the tennis court and bathroom. 

Each piece of little litter takes as much time to pick up as larger litter, except where one can sweep them up.  For each piece of litter one can see from a car, there are 50-100 unseen pieces that must be picked up, one by one.  But even the smallest glitter of glass or balled-up gum wrapper can be seen by a person walking, and attracts more and larger litter, which is why they all must be picked up.