Leo's legacy isn't immune to litterbugs

A woman walked over to my desk the other day and she was carrying a pair of plastic grocery bags, one in each hand.

Her name is Barbara Prowell. The sacks, she said, were stuffed with trash.

The rude reality of littering, however, had not prompted Barbara's visit.

What she wanted to tell me was where she picked up all the swill: Along the Leo Adler Memorial Parkway.

Barbara emphasized that she hadn't been hoarding the garbage, either, so as to strengthen her case. Actually she filled the two sacks during a single stroll along the path that honors Leo Adler, Baker City's greatest philanthropist.

Barbara's story disappointed me.

But what's vastly more distressing, it seems to me, is that no part of her story surprised me even slightly.

I walk the Adler Parkway occasionally too and although it's tidier than, say, the barrow pit beside Interstate 84, the path is hardly immune to the slovenly habits of some people.

In other words the Parkway is pretty much like most places where people often go.

Barbara said she intended to tell her tale to Shannon Regan, who's the code enforcement officer for the city police.

I didn't discourage Barbara but I doubt Regan can do much to deter those we used to call "litterbugs" — a moniker I've always thought unusually apt because it puts the deliberate scatterers of trash on the same level, intellectually, as cockroaches and dung beetles.

Regan could cite someone for littering but she'd have to see the person doing it, which seems unlikely given that it takes all of a half-second to let a hamburger wrapper slip from your fingers.

Still and all, I share Barbara's frustration and I admire her tenacity at cleaning up after the cretins, in the manner of a mother who's forever returning her toddler's toys to a closet.

(Toddlers, of course, are not cretins — they don't know they're not supposed to leave stuff lying around.)

Jennifer Watkins feels much as I do about Barbara's crusade.

Jennifer is the city's community development director, and her duties include making sure the city's park spaces, including the Adler Parkway, are looked after.

"We see a lot of people out there picking up trash while they're walking, and we love to see that," Jennifer said on Tuesday.

It'd be better still, of course, if good deeds of that sort were never necessary.

I've littered. If I were confronted with the complete tally of my transgressions I'd probably blush in shame.

I think my record over the past couple decades is pretty nearly spotless, though, and I have stooped down to pocket scraps I've dropped as small and inconspicuous as the clear plastic wrapper of a butterscotch.

Nonetheless, I'm not nearly so selfless as Barbara. I tend to be satisfied with not contributing to littering plague, and I rarely try to make up for someone else's carelessness.

To be frank I've never understood littering — even when I was doing it.

I guess I can conceive of a situation in which littering, though not morally defensible, at least carries a certain logic. If you're driving on a remote stretch of highway, for instance, and you get stuck with some bit of refuse that exudes an especially noxious aroma, you might persuade yourself to heave it out the window rather than wait for the nearest trash can and subject your nostrils to prolonged abuse.

But I can't think of a single extenuating circumstance to explain why someone would think it not only acceptable, but also necessary, to toss a plastic water bottle or an empty soda cup into the bushes beside the Adler Parkway, or on a sidewalk, or in a store parking lot.

Littering, it seems to me, requires about as much effort as not littering. Garbage cans are so ubiquitous — there's at least a few along the Parkway — that to avoid every single receptacle requires a level of dedication which I would admire were it applied to some gainful pursuit.

Littering, of course, is but one of many manifestations of the human inclination to be simultaneously lazy and selfish.

And although I'm probably hopelessly naive I think that littering — unlike, say, some drivers' predilection for hunkering in the passing lane regardless of their speed — is a soluble problem, at least on the modest scale of the Adler Parkway.

The main reason for my optimism is that I doubt anyone truly believes littering is a good thing — even the litterers themselves. This is at least half the battle.

I harbor no such illusions about highway congestion. I'm certain that some drivers have convinced themselves that by occupying the passing lane they're protecting a significant number of fellow travelers from deadly crashes with reckless speeders.

The litterbugs, by contrast, would, I think, respond to a subtle reminder.

A nice woman brandishing bags of trash, for instance.

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald.