Saturday, July 10, 2010

Litter Bugs or should I say Slobs

I will never understand the human race. What is it within us that makes people live and act like animals? I am speaking specifically about littering. Everyone sees it on a daily bases, people just throwing their waste on the streets. Usually it’s something small in nature, but that still doesn’t make it acceptable.

The other night I was driving up 5th Ave. near the police department substation and noticed that there was an abundance of garbage strewn about the streets. Everything from cups, wrappers, chip bags, bottles… you name it. I thought to myself, “the nerve of these people doing this right under the nose of the police department.” Some people just don’t care about the conditions that they live in let alone the conditions they make others live in.

The following night I attended the monthly city council meeting. During the public comment period several people got up and spoke about individual’s civil liberties and how they are being violated in the city of Troy. Let me preface my thoughts by saying I am not dismissing the notion that certain individual’s liberties may have been violated or not. That got me to thinking, what about my neighbors and my civil liberties? We are the ones who are trying to uphold some level of decency in our community while there is an overabundance of people who wish to crap on it. Excuse my language but this upsets me. Drive through South Troy or North Central and tell me if the majority of the people that live there care about OUR civil liberties. While there are a few people in those neighborhoods that do care and do their best to improve them by organizing weekly cleanups and even spend their own money to buy and plant flowers just for those who could care less continue to litter and kill and steal the flowers. To continue to see these things happen and hear the stories drives me insane.

This brings me to today while I was traveling up River Street and just as I was passing Flanagan Square I saw a woman throw two empty soda bottles, an assortment of wrappers, and cigarette butts out her parked car window onto the street. I pulled up alongside her and asked, “What the hell are you thinking?” She ignored me. So, I asked again, “why would you choose to do something like that?” She answered by saying, “What the “f” are you talking about?”

At this point I noticed that she was an adult woman, not a teen, just and immature adult. “Why would you throw your garbage all over the street like that,” I asked. She replied by telling me to get the “f” out of her way because she had to go into her house. I then asked, “You live here? Why couldn’t you have brought all that into the house and thrown it away?” At that point she called me a few choice words. I then gave her two options. I said, “Mam, I don’t appreciate people who treat my city as a dump. There are people who work hard to make the place we all live the best that it can be. I am asking you to put your ignorance aside and pick up what I just watched you throw out your window that happens to be in front of the house where you live and if you choose not to you’ll have to explain to the police why you choose to make all of us suffer because you choose to live like a slob.” She thought for a moment, climbed out of her car and picked up her mess and then some. I thanked her for making the right decision and continued on my merry way.

This is OUR Troy, we own it trough our hard work, sweat, and taxes. We need to stand up and fight for what’s ours and protect it, if not us who will? No one. And if that happens we’ll just waste away.

4 comments:

  1. You've hit on a point that many, many citizens within the South Troy and Uptown neighborhoods have been stomping our feet over for years to no avail. Thank you for stepping up to the plate and calling a slob a slob. It will take EVERY good and upright citizen of TROY, regardless of where they live, doing so in order to eliminate the apathy that WE have allowed to take hold of our CITY. Many individuals, like the slob in your story, feel "entitled" to be pigs. After all, everything is handed to them. They don't have to work for it. They don't EARN it. They don't care. It's that apathy we are fighting. It's a battle that will be won ONLY when EVERYONE stops to call a pig a pig.

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  2. This is a subject near and dear to me. Can you imagaine a grown woman throwing garbage out on the street in front of the very place she lives???? She doesn't mind seeing garbage in front of her house??? She is not embarrassed to have people visit her and see trash strewn in front of her building??? AND EVEN WORSE, she had the nerve to have an attitude when she was caught littering and asked to pick up her mess.

    I own a home on River street in Uptown Troy and every single day I walk out of my house to see all kinds of garage on the street. This garabge is caused mostly by people who do not work for a living as I do. They get free money and all kinds of help from the government while I work to earn my cash. There is an abundance of people like this living in South Troy and Uptown. These two neighborhoods seem to be a dumping ground for people who do not care to earn a living or have any desire to see clean streets when they look out of their windows.

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  3. Thank you thank you Jim for speaking out! We have endured this way too long, people that 'pop' up to live in our Community and make a craphole out of it. On my BLOG people complain that I am a complainer, what they don't care??? I guess they don't. We complain about them throwing their garbage out the 3rd floor windows to crash and break all over the sidewalk. They the rodents finish tearing it apart at night.If this is how you handle things where you 'use' to live, PLEASE go back! We won't miss you. Everyone should speak up about this when they see it and maybe....just maybe they will get the message!

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  4. Thanks for stepping up and calling out a slob for their part in trashing our city. I think The DartLady is right ... there's a whole "class" of people that live off money from our government. We have taught these people that it is someone else's job to put a roof over their head, food in their mouth, and apparently trash in the garbage.

    I have no problem w/ ASSISTANCE, but just this weekend I learned that the woman I was having a problem w/ next door was living entirely off our dime. Between Section 8 and SSI, her rent ($750/month) and utilities were covered. She was a rude, disrespectful slob, and I'm so glad she has moved out of that apartment.

    And we've actually created not one but TWO career-welfare classes ... let's not forget about the slumlord's who no problem housing these people who are trashing our neighborhoods, as long as they get paid to do so. We need landlords who care and invest in their properties ... not collect rent until their tenants destroy the place, then leave the city a vacant, decaying property.

    IT ALL NEEDS TO STOP.

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