I have a problem. The problem is my wife. Well, it’s my wife’s habit of picking up garbage along the roadsides as she walks.

I really don’t understand why our roadways are treated as garbage cans or why she has taken it upon herself to be a one-person trash removal team.

While in the Air Force for more than 21 years, I had an opportunity to see just about all of our great country. One thing I noticed is the absence of garbage littering the roadways in the Pacific Northwest. I did notice on a trip from Spokane to Columbus that once I hit the Tennessee state line garbage began to appear along the roadways. Was it just a Southern thing?

The habit of what appears to be many of our good neighbors to discard their fast food trash whenever and wherever they want certainly adds credence to the stereotype Northerners have of us Southerners as mentally challenged Neanderthals. You know Southerners are jerks clinging to their Bibles while guzzling cans of Billy Beer and using the empty cans for target practice.

Quite frankly, I don’t understand, because we seem to be proud of our beautiful environment and love to get out in the countryside to go fishing, hunting or hiking.

That said, doesn’t it make sense that we would desire to protect the environment we both love and depend upon for our recreation and, possibly, livelihood.

I hope that I have made a serious error in judgment and that the refuse along the roads is not the product of those of us who live here, but rather strangers who visit and lack the appreciation we have for nature. I doubt that to be the case though as the amount of litter would seem to indicate its origin came from the hands of our friends and neighbors.

Perhaps the heaving of refuse is seen by the perpetrators as landscape design to beautify the countryside. It is not. It is simply trashy as are those self-professed “landscape artists.”

All this being said causes me to ask a question: “Does Houston County have any law regarding discarding of trash along its roads and, if so, why it is not enforced?” Indeed, if such regulations exist I would hope the penalty would be enough to discourage the trashy practice. Were the penalty sufficient enough perhaps the monies collected would offset the need for our continual, perpetual SPLOST.

Until the tossing of trash by our streets is stopped, I guess I will have to be supportive of the good intentions of my bride and help her clean the county. I wonder could we get a county contract for this service or go on the county’s payroll as part-time employees?

David Wittenberg resides in Kathleen. He can be contacted at dkw460@yahoo.com.