As I was jogging down Blackjack Road to get home from the bar the other night, a handful of cars passed that aided my progress with their illuminating headlights. These headlights were not only helpful in guiding me down that poorly paved, dangerously unlit, country thoroughfare, but they also opened my eyes to the horrendous amount of garbage strewn across the shoulder of the road. Blackjack Road is a three-to-four-mile stretch of exquisite northeast Mississippi scenery. It happily leads nowhere, and the only people who seem to know it exists are the couple of hundred folks who call Blackjack their home. My roommate, Teabag, and I are two such souls who must endure teasing from our friends and families as they make light of our street name. Teabag and I enjoy the country living. Though we are only a couple of miles out, it seems like an eternity to civilization, and on our journeys to and from civilization (or Starkville, whichever we choose to venture to), we are pained by the ugly disarray that plagues our pitiful avenue.
I have never been an environmentalist or a conservationist, nor has Teabag. We both live our lives free of -isms, and I never would have noticed the epidemic of trash had it not been for that late-night 5K. Now in the blazing glow of daylight, the epidemic seems exponentially disgusting, and I cannot hide from the feeling that I should do something. Of course, at first, I believed these feelings to be self-imposed self-importance. Why would anyone listen to little, ole me? But then one morning, Teabag stepped from his kettle (his bedroom) with a disturbed (not mentally) look on his face, and he affirmed what I had been thinking. In a not so elegant, yet slurred matter-of-factness, Teabag stated that we should do something about “all that [poo] along the side of the [pooing] road.”
With the majority of the household in agreement (two out of three, for the dog was absent during the vote), we began a political action committee. We set an agenda and considered our policy options, and within one episode of the “Price is Right” and “Judge Judy,” we had devised a policy for the cleanup of Blackjack Road that was guaranteed to give us the results we wanted.
Our policy begins with individual citizen participation and not lobbying for governmental involvement. We thought this would be best because Blackjack runs outside of the city limits of Starkville; therefore, the city officials could provide no help. It also runs through the jurisdiction of two different county supervisors. This means to compel the county into action, it would take months of dealing with bureaucratic run-around. Teabag and I want quick results.
Our policy agenda begins with rallying interest and participation. We would begin by collecting pledges and donations. We would start with the hundred or so people who live along Blackjack Road and ask each of them to donate $10 and pledge two hours of one of their Saturdays to the cleanup.
With this pledge and donation, they instantly become a member of our unnamed political action committee. The $10 donation would go toward a breakfast or lunch (depending on the time of the day of the cleanup), garbage bags and one commemorative Hanes Beefy T. Of course, the shirt would be stylishly designed by me and Teabag and would say something witty, yet lowbrow, like “Don’t Bet on Littering on Blackjack.” If our calculations are correct, and if we received only half support for this project, then each individual would only be responsible for cleaning up 50 yards of Blackjack Road. That would only be a couple of hours of work. In essence, each individual would sacrifice $10 and two hours to receive breakfast/lunch, a T-shirt and most importantly, a litter-free road home. It seems plausible.
Of course, there are holes in our plan. Suppose our neighbors don’t share our enthusiasm about a litter-free Blackjack. Suppose they don’t want to give up time on their Saturday. Suppose they think Teabag and I are a couple of freeloading freethinkers looking for a couple of extra bucks, and they run us off their property. There are so many different issues that come into play. And soon, Teabag and I were overwhelmed.
Our political activism ended about as quickly as it began. Our political action committee turned out to be nothing more than a very intense Tuesday morning conversation. It began as a glimmering blaze of hope but slowly snuffed out into a cloud of deep, gray smoke.