Adopt-A-Highway

---

WE CAME
WE STOOPED
WE PICKED UP THE TRASH

The morning of April 26th 2003 found nine members of the Onondaga Ski Club down at the intersection of routes 80 & 81, ready to brave the coolness and dampness. We were not going skiing at any of the areas nearby, nor did we have our bicycles with us. We were on a mission.

Our co-leaders, Mary Jo DiNuzzo and Neville Sachs, had earmarked that day for the spring cleanup of our chosen site in the Adopt-A-Highway program, the first weekend day after National Earth Day, April 22nd. Our task was to go one mile both north and south on Route 81 from the intersection with Route 80. Four lanes of blacktop divided by grassy median, wide expanses of grass on the outside of the lanes, plus the bridge area that goes over Route 80 is maybe 120 acres. Throwing out the actual highway area, it's still a lot of ground for nine people to cover in two hours…. or so.

While some of us were having the customary coffee at the local fast food emporium, Mary Jo made the assignments: Going north were Peter Huntington and Bill Beaudin. Dealing with the southern section took the rest of us. Because this area is usually messy, messy, one group starts at Route 80 and heads south while another group takes a car down to the cross-over and starts back. A certain amount of coordination is required to insure that the south bound group has a key to the vehicle left in the cross-over… be hell to get there and realize someone would have to go back to the start point, get the key, then walk back ( if they couldn't convince someone to drive them ) to the cross-over again. On this southern section we had Mary Jo, Don Goulet, and Neville Sachs taking the car down to the cross-over. Marilyn McCabe, Tom Button, Ken Kotwas, and this writer started out heading south via our feet.

The nine orange vested, hard hat covered club members started to carry out their assignments around 10 A.M., walking along the highway in the grassy areas looking for items people carelessly toss out the window. True, there are lots of vehicle pieces here and there left over from accidents or ???, but the greater part of this trash could just as easily been kept in the vehicle until a proper disposal site could be found. Sometimes there is a true find such as the time a working cell phone was retrieved. We found out it had been stolen, and the legal owner was relieved it was recovered. This time our group found a funnel, a Trojan still in it's sealed package, a porno magazine, many Snickers wrappers, two dead coyotes, a valid credit card ( no, we didn't have 'lunch' on the cardholder ), many empty wrappers to beef jerky, and a live snake that sprang up from the ground when uncovered. I don't think there's any connection linking all of these together, but 'ya never know.

Our scheduled cleanup is for two hours, but the southern end is such a mess that we ran over by quite a bit. In fact, the three 'pickers' in the photo didn't quit until 1:30. Ken, Tom and Don stayed with the program until the bitter end, actually getting to the cross-over at the southern border of our area. Kudos for these guys. Maybe the club should buy them each a new garbage can! Tom had an observation that deserves mention. Most of the fast food wrappers that were in this location actually came from the eatery at the intersection of Routes 81 and 20, a number of miles north of where we have our Adopt-A Highway area. I guess this means the wrappers from the one at our intersection wind up closer to Cortland.

Our next cleanup will take place sometime this fall. It would be super if we could get more than nine members to participate. Slobs are always going to discard out the vehicle window, so we'll always have some cleaning up to do.