Who Stops?

March 26, 2025

For more than 20 years, Andy and I cleaned a 2.3-mile stretch of road for the Adopt-a-Highway program in Pennsylvania. When age and health problems prevented him from doing the work, I cleaned by myself for a few years.

Often, as I worked, people would honk their horns and wave as they drove past, a nice way of recognizing the improvement and expressing their appreciation. Their acknowledgment encouraged me when I got angry and frustrated, picking up all kind of trash, from beer bottles and McDonald’s wrappers to dirty diapers, tires, or a deer carcass in a trash bag.

A few months ago, I signed up to clean my road here in Ithaca. I’m in my 70s now, so this time I only volunteered to do one mile in each direction. It’s a part-residential, part-agricultural street, so there are fewer hidden spots where people can dump their rubbish in the woods or over a bank. The trash isn’t as bad, but it’s difficult work, climbing in and out of ditches, bending over, and fishing stuff out of cold water.

And yet, not one person has honked and waved.

Why is that?

I wonder if the answer has to do with income. In Susquehanna County Pennsylvania, the third poorest county in the state before gas fracking, people tend not to expect that anyone's going to do much to help them. Ithaca, on the other hand, where I live now, is fairly wealthy. It’s got two colleges, several indie bookstores, a great cinema, and numerous parks, trails, coffee shops, and restaurants.

Do people here expect others to take care of things for them, like keeping the roads clean? Maybe they just assume that someone should be doing those things.

I’m currently in a book group focused on climate change. A book we read earlier this month was A Fire So Wild by Sarah S. Grossman. As a major wildfire begins to engulf the city of Berkeley, Sunny, a homeless man of Filipino descent, is trapped in a wealthy neighborhood when his car burns and he’s waiting for his partner who's waitressing at a charity party. Frantically, Sunny tries to get the attention of the people fleeing in their expensive cars, but no one stops for him.

Believe me, I’m not comparing my volunteer work as a road cleaner with a desperate man trapped in a raging fire. However, the book discussion and the cleanup came within days of each other and led me to wonder if there are any similarities.

Primarily, these musings make me determined to pay more attention to people who are in situations or engaged in activities that I might ordinarily overlook or take for granted.