May 2, 2006
Church of the litter-day saints
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No nation is perfect. You travel to observe, to enjoy but rarely to criticise.
All the same, I've been disappointed by the amount of litter beside country lanes. It is a constant presence, at least something every pace of an everyday stride.
When I noticed it, I thought what I saw must be the result of a rubbish bag left for collection, a bag that a fox or a cat had opened and searched without thought for the feelings of those who would follow. But the more I looked, the more I knew that wasn't so. Because the litter beside the roads is exclusively drink cans, bottles and takeaway food wrappings. It is the evidence of years of drivers tucking in as they go, then throwing what they no longer need out of the window. And there it lies until it rots, which would take centuries, or until someone collects it, which looks like taking just as long.
By contrast, signs every so often warn that the penalty for litter is some colossal fine or three months in jail or both. The trouble is that nobody cares.
And something else I noticed, happier this time...
All along my route, I have been passing blue signs telling me my road has been sponsored. Sometimes it's by a company but more usually it's but some society or club like the American Veterans of Foreign Wars (one of whose branches I passed, leading me to wonder - the Civil War apart - what unforeign wars America had fought). But as often as not, the road is sponsored by "the McFadden family" or by "Jim and Tracy and Jim Jr".
What difference it makes, I don't know. Every metre seemed sponsored by somebody or other and there were no unsponsored stretches to show the consequences of civic indifference.
And still on signs, it seems Virginia drivers can choose any number they wish for their car. Outside a post office, I found TEAAT4 parked next to CURVZ4U.
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TEAAT4 told me she had picked up the habit of afternoon tea while living in England with her husband, who was at "an American facility" there. CURVZ4U said she ran a chain of fitness gyms called Curves and was benefitting from the free publicity. But best of all was that she was eight months pregnant and her tight white T-shirt made it clear she had CURZ4HER as well.
My favourite, though, wasn't a number plate. It was a large plastic sticker across the top of a pick-up windscreen.
"Grumpy old man", it said. I went to talk to the grumpy old man. He said his daughter had given it to him. And given what it accused him of being, he hardly felt able to refuse it.
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