By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

A few weeks ago while sitting at a red light at the intersection of Airport and Government, I was shocked to see the person in the truck in front of me unceremoniously dump five or six empty beer bottles into the park. Actually, shocked is an understatement. My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

There’s littering, and then there’s LITTERING! I couldn’t imagine trying to operate a stick shift with the cajones it would take to just hurl an entire six pack into a park in broad daylight while sitting still. I wanted to do something about it – call the cops or something, but I wasn’t sure what I could do.

These were clearly rednecks, so honking and glaring were bound to produce gunshot wounds that would probably upset my wife and children. So that was out. Ramming them with the Moonbuggy was unlikely to do much since their truck was much larger, so I nixed that plan. Then, as the light turned green and we began to move forward, I saw the strategically placed sign urging me to rat these losers out to Keep Mobile Beautiful. So I whipped out the cell phone and called in a description of the evildoers, along with the license number.

I must admit, “dropping a dime” on somebody never felt so good. (Note to younger readers: At one point, pay phones cost just a dime, thus the term “dropping a dime” meant making a call to tattle on someone. Nowadays, you’d have to say “dropping 35 cents on someone,” which sounds stupid.)

Turns out, I was on the cutting edge of a new campaign in which Mayor Sam “Gladbag” Jones envisions us all dropping proverbial dimes on one another for littering. Jones is fed up with the trash and litter scattered across our sort-of-fair city, and he wants to do something about it. I couldn’t agree more.

Ever since Sam Jones started talking publicly about getting rid of trash and litter, which he’s calling “Operation Clean City,” my eyes have been opened. Man, there is trash all over this town! People around here apparently think it is just fine to toss out bottles, cans, diapers, grocery bags and Depends adult undergarments.

I even heard second-hand the other day about someone charged with keeping the grounds of a local hospital clean finding a woman’s “weave” tossed out in a parking lot. (Note to older readers: A “weave” is a piece of hair “woven” into someone’s natural hair in a way that makes that person look as if he or she has longer hair or an animal on their head. Normally, weaves are not casually thrown out car windows.)

And then there’s the cigarette butts….

God help you smokers who think squirrels eat cigarette butts, that they dissolve in the rain or that seagulls use them to make nests. Who knows what you’re thinking, but many of you – MANY OF YOU – think it is your right to flip, stomp, stub, grind and flick butts into almost any open space. Look around at any roadside or along any sidewalk in town and you’ll see thousands of cigarette butts. In fact, just about every roadside in town is full of butts, cans, bottles and weaves.

“It’s disgusting. I call them roadside landfills,” said Bob Haskins the coordinator for Keep Mobile Beautiful. Haskins is Jones’ point man in this new push against litter, and he is Dirty-Harry serious about getting it done. I called Haskins to find out about the litter crusade, but also for personal reasons. I wanted to know what happened to the rednecks I ratted out a couple of weeks ago. I was hoping they’d been executed, but apparently the “Litterbug Hotline” doesn’t carry that stiff a penalty.

“We send them a letter with a car litterbag and a static-cling window sticker,” Haskins said. “It does not have any real weight to it, but it’s a reminder that somebody saw them littering.”

OK, that was a little disappointing. These jerks trash-up the park and get a cool car litterbag as a reward. I’m sure they were too illiterate to even read the letter. But Haskins picked my spirits up like an old, discarded weave when he told me the letters have indeed prompted calls from offenders who promised to mend their wicked ways. Even a Keep Mobile Beautiful board member was turned in on the hotline once – apparently the member’s kid was a litterbug. Parents are always the last to know.

Haskins wants an Azalea City where we don’t hesitate to rat out litterbugs, even for something as small as tossing the ubiquitous cancer stick remnants. He would like all of us to plug the Litterbug Hotline digits into our cell phones, so I’m doing it. For non-Cingular customers, that’s 208-6025. Cingular users can just dial #562 (#KMB).

Once the message starts, just hit # to cut through all the rigmarole, and leave a description of the vehicle, location of the offense, whether it was the driver or passenger, a license tag number and what you thought was tossed from the car. Oh yeah, this is only for moving offenses. If you want to report other types of littering, you can call 208-7999.

Sure, all of this may seem a bit “Big Brotherish,” but it’s not like you’d be ratting out people for not paying their taxes or running a meth lab. These are litterbugs, they deserve no quarter. Personally, I can’t wait to snitch on a few more.

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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