In a spirited game of Monopoly or gin rummy or lawn croquet, my lifelong friend Wayne Bryan can be a playful trash talker.
He is also a serious trash walker.
That is to say, during his brisk daily morning strolls for exercise through his Camarillo neighborhood he picks up litter. He also pulls weeds and sometimes prunes bushes, and when larger items of junk and discarded furniture sadly, but routinely, materialize on his route he loads them into a truck and hauls them off to the dump on his own dime.
It is a Sisyphean task, but the end result is Wayne’s World is as pristine as Disneyland’s Main Street USA.
“I take pride in keeping a three-mile stretch clean and litter-free,” Wayne says. “I hate to see trash or graffiti or weeds or even trees that need pruning. It actually makes me jump out of bed each morning at six o’clock to get out there and make things look better.”
Armed with a “grabber” — pinchers on the end of a stick — and high-octane vigor, Wayne estimates over the past year alone he has filled more than 100 lawn-sized plastic bags with trash as well as green waste.
A week ago, he ventured beyond his usual adopted roadway and supercharged his efforts by tackling a two-mile stretch of a busy city street, including the median between lanes, that had become a blight that saddened him whenever he drove by.
Five days in a row he jumped out of bed at sunrise and spent the next three hours in a dual role of volunteer garbage collector and gardener. By week’s end 15 hours of solo labors had filled 13 large bags with trash and litter, weeds and brush — and an eyesore, thanks to Wayne’s sore back, is now a sight to make eyes happy.
Hercules cleaning the Augean stables was no more impressive, especially when you consider the Greek hero was in his twenties when he undertook his famous 12 Labors while Wayne turned 79 earlier this summer.
“Picking up orange peels,” as John Wooden referred to his similar habit of cleaning up litter on his morning walks, has long been a labor of love for Wayne. His twin sons Mike and Bob even mentioned this during their induction ceremony into the International Tennis Hall of Fame last summer, sharing with the audience: “Each day when we made that seven-minute drive to the Cabrillo Racquet Club, if our dad ever saw a piece of trash on the side of the road he’d pull the car over and we’d jump out and pick it up. He’d often say to us, ‘Always leave the campsite cleaner than you found it.’ ”
Going even further back than Mike and Bob’s childhood, I take you to my own. In the 1970s, we young tennis players enthusiastically raced around the Cabrillo Racquet Club grounds after Saturday morning clinics frantically picking up discarded paper cups, cans, and wrappers as if we were hunting Easter eggs because Coach Wayne made it a fun competition.
Wayne would like to revive that spirit today in grand fashion.
“I dream of every school class in America having an annual kids’ trash pick-up day with a three-hour effort in their community,” he says. “Pick up trash. Or pull weeds. Or plant trees. Or paint over graffiti. Or all four! Get all their parents helping, too!”
Wayne added a plea to me: “Help me get the idea out there!”
And so I shall: Local schools, are you up to the challenge?
* * *
Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.
*
Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.