Little Things Jack Maley

I know for a fact that my grandfather picked up every single piece of trash he saw. It didn’t matter where he was (in town, at church, on the beach), or what it was (a receipt, a broken beer bottle, a plastic fork); he was going to pick it up. It was his personal, endless responsibility to make his town of Pine Mountain, Georgia cleaner and prettier, one piece of trash at a time.

Yes, embarrassing as it could be to the younger me, my grandfather was the de facto trash man. I would always roll my eyes in the most pre-teen way possible whenever he stopped his truck on the side of the road, just to pick up an old crumpled Doritos bag. But in hindsight, it was his own way of making a difference in the world. My grandfather believed that if you wanted to change something, you had to take personal ownership of the issue and do it yourself. He wanted to make his town as beautiful as possible, and the best way to get started was to bend down and pick up a piece of trash.