JULY/AUGUST 1987:  After living in Albuquerque, New Mexico for 14 years, I returned to the family homestead to become a 'born-again Milwaukean'.  My mother, not believing in idleness - especially on my part - roped me into attending the next Big 3 Block Club meeting.  The 'Big 3' stood for the three contiguous blocks where our family had lived since 1950.

During the meeting, I volunteered to help clean-up the streets and alleys in our area some Saturday morning.  That next morning the President, Vice-President, another resident and I cleaned up the litter from the front yards, gutters and streets of our three blocks.  We had help on the V-P's and my block from my mother and on the President's from her husband.  No one from the third block showed-up to help.

We also cleaned up some major trash areas in the alley next door to the President's home, including some that had been sitting in the open in the alley for several months - the sanitation department not touching anything that's not in a cart!?

Although we all agreed to show up the next Saturday to do the same, I was the only one who actually showed up.  Subsequently, my mother and I just picked up the litter from the front yards, gutters and street of our own block until the weather got too cold.

MARCH/APRIL 1988:  Once the weather started getting warmer, I began venturing outside, again; this time spending more time in the alley than on the street.  

Some days, I sat on the concrete bench formed by the backside of the garage slab across the alley - mainly to take a mental break from the computer re-programming I'd been doing -- it having been put off until this move back to Milwaukee from Albuquerque.

As a side bar, one of the things that initially happened while I sat in the alley was that each new group of Black kids usually ran their fingers through my silky blond hair - sometimes asking first, mostly not.  Not wanting to make shy kids even more so, I always gave permission or made no big deal of the unpermitted intrusion.  It seemed to be an indication that these kids didn't hang around very many, if any White people.

On one of these days, while paying attention to the 4 to 9 year old kids playing in the alley, two 4 year olds stopped playing and began beating each other up.  As a distraction to stop the fighting, I suggested a round trip foot race from one tar line to another down by the telephone pole at the end of the alley - a total distance of about 200 feet.

Well, you'd've thunk these kids had never been associated with anything as exciting as this in their lives!  Not only did this get rid of all thoughts of `beating the tar out of each other', it spread to the older kids until we had races going four kids at a time for the next hour, or so.  My first though was:

Boy, THESE KIDS ARE REALLY HARD-UP FOR ENTERTAINMENT - they are STARVED for attention and any type of meaningful recreation!

APRIL/MAY 1988:  Having decided to shut down my business rather than restart it in Wisconsin, I began devoting all my energies to the youth in my neighborhood.  Our 3 blocks had more than 300 kids living on them - half of them being on the streets and in the alleys during most of each day.  My first priority was to find out who they were and what they were doing.  An efficient method of becoming acquainted also involved helping our neighborhood at the same time - clean-ups.

The initial alley clean-up began around this time.  Two 11 year old girls, one from our neighborhood and the other a cousin from 47th, were especially helpful.  Rewards of a can of soda and a bag of raisins were given to each helper around this time.  But, the greater reward to the girls was just the chance to have some sort of meaningful interaction with an adult - we could work, joke and learn from each other while accomplishing something worthwhile.  [ There were other girls of the same age in this neighborhood at the time whose motivations for involvement with an adult male were more pecuniary in nature - their solicitousness being more associated with the oldest profession in the world (and their family) than with a desire to learn anything from (or about) a new adult man in the hood. ]

The alley clean-up routine evolved into an opportunistic venture - typical of almost any type of activity in neighborhoods stressing to their breaking point by poverty and ignorance.  I waited until the kids suggested a clean-up - having quickly learned not to push anythjing unless I wanted to do it entirely by myself, which itself wasn't a problem but didn't accomplish my objective of getting kids involved in any type of decency instilling and social bonding activity.

During these clean-ups, each child was issued a pair of cotton gloves, a cleaning implement and a task.  We went up and down the alley picking up the loose litter and placing it in the nearest can.  Large industrial strength brooms, shovels, dust pans and foxtail-type hand brushes helped us accomplish our objectives.  The kids couldn't have been more enthusiastic - they loved it and usually fought over who got to use the largest broom or shovel.  Some wanted to work near me - others were perfectly happy on their own - sometimes bossing 'their' helpers around.

We got those areas near where the kids lived first.  During the growing season, my pruning tools were used to cut and remove weeds and wild tree growth from the fenced areas abutting the alley.  On a few occasions, one of the older boys or girls used the pruning shears under my close supervision - me making sure they didn't cut anything that would involve human blood.  (We never did have any 'serious' accidents - minor cuts or bruises usually resulted from too much enthusiasm around all the broken glass in the alley.)

MAY/JUNE 1988:  The first of four street and gutter clean-ups was begun - the last taking only a couple of hours.  It involved sweeping the street and gutter dirt and debris into scattered piles.  A 7 year old who liked interacting with me, as I did with him, was the best helper.  He followed along with the foxtail, dustpan and an empty garbage cart - placing the neatly piled litter in it.  His siblings also helped pick up the larger litter from lawns and sidewalks - albeit with repeated proddings and encouragement from me.  (Another 2 year old sister wanted to join the 'fun', too, but was too young and had to wait until the following year before she could work along with the rest of us.)

The older brother (a kid who wouldn't have been caught doing any of this a couple months ago and still wouldn't be caught doing it on his own block) was in 2nd grade.  He had a tough time spelling cat, bat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat and sat and couldn't notice the similarity in any of those words!??  (He wasn't dumb.  He just hadn't been raised in an environment where children were read to - where rhyming and word associations were a learning game.)

Following all this work-fun, the 7 year old got a soda and three bags of raisins.  His 3 year old sister got a soda and one bag of raisins.  The four year old actually got nothing since he really only `voluntarily' started helping toward the end - when the rewards were in sight.  I told him that I wasn't training hustlers and con-artists, so he would only get a soda and not a bag of raisins.  That was too much for his `highly' independent spirit and he went home crying in a huff.  (Eventually, he ceased crying as a ploy to get to me - I long before that having learned to ignore such tactics by uncooperative children.  His strategy evolved into just leaving in a huff.  My challenge was to get him to maintain his independence and spirit without breaking it, but also to channel it in a more constructive and rewarding direction - a policy never reinforced by anyone else around him and which ultimately didn't work.  He's been in prison since age 17 for having been party to an armed car-jacking.)

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988:  At this point, my routine was to go out in the alley and street each morning to pick up the stray litter blown by the wind or dropped by `adults' the previous evening.  I usually covered the area from the first house north of ours to the end of the block - five houses on each side of the street and alley.  The debris in the alley was not as numerous and consistent as that in the street.  (Aluminum cans have always been recycled for cash.  Glass bottles were and still are retrieved on sight - it being easier to pick-up one jar rather than 1,000 pieces of broken glass.  Those hard bottles, along with sticks, rocks and anything else that can easily fit in a child's or adult's hand are also easy weapons of opportunity - removing them also diminishes the likelihood of having dangerous street and alley fights in the neighborhood.)

Eventually, it usually took less than 5 minutes each morning to clean-up all the litter on our street - the process also gave me the chance and excuse to talk to my neighbors, especially the new ones who came and went from some rental flats almost every month.  (When living in Albuquerque, the same sort of clean-up routine was done around the larger than normal corner lot I owned (shown to the right) - a northwest corner location that caught all the debris blown along by the strong winds from the south.  Transient litter was also dropped by children - mostly having come from the fast food hamburger place a few blocks south near the local high school.)

Our family used an old 45lb Sears laundry soap box kept on the porch to store litter until it was full enough to take to the alley garbage cart.  This flap-top box was decorated with shelf paper by my mother.  Eventually, many neighbors did the same or used 5 gal plastic buckets.  Some still attach plastic bags to the posts or fences in their front yards to hold litter. |benigNeglect|home

Website link/location/URL: http://Ruben.Ciriacks.com/litter.htm