The warm days are finally here, and more people can be seen in the parks. Jogging, cycling, strolling, sitting in the sun. Soon they will be picnicking, barbecuing, playing softball, lying on the beaches or the grass. Such happy people. And such slobs.
A harsh word, slobs. But I can`t think of any other way to put it. The amazing numbers tell the story.
This year, if it is anything like last year or the year before, park laborers will pick up 25,500 tons of garbage from Chicago`s 500-plus parks.
I don`t like measuring anything in tons. Pounds are more impressive. So if we break those 25,500 tons into pounds, it comes to 51,000,000.
Now that is a real number: 51,000,000. For those who flunked math, you pronounce it 51 million.
The figure is even more impressive if you look at it another way. It comes to almost 19 pounds for every person in Chicago: man, woman, child or anything in between.
We know that not all Chicagoans use the parks. Some people don`t care to commune with nature. Or they don`t care to commune with muggers, boom boxers or perverts.
So that means that someone else is bringing in the 19 pounds of garbage for the non-user. That means that if you don`t use the park, someone else is dumping your allotted 19 pounds. Which means he or she is a 38-pound dumper.
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And that doesn`t seem fair, since even the non-dumpers are paying the taxes to cover the $4 million or more it costs to pick up the park garbage.
Now, much of this garbage is put where it belongs, in the cans that are provided by the Park District.
But an enormous amount of it is tossed hither and yon, up and down, some of the strangest things in some the damnedest places.
When Ben Bentley was public-relations man for the parks, he once said, in a trembling voice: ”On a Monday morning after a hot weekend, there are things out there in the grass that I won`t even describe because they would make you sick, and they make me sick just thinking about them. Diapers and underwear and sex things and stuff of a very personal nature.”
I remember one of my softball teammates sliding into second base, then writhing in pain. We thought he had jammed an ankle or knee.
It turned out that he had been stabbed in the hip with a chicken bone. To this day, I don`t understand the mind-set of someone who would toss a chicken bone in the basepath near second base.
Not only was the chicken-bone wound painful, requiring stitches and shots, but even worse, he was my best player and was lost for two games. And from then on, he was afraid to slide. And who could blame him? The next time it might be the bone of a large turkey.
That was when I made a proposal for a new law that I have repeated under the administrations of six mayors.
It`s my belief that nagging, preaching and posting signs about littering doesn`t accomplish much. There are people who can be surrounded by waste baskets, but they will drop their chicken bone or plastic cup or diaper where they sit.
So I have suggested in the past, and I`m doing it again, that the law be changed to increase the penalty for littering in the parks.
It should be an act punishable by public hanging. And by public, I mean in the parks, where the lifeless bodies of the offenders could be left to dangle and twist from tree limbs. Maybe with a sign on the stiff`s chest that says:
”He littered.
”You could be next.
”Please deposit trash in cans,
”And we won`t hang you.”
That might sound excessively stern to some, especially those of the bleeding-heart persuasion, but I`m not talking about hanging every person who tosses a hot-dog wrapper or a used sexual device into the grass or sand. That would be barbaric.
But maybe a dozen or so scattered around the big parks-Lincoln, Grant, Jackson, Washington-and only one in each of the smaller neighborhood parks.
As I said, I`ve made this proposal during the administrations of six mayors, but, alas, I`ve been ignored. The only person to share my enthusiasm was the late Jay McMullen, the husband of Mayor Jane Byrne.
When I suggested a hanging law to him, he said: ”I like it and I`ll mention it to Jane, but I think we might run into flak from some of the liberals.”
But he didn`t follow through. Which is why I wasn`t surprised when she lost the next election.
If they had listened to me, she might still be mayor.