Graduations are behind us so now, so bring on the summertime. June weddings abound. The swimming pool is getting good use and vacation time has started. Church camps are coming and I hope we can all have a safe summer.

I think back over the years and remember how happy I was for school to “finally” be out. I wasn’t much for sitting in a classroom, with its stinky smell of eraser dust, books and so forth. It was good to be ready to go visit grandparents and enjoy the freedom of being a kid in Oklahoma. Of course, I forget the hard work in the fields and long bouts with grandpa’s hoe and the killing heat of July.

And this happened to me a few years ago here in Allen, a confluence of an overabundance of visiting grandkids (if such a thing is possible) and trips to the local City Park. For reasons unknown to me, my grandkids always loved to play on the outdated rusty playground equipment in Allen Park. Some of this equipment seemed dangerous to me but those items were their favorite. “Wish we had a park like this in Florida,” said one little granddaughter.

I thought of the playground near her home in Fort Lauderdale and wondered what the heck she was talking about, but I guess she had her preferences. The next day we went back and again as I looked about, the park looked pretty sad to me. Trash was strewed about. Cans and bottles lay just where they had been tossed so I just told the kids that we were going to clean it up. And we did. I suppose it shows that they were pretty pressed on what things they wanted to do.

The kids turned to and in a very few minutes the trash was stowed away and one asked, “why do they throw their cans and trash on the ground? There are trash barrels around the park.” It was a good question and one many of us wonder about to this day. Just this weekend I was driving behind a pickup truck and in the space of two blocks they pretty well cleaned out their truck by simply tossing their garbage out the window. So, the carnage goes on.

Since that time a few years ago, my wife and I try to spend a little time each week on picking up cans and bottles out of the roads and ditches around town. It helps a little I guess but what would really help is if we would educate ourselves and kids on how damaging it is to our town to simply be “trashy.” Let’s try to get those bottles where they should be. In the garbage cans.

Meanwhile let’s have a good summer, enjoy our town and of course, be sure and go to church Sunday.

Wayne Bullard, DPh cwaynebullard@gmail.com