Trash Pickers Should Show Some Respect

To The Editor:

Tomorrow (Monday, May 21) is big trash pickup for residents of Marthasville.

After a weekend of backbreaking labor, my boyfriend and I set out trash to be hauled off. In the time it took us to drive to Washington and grab dinner at Taco Bell, I came home to find someone had ripped the bags open and strewed the contents all over my yard, the street and my neighbor’s yard.

This morning before work, I bagged it (again) and put a tarp over it. Soon, a slow-moving truck approached my house. I called out to the driver as he eyed my garbage, “Please don’t go through my trash.” He informed me that when I set the trash out “on the curb,” it was no longer my property.

What luck! I was about to be vandalized by someone versed in property law! To help delineate what was the “curb” and what was my front yard, I pulled my car in front of the trash.

I had to inform another lady that she was welcome to take the whole kit and caboodle, but she could not come on my property and rummage through it.

I am not against the thrill of finding a gem in a pile of garbage. I am against people coming into my front yard, breaking open bagged garbage and throwing it around my property and being told by strangers I have to let them do so.

It seems big trash day is more excitement than Marthasville can handle.