Who Cleaned up the Park?

Mack Hall


Someone said that someone said that someone else said that the ‘net said that someone said that the sexiest accent in the world is Irish. Well, who could argue with that sourcing, eh?

Our own rural accents are admittedly pretty cool some of the time. A certain silver-haired cooking-show gal, for instance, has a lovely voice, but there’s just something de Medici about her intonation that makes one suspect that she knows where several shallow graves are located. But our East Texas accent, the sound of one long eyebrow whining, cannot be not recommended for public consumption or wide distribution.

Business people from East Texas should never do their own radio commercials. In the days of that “Iz iyit trewwwwwww? Iz iyit trewwwwwwwww? Iz iyit reelly trewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww?” thing my reflexes developed so efficiently that I could hit the OFF button long before the last syllable of the first “iz iyit trewwwwwwwwwwwww” faded away to die an agonized and prolonged Wagnerian death in some other sufferer’s ears.

One wonders how many professionally-made commercials with trained voices are missed because the radio listener kills the sound of an amateur’s unfortunate baying and doesn’t get back to the station until after he’s had therapy. If I were buying a commercial I would specify to the radio sales folks that my expensive and attractive commercial should never be positioned behind Nasal Bubba or Adenoidal Cletus lest the good commercial go unheard due to dead-air time.

Equally annoying is the endless repetition of a commercial. The public-service spot about two teen lads leaving a party when the drinking started was pretty cute the first two or three hundred times I heard it, but repetition, vain repetition, now sends my lightning fingers of radio death flying to the dial.

If you never listen to the radio, let me give you the exposition: two teens come home late at night, and are ambushed by Dad, who wonders why his sons are late and why they are wearing food (fathers are like that). They explain that they and some others wisely left an unchaperoned party when drinking began, and drove to a fast-food joint for, well, some fast-food. But they did not eat the food; they then motored to the park and, for reasons best known to teens, threw the food at each other. The wise father is amused at the narrative, proud of his sons for their mature judgment, and sends them upstairs for baths and bed.

Okay, fine, good message, cute presentation.

But upon hearing this fictional narrative several dozen times, one begins to wonder: who cleaned up the park?

Take-out food comes with layers of wrappings, a paper bag, tiny envelopes of salt and pepper, little plastic thingies with sauces, drinks in cups, straws for the drinks, a receipt, and so on. And then there’s the food itself, tacos and hamburgers in this story. All over the park, rotting and fly-blown and malodorous by the time the sun rises.

Littering is hardly to be compared to underaged drinking, but it’s still illegal in its own modest way, it’s not considerate, and someone has to clean up the mess.

I imagine anyone who grew up in the hungry 1930s latched on to the food wastage thing immediately. In a world in which there really are hungry children (I’m not talking about the fat boy waddling down the street with a bag of ‘tater chips in one hand and his cell ‘phone in the other), is this scenario a good idea? Will the lads keep a straight face as they help collect canned food for the genuinely poor at Thanksgiving and Christmas?

Well, we’ll leave the park cleanup crew to their work. Maybe they will enjoy listening to the radio while cleaning up the litter.