On Saturday I dug out a trash bag and a pair of gardening gloves and walked down to Pleasant Hill Cemetery to pick up trash.
I go to the cemetery a couple of times a year to take pictures. Seems weird, I know, but you can get some great effects of light and shadow, and textures. The cemetery abuts the Burbank experimental farm and it’s nice to walk through there in the spring and fall. It’s peaceful. I guess because I do take photos there sometimes, I started feeling a bit proprietary about the place, and two weeks ago, when I was there, I noticed a lot of trash in one area of the cemetery, the corner bordered by Highway 12 and Pleasant Hill Road.
This is the oldest part of the place and has the most trees and cover. It is across the street from the 7-11 store and the deli. Since the town of Sebastopol banned alcohol in the little park on Pleasant Hill and Valentine, this is probably the closest quiet place to come and take a break. Still, can’t you carry out your own trash? And that reminds me; who is the genius who decided we needed 24-ounce cans of malt liquor, anyway?
I came home with a big trash bag three-quarters full, and I only looked around that one corner. Malt liquor cans and bottles, plenty—at least they recycle. Plastic tops from cold drink cups, some with the plastic straws still stuck through them. Snapple and Sobe bottles, plastic and glass. In case you are wondering, these were tossed aside in the grass, not set up on graves to hold flowers. The bottles and coffee cans that were resting on gravesites, some with artificial flowers still in them, I left alone. I also left bits of things that were the remains of artificial flowers that had rolled or blown away from their intended memorial. I suppose next time I should pick those up. What else? Gum wrappers—a lot of those. Plastic cookie packages. In my zeal to pick up stuff I ruined one of the best still life pictures ever; an old headstone from the 1920’s, with a pair of sweat pants folded up against it, a malt liquor can slanted diagonally across the sweat pants. I took the can. I left the pants. Maybe someone will come back for them.
If you left your pants in the cemetery, wouldn’t you notice?