HAMLET - As one turns off of Highway 74 Business onto Old Laurinburg Road just east of Hamlet, an unmistakable, quite noticeable, and easily read sign is strategically posted. It is a warning sign, threatening no less than a $1000 fine for those who choose to litter the roadside.
Evidently, such a notice has little effect.
Monitoring of this stretch of country road from HW 74 on to Batten Road (a distance of less than mile) revealed that, at least for the few days of focused observation, a relatively surprising amount of trash had been mindlessly tossed out of vehicles on any given afternoon.
Surprisingly, though, return trips the following mornings found no litter anywhere to be seen. Debris scattered everywhere on both sides of the road one afternoon, but pristine clean the next morning! How was such a miracle transpiring? A trash ferry of some sort? Well … yeah, actually there IS!
To be more precise, there are at least THREE of them.
Investigative research visits to the same site over a period of days led to the sighting of two of these elusive creatures.
Ozie Felder, a resident of Dobbins Heights and assistant pastor at First Harvest Faith Christian Center on Batten Road, was discovered at about 10:00 a.m. one morning picking up the bottles, cans, bags, etc. that had accumulated over the previous day and night.
He was observed conducting a relatively laborious task. Driving a pick-up truck with a flat-bed trailer attached, Ozie, a 71 year-old military retiree, would park the vehicle, grab his plastic trash container, and proceed to walk along the side of the road, bending and collecting each piece of trash that he would come upon.
After trekking a hundred yards or so, he would cross the road and reverse his walk, replicating the procedure as he returned to his vehicle with an almost-full trash can.
“It’s just amazing how much trash gets thrown out along here,” said Ozie. “It takes me more than an hour to cover from the church to 74 highway.”
When asked as to why he does such a thing, Ozie is quick to give credit to the Lord. “It just seems to be a calling, I guess; God tells me that it is the right thing to do, so I do it.”
No pay. No recognition. No credit. No thanks. Yet he has been doing this for over two years.
But he has competition, so to speak: Another steward of this stretch of road is James Gulledge. Shortly after the Ozie Felder sighting, a return visit revealed James, 69, out there doing the same thing! And he’s been doing it even longer than Ozie!
When questioned, it was found that he had retired from the City of Rockingham Sanitation Division and thus knew a thing or two about this sort of work. Of course, he, too, receives no pay, no recognition, no credit, and no real thanks from anyone for his altruistic efforts.
James credits “Mrs. Warnock” from “farther down the road” for getting him started in the first place. “She would be out here real early in the morning, picking up the trash, so …. I just figured she could use some help.”
“I live just right up the road,” James said, “so I ride by this way every day.”
But “riding by” and taking the time to stop to pick up essentially two miles (a mile on each side of the road) of trash (normally about five trash bags full) almost every day are obviously totally different situations.
“Yeah, a lot of people ask me why I keep doing it, but …. it just seems to be the right thing to do, says James.
“The right thing to do!” Wow, now THERE’s a concept.
Wonder if all those litterbugs traveling along Old Laurinburg Road ever wonder where the trash disappears to each day after they so thoughtlessly toss it from their moving cars?
Perhaps simply holding onto their garbage until they get home to their OWN place (where they could dispose of it in the proper manner) is just too difficult of a chore(?)
Maybe THEY should stop to think about what constitutes “The right thing to do” and refrain from littering in the first place.
Ozie, James, and Mrs. Warnock would probably appreciate some time off.
