What would Larry do?
Last Friday I pulled up to the recycling dumpster with a truck full of stuff, found it overflowing, and did what any reasonable person does - drove back home and waited for next week when the dumpster was empty. No big deal.
When I came back Monday, someone else had not been so patient. There was a pile of bottles and other recyclables sitting right next to where the dumpster had been. Just sitting there in the middle of the parking lot. A little monument to frustration.
As I backed the truck up and started unloading, it hit me pretty quickly: Nobody is coming to clean this up. So I did what Larry would have done - I picked it up and put it in the bin.
And I drove home thinking about that. Because the truth is, we'll never really know the full accounting of what Larry did for this community. The things he picked up. The things he fixed. The things he quietly made better without telling a soul. We've said it before in these pages and we'll probably say it again - he was a mensch.
But here's the thing: it's not just on Larry anymore. It's on all of us. This valley is a treasure, and treasures don't maintain themselves. It takes everybody doing the small things -the unglamorous, unnoticed, unremarkable things - to keep it that way.
~Pope |
