Palm Coast’s Litter Problem handled by Resident
“There are some things that bother some people that don’t bother others…”
Hmmm. That sounds like a certain glittery rule I’ve heard before, attributed to a certain famous historical figure. What was it again? I’m going blank.
Well, it’s also Bob Burness excuse — an excuse for taking it upon himself to make Palm Coast more attractive and wholesome by picking up all the discarded garbage he finds along his morning walking itinerancy. His route takes him around the West Pointe Plaza located at the southwest end of Palm Coast Parkway and also around the newer Publix, and some of Florida Park Drive.
That’s what he told us, anyway, when we asked to meet with him one morning in the AC after catching him anonymously in the act.
“Everyone has their thing,” said Bob, a Palm Coast samaritan/resident since December 2011. This is his…
*Who Bob is…how he got here…and who do we thank?
Other than this hobby/public service, Bob, who has a big 80th birthday ahead of him this month, is an enthusiastic golfer (his other main hobby as you can tell by his cap)who grew up admiring Jackie Robinson — the first African American to play baseball for the majors — for his dogged spirit and willingness to play to the end.
Before retiring to Palm Coast, Bob was a high school calculus teacher in Long Island, a job he’s grateful to have fallen into by being in the right place at the right time.
He first became aware of Palm Coast through a friend who already owned a condo here. We’ll call his friend “John.” John is former engineer and fellow math whiz. They’ve known each other since the sixth grade. Bob, not one ever to seek spotlight for himself, actually tried to get us to interview John instead of himself.
At the time, Bob and his wife were tired of the cold weather and the taxes. But they’d also lost a daughter.
For his wife, life in Long Island “had become a little traumatic. We’d drive down the same roads continually and she got a a little weepy.”
They met John in Jacksonville and viewed about six places with a realtor. Bob wasn’t crazy about any of them. However, John saw something he liked and ended up buying it and selling Bob his condo.
That worked out for everybody — including us! “Out of the 107 units in the condo, if I had my choice, that’s the one I would’ve picked,” Bob said. There’s a lot of homogenization in these condo communities, he added. But for him, the way it was situated was important.
In Long Island, he always had someone across the street, someone around the catty corner, and someone on each side of him. Here, there were just two units across the street. In one case, the owner was there only part-time, and in the other, there was a woman who lived by herself, a few doors down. In addition, there was an adjacent empty lot.
So get the picture that Bob likes his spaces clean and quiet. For him, the peacefulness and relative privacy was the main selling point here.
*Picking up after your neighbors…
Every once in a while, Bob stumbles across something that’s not trash, like the time he found a $20 bill. But that’s an anomaly.
Bob first started noticing debris, and getting irked by it, during his morning walks with J.R. — a proud, handsome beagle who had belonged to his late daughter. J.R. has since passed on, himself, but Bob still continues J.R.’s route everyday.
“You know, some things that bother some people don’t bother others. People who throw debris on the ground, it obviously doesn’t bother them.”
In fairness, people driving aren’t able to stop to pick up garbage and may not even be able to see it from their vantage point. Plus, it should be noted that I Love Palm Coast wants Palm Coast drivers to keep their collective eye on the road. So any roadside or sidewalk pickup is incumbent on walker citizens.
“So in my experience, if I go for a walk, I don’t want to see junk,” he said. “And that’s the motivation. Where I walk, I like to see it clean…
As far as Bob can tell, the service he provides is just him taking advantage of his retirement. Before he got ahold of his “grabber,” shown in the opening image, Bob was bending over each time to pick up the debris and place it in a paper bag.
A patrolman caught Bob in action one day and actually gave him his own trash picker. Bending over was good exercise, Bob said. But the grabber made it easier and afforded him greater purpose. Plus, he was able to reach more stuff — especially in the swales when they weren’t too wet to venture a little into.
However with that particular grabber, he promptly “busted it,” whacking plastic golf balls in his garage.
“There’s not much to a plastic ball, but I guess I put good speed on that one. And that was the end of the grabber.”
*Personal Impact…
“By accident, I happen to help some of the nearby businesses, because I’m actually seeing stuff on some of their lawns (or parking lots.) So I get a smile here and there from some of them,” he said.
As we mentioned before, that’s how we happened upon Bob in the first place.
“But it’s not to help them, actually — it’s indirectly helping them,” he said of the businesses. “But it’s just my own eyesight. I just don’t like to see that stuff.”
His proclivity for math, probably also has something to do with it.
“You want things to be equivalent, you know. You don’t want to leave a thing undone. In a sense, you like things to be the way they should be.”
When Bob taught calculus, he tried to keep ahead of the cream of students, staying up late at night, trying to complete the extra-credit problem. It was certainly a challenge as Calculus is a subject which attracts only the brightest.
In a way, that’s similar to his en route garbage mission in Palm Coast. “But it’s an impossible job, because the litterbugs are ahead of you.”
Yet, he doesn’t hold it against them.
