There have been bitter complaints lately on social media about shoals of trash left behind after soccer matches, softball games, and pickup basketball in our East Hampton parks, particularly the town's recreational facility on Abraham's Path in Amagansett. Video clips from concerned citizens show bottles of Modelo, half-drunk, abandoned by the courts; bottle caps peppering the grass; bags and Poland Spring bottles under bleachers, and six-packs blowing in the wind.
Garbage doesn't belong on the ground. "Leave it as you found it" is the golden rule when it comes to our public spaces, from beaches to the Terry King ball field. Trashing our parks is, yes, a trashy habit and encountering the detritus of someone else's morning after on your morning walk can be infuriating. All that is obvious.
But there has been an open and ugly anti-immigrant tinge to some of the Facebook commentary, because of the fact that these sporting facilities are favorite gathering places for families and working people in our Latino communities. The message is that there is something wrong with the culture of "these people" and that East Hampton, and the U.S.A., were once pristine and litter-free.
How quickly we have forgotten the trash-tastic America of yesteryear.
Do you remember that bucolic scene from "Mad Men" in which the Draper family ends a day in the park with Don hurling his beer can into the trees and Betty flipping the picnic blanket to leave the sandwich wrappers and napkins on the grass? Yep. That's a true depiction of how trashy things were around here until the mid-1970s. It took decades of "Keep America Beautiful" commercials to change Americans' habits.
Do you remember the moviegoing audience, at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," unceremoniously dropping popcorn buckets on the floor of the cinema and strolling out as the credits rolled? We do. Yes, children, that went on throughout the 1980s.
Remember bottle dumps in the woods?
Plenty of native-born Bonackers can tell you, from experience, how they used to toss empty beer bottles out the window of a moving car or use beer cans as targets for BB guns, and sure as shooting those teenagers weren't tactfully picking them up afterward, either.
Norms change, and no ethnic group, minority community, or nation of origin has a lock on litter. Furthermore, garbage dumping at sports facilities is a problem that is eminently fixable.
The East Hampton Town Litter Action Committee, as we mentioned earlier this month, has been doing a bang-up job. We contacted them on this issue only yesterday, and expect they can do great things when they turn their attention to this flashpoint. Perhaps a sports-field cleanup day, bilingual "Give a Hoot" messaging in the schools, and/or signage by the stands? Instead of raging, let's fix this.