Signals

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

What does it signal to you when you see a train car covered with graffiti? Or someone’s yard or home up to here in trash? Are these things so ubiquitous you don’t give them a thought?  

Laura was driving us home from a wedding in Western Kentucky this past Sunday, and I was looking out the windows and suddenly started noticing such conditions everywhere (including Tennessee and Georgia; I am not picking on Kentucky). I have also noticed that passenger train cars do not have graffiti; they must be stored in secure places.

The freight car situation indicates to me that (a) there is a large group of people that have no respect for other people’s property and (b) the property owners, the railroads, don’t care either. 

Don’t give me the old trope about when paint in spray cans was invented, that it's like blaming guns for holes in people. There are humans behind these things and humans that are accountable for these actions.  

Are these humans angry, self-centered, or something else? Who knows?

When it comes to someone’s home, yard, or larger landholdings, there are other factors at work. Mental or physical factors. If a person can’t physically clean up their property or home, as a good neighbor, you might gently ask them if you can help.

If the issue is mental factors, it could be they are seriously depressed (and I think hoarding is a subset of this).  

Think about it in your own case. If things get out of hand from your normal standard, isn’t it often because you cannot motivate yourself to pick up those newspapers, empty that trashcan or sweep the floor?

Big city sidewalks are a similar problem. So are homeless people living in squalor on streets, in alleyways, and so forth.  

None of this used to exist in our homes, on the railroad tracks or on city streets. When I was a kid, we lived next to the New York Central tracks in Troy, Ohio. The streets, including our street, crossed these tracks at a right angle. All the houses next to the tracks on all the streets were well maintained.  

The freight cars that went past were graffiti-free. We could go to Dayton to take in a movie or go to the big Sears store without encountering debris.

A boss I had many years ago who was from Finland, talked about coming to New York City in the 1950s.  He talked about how shiny and clean it was in those days. I think he used the word sparkling.

I don’t want to sound woke or suggest it will be an easy task, but it seems to me that if we collectively raise our standards and cleaned up our country, we would be in a lot better condition mentally as a country.  

This will take a huge effort, but I think the cost can be relatively small.  

Just maybe some of our other problems would melt away if we stopped living in the clutter and debris.  

Raise your standards, please.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.