Every day when I drop my kids off at school there’s a choice to make. I can either, like most departing parents, turn left and join the stream of vehicles trundling to the busy intersection of Bains Road and U.S. Highway 61, where a traffic cop will deliver me into the federal highway morning traffic streaming frictionlessly south towards Baton Rouge. Or I can turn right to take a more circuitous, but far more scenic route: down Bains Road, then across LA Highway 10 to Joe Daniel Road as far as Highway 965. Then it’s left past Oakley Plantation, right on Audubon Lane to swoopy, tree-shaded 966, then a quick right onto Folkes Road to join U.S. 61 by the Thompson Creek bridge. In all, this option might add three minutes and a certain amount of steering to the morning commute, but since it traverses several of the Felicianas’ handsomest rural byways, the extra time seems a small price. Winding their way between cow pastures and country houses, Bains, Joe Daniel, and Audubon are all two-lane byways with pastoral views shaded by canopies of oak branches that frequently meet overhead. Driving this route I pass wildflowers and corn rows, grain bins, split-rail fences, creeks and ponds; and thirty-five-mph speed limits only occasionally tested by frantic moms jacked up on morning coffee and Spongebob Squarepants, gunning their Suburbans to beat the tardy bell. What you will not see, on Bains Road at least, is any litter. Not a single bit. And since that is a feature that distinguishes Bains Road from many other rural Louisiana roads, I’d like to take a moment to laud the man who keeps it that way. His name is John Charrier, but he prefers to be known as The Trash Man of Bains Road.
From our children’s school to Highway 10, Bains Road is three miles long. And more mornings than not, somewhere along that stretch drivers will spot a trim and quick-moving gentleman striding along, gathering the flotsam tossed from passing cars. Dressed in old pants, sturdy walking shoes, a woolly hat and dayglo vest, John Charrier patrols the entire road from Jaycock Road to Highway 10 armed with a plastic grocery bag, a cheerful wave, and a firm dedication to keeping a pretty rural thoroughfare free of the garbage that blights so many public spaces. A retired attorney and former daily runner until knee trouble forced him to look for alternative exercise, Charrier moves with the lithe economy of a man used to being in motion. “This is my thing. I don’t travel,” said Charrier when, having been waved at jauntily by him for the umpteenth time, I finally pulled over to say hello. “I can’t run anymore, so now I walk,” he said. “And since I was walking, I figured that I might as well pick up trash. People tell me that I shouldn’t lower myself by doing this. But this is what I do. It’s become a mission.”
Bains Road stays busy during the morning school run, and as cars swished by, many drivers greeted Charrier with hoots and waves that revealed true appreciation for the way he chooses to spend his mornings. The Trash Man always waves back. Invoking the Larry Niven quote about fools being protected by more capable fools, he noted that his wife used to worry that he would get hit walking the shoulder of the narrow, heavily traveled road. Apparently she wasn’t alone. Indicating the trademark high-visibility safety vest he wears, Charrier recalled the morning he was startled when a large pickup truck abruptly swerved to the shoulder in front of him. The driver, a worker at one of the nearby plants, thrust the vest out the window at him, snarling, “Put this on before you get run over!” Another time a nurse slowed down long enough to hand him a box of disposable rubber gloves, which, given some of the things he retrieves (condoms, diapers), looks like an altruistic act in its own right.
When I pass a junk food container or disemboweled La-Z-Boy dumped on the side of a pretty rural road, it makes me mad. I curse the “not-in-my-backyard” mentality that enables someone to drive a broken fridge out to an empty stretch of road and dump it into a ravine, but not to see that throwing trash onto the roadside is pretty much the same as pitching it into our shared, collective backyard. But the Trash Man of Bains Road isn’t angry. In fact he seems to derive genuine satisfaction from just doing something to make the backyard a better place. Like the time he happened across a debris field of garbage that included not only the usual beer cans and fast food wrappers, but also expired insurance cards complete with name and address. He picked it all up of course, and then, being a retired attorney, took great pleasure in composing a letter to the owner, thanking him for visiting our parish and noting that he appeared to have left some belongings by the roadside.
After all, it’s kind of rewarding to clean house. John Charrier’s house-pride just extends father beyond his front gate than most. Honestly, every morning when I drive that pretty, pristine stretch of scenic byway and return his jaunty wave, it’s enough to make me wish there was a trash man living along my stretch of scenic byway … Oh, wait. Perhaps it’s time to get a grocery bag and a dayglo vest, and go out for a walk of my own.
James Fox-Smith, publisher
* Is there a local litter hero quietly at work making your neck of the woods a better place? Send us a photo and we’ll add it to our Trash Man (and woman) Hall of Fame.
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