High End Trash?

I don't know if it's like this across the U.S., but in Atlanta, the Martin Luther King holiday is to be considered a "day on" instead of a "day off." Around these parts, if you have the "day off" of work, you do some sort of volunteer work rather than sleep in and waste the day away - in other words, a "day on." When I worked in Corporate America, my "day on" was to actually go to work; but in the government, it's a recognized holiday. So when I became a federal employee a few years ago, I started my own MLK day-on tradition - I pick up trash on our street.

Over the few years I've been doing this, the trash has changed. I don't know if you could say that the trash has "improved" but it certainly isn't the kind of trash we used to pick up when we first moved into this (neighbor)hood. Back in the day, the refuse consisted of endless mini zip-lock drug bags, Krispy Kreme doughnut boxes, Krystal burger wrappers, Wild Irish Rose bottles, Old English 800 cans, three week old copies of the rain-soaked local free newspaper, and cigarette butt after cigarette butt.

Yesterday,however, I had some unusual items turn up in my City of Decatur "pay as you throw" bag: an Amstel Light beer can, a snow-frosted week-old copy of the Wall Street Journal, an empty box of Boston Baked Beans candy, a Black and Mild Cherry Vanilla cigar wrapper, a high school report card with all A's and a B, and a to-go-box from the Buckhead Diner.

The Oakhurst trash is clearly moving up in the world...