My friend J and I have been walking pretty regularly for almost three years now. (Wow! Has it been that long?) Our normal path takes us south down Keeler Avenue, east on 18th Street, then north on Johnstone Ave until we get back to her house on 12th street.

We call ourselves The Old Bat Patrol. Along the way, we pick up garbage. We even have garbage sticks and t-shirts.

It’s pretty amazing to both of us just how much garbage accumulates along this path when we are pretty diligent in picking it up four days a week. The main things we pick up are pop cups, beer cans, cigarette packages and The Hometown Shopper. Lots and lots of copies of The Home Town Shopper.

The Home Town Shopper is a Bartlesville Examiner Enterprise production. It’s tossed in the yards of every house on our walking path on either Tuesday or Wednesday, I can’t be sure. We even get a copy on the lawn of The Big House, which is currently (and noticeably) unoccupied. I pick them up when I mow the grass.

We don’t have a subscription to the Examiner Enterprise but are still the recipient of this paper that goes straight from my lawn into my garbage can. I unrolled the one above so I could take a photo to add to this blog.

Dear Examiner- Enterprise,

No one is reading The Home Town Shopper which you so generously toss on our lawns each week.

They run over them with their lawnmowers.

Leaving little schnibbles for us to try and pick up.

They just leave them lay, until they are yellow and so many in number that J and I pick them up and throw them away for you.

Sometimes, they land in the street (or are put there!).

When they look like this

we can’t pick them up anymore. They’ve become one with the asphalt.

We love walking, including picking up the garbage. It’s good exercise and it makes us feel like we are doing something possitive for our neighborhood.

I do, however, feel sorry for the advertisers in the Examiner-Enterprise who believe that there are people actually seeing their advertisements in The Home Town Shopper. It’s clear that no one is reading these papers.

It might be time for the Examiner-Enterprise to get into the 21st century and find some better way to help their advertisers get their word out. Hey, twitter is free! 🙂