Dear Editor,

Only a few years ago Rand McNally Company dubbed Danville the second-most beautiful small town in the entire United States. We were justly proud. If, however, the visiting team were to return to Danville today and drive some of our streets and county roads, their evaluation of us would almost certainly change for the worse. Why? In a word—litter!

Regularly, I run or cycle on Gentry Lane and North Buster Pike, and I drive North Third Street daily to and from my home. These days, all of them (in very different degrees) are afflicted by litter.  

The worst is Buster Pike. Here is what I saw last spring and summer. Green and brown bottles for beer and white bottles for whiskey; aluminum cans for beer (Busch and Budweiser) and soft drinks (Coke, Pepsi, and Mountain Dew); cups (Styrofoam for coffee and clear plastic for soft drinks); clear plastic bottles for water; plastic lids; straws (paper and plastic), large cardboard boxes for canned goods and small ones for takeout from McDonalds, DQ, and Fazoli’s; gallon-sized plastic milk bottles; gum wrappers; bottle caps; plastic grocery bags.

If that is not bad enough, Buster Pike featured large bags filled with garbage, a banjo, a full-sized mattress, and a dead deer. The dead deer is now just bones but is still there. Even now, there are still-full garbage bags hanging from the barbed wire fence where they, apparently, got hooked when flung from a moving vehicle. Happily, Gentry does not now have the larger items that Buster Pike does, but a couple of years ago that lovely, shaded road sported a discarded sofa and an end table.

North Third Street out to Ky. 2168 has not been littered in past years. Now, however, it has in less concentration than the other roads some cans, bottles, paper, an egg carton, two gallon-sized milk bottles and an inflated blue air mattress. Notice the ditch on the east side and the bushes on the west. And for the first time I can recall, there are even a few unsightly items on Brookside Drive in Streamland, which has always been pristine.

All of it will be picked up at the end of winter I have been assured, but why is any of it there in the first place? That’s my question. Why, lately, would anyone want to turn our beautiful town and county into an ugly dump? It is a question for which I have no good answer.

Milton Scarborough

Danville