The Quick and The Dead and The Trash

The other day I was driving down South Cannon, a key road here in Kannapolis. I saw a guy walking on the side of the road FLING a plastic bottle into the woods. It was repression rather than restraint that prevented me from turning the wheel and sending him flying into the woods as well.

There's garbage all along the roadside around here, and trash is constantly blowing into our yard, our gardens; plastic bags like smoke ghosts clinging in our branches. I've lived all my life in the American Southeast, so I'm accustomed to filth and litter all over the place, but it seems to be more concentrated in this depressed small town. Probably a stagnating vicious cycle... if the place is a trash bin, why bother being clean?

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I just finished The Quick and The Dead by Joy
Williams. At first I almost gave up on it because the adolescent characters seemed too arch to be believed, but I finally accepted the stylization and slid into a splendid examination of American Enigma. Consider reading it. Thank you.