Why Doesn’t Somebody Do Something?

Have you ever complained about a problem for years—only to realize you could’ve started fixing it yourself?

Why do we often prefer protests, speeches, and criticism over picking up the first piece of “trash” in front of us?

What happens to a church, a family, or a community when everybody assumes “somebody else” will take responsibility?

I’ve enjoyed running at Triple Creek Park in Gallatin since I started working with the Hartsville Pike church on June 1 of last year. 

It has 185 acres, football, softball, baseball, and soccer fields, a playground, a frisbee disc golf course, and several miles of walking trails. 

This park is well maintained. The people who work there it are friendly. It’s a short distance from our apartment. 

About a month ago, I started noticing the trash: snack wrappers, Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes, water bottles, soft drink cans, gloves, napkins, diapers, dog droppings in plastic bags dropped at random places, a t-shirt, and washcloths.

The city provides trash cans well-spaced around the park. There’re several designated places with plastic bags and disposals for people with dogs who would like to keep the park clean. 

I observed how unfortunate it is that people are so irresponsible. They drop their trash anywhere they want to. I’ve noticed that once trash begins to accumulate, it becomes a magnet for other trash. Before long, it becomes a city dump. People know to bring their trash to that area because everybody does it. 

I wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about this. Then I remembered that I was somebody. I thought of things that I might do to eliminate this problem. 

As I was brainstorming during my run, I thought of what people do to address problems in our society. 

I could organize a protest. I could be advertise in the paper. We could set a time and date to march through downtown Gallatin. We could print attractive signs to let people know that garbage needs to be eliminated in our city parks.

However, that’d take a lot of time and money, and I don’t want to do that. 

My next thought was to go to a city council meeting and tell them how unfortunate it is that the beautiful park is being trashed by people who visit there. The Council permits citizens who wish to have three minutes to address any issue in the city. 

As I started planning this possibility, I thought I might take a minute and a half to suggest that the city hire personnel to keep the park clean. They spent $2 million dollars in 2022 to build a beautiful park. A proposed expansion of Triple Creek Park, announced in March 2026, is a $7.2 million project slated to add five more soccer and ball fields. It shouldn’t be disfigured the way it is. They could spend a small amount of money by hiring one or two more employees to keep it looking beautiful. 

I thought, as long as I was there, I could complain about high taxes and wonder why they had so many employees on the payroll. 

And then I realized that would be inconsistent. 

I considered writing a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. I’d tell them how much I’m enjoying their park and suggest that everyone do their part to keep it clean. The people who drop trash all over the park should be ashamed of themselves. 

I get the local newspaper and read all the letters to the editor. I then asked myself, in my decades of reading newspapers and the letters to the editor, what have I ever done as a result of reading one of those? I came up with a zero. 

I could post on Facebook and tell people how awful it is that people would trash a good park, hope they would read my post, realize the error of their ways, put their disposables in proper containers, and send me a thank-you post about how helpful I’d been. But I notice that many do that with political trash and it hasn’t worked well.

Up to this point, I didn’t like any of the ideas that came to mind. 

I then wondered what would happen if I started picking up the trash on the trail where I was running. It wasn’t long until I had a handful of trash. It was difficult to add more. 

But I noticed something interesting. When I picked up the trash as I started running, when I ran around the same trail the second time, there was much less trash.

On the third day, the first piece of trash I picked up was a Walmart plastic bag. I started putting the rest of the trash in the bag. I learned that that’s a lot easier than trying to hold all sizes and kinds of trash in my hand. 

I started getting a Walmart bag each morning as I left our apartment so that I’d have a receptacle for all the things people left by the side of the trail. This was much easier. 

I thought about what I should do with all the trash. I considered putting it in a big pile in a very conspicuous place and posting a sign, “You should be ashamed of leaving all this trash in this beautiful park.” And then I thought, what if somebody gets my sign and throws that into the trash pile? That would be a waste of time and effort for me to do that. 

I haven’t received much appreciation for what I’ve done. Two people have said thank you out of about a hundred that I’ve passed. Should I quit because few appreciate my efforts?

The disadvantage of being a garbage collector is that it slows down my time in running. But I’m not training for a marathon nor running in a race each morning. 

Also, during these runs during the past few weeks, I’ve reflected on my 65 years of preaching. In each congregation there’s been trash—things being done and said that are unkind and unhelpful. These things mar the beauty of what could be a great congregation. 

Also, the possible solutions others and I’ve tried that I thought of for handling the trash in Triple Creek Park haven’t worked.

Perhaps the best thing for me to do is the theme of a sermon that I’ve preached more than any other: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. 

Is my picture printed here?