Here we come, to save Mother Nature!

		Above, Jeremy Jennings with a bag of treasures. Below, Will Howell and Jerad Hughes are thankful for waders.

By David E. Booker

Thirteen shopping carts, 23 bags of trash, 1 tire rim, 1 bike tire, 1 metal cage (in not too good a shape), 1 piece of rebar, 3 pieces of wood, 1 blanket, 2 jackets, 1 partial bed frame, and assorted other trash. The trash bags had a multitude of beer cans, liquor bottles, cough medicine bottles, pieces of cardboard and newspaper. That’s what was gathered during a First Creek Greenway cleanup on October 7th.

Some say the trash in the Greenway never ends, and they are correct. But the trash left by passersby, vagrants, and those in Old North Knoxville, who should know better, is in many ways less severe than it was when the cleanups began six years ago. And the work of volunteers through the years has earned Old North an adopt-a-stream recognition plague posted near the Broadway entrance to the Greenway.

Nine adults and three children from Old North Knoxville, as well as a crew of 6 people provided by Mike Stringfield, Work Project Coordinator for the State of Tennessee Dept. of Probation and Parole fanned out starting at the Broadway entrance and worked their way downstream and down the greenway paths for the fall cleanup. Thank you to Glenn R. Young, Jeremy Jennings, Margo and Jerad Hughes and their two nephews Dylan and Benjamin Kagan, Jerry Rivers, Will Howell, Jonathan Hickman, Beth, David and Lauren Booker of Old North for taking the time to clean up a part of the world we all share.

	Benjamin Kagan is helping the parolees keep their loads balanced.		Glenn Young and Dylan Kagan posing with the impressive pile of trash.