Keeping the fair clean no easy feat

Gene Criddle has been arriving at Arena Park at 6 a.m. for more than a week, wearing a bright orange vest over his shirt.

The Cape Girardeau resident, who typically cleans homes and rental properties for a living, has been part of the SEMO District Fair cleanup crew for five years.

With sometimes as many as a dozen people, a combination of volunteers and paid workers, they emptied barrels of trash, picked up litter and wiped down chairs and tables. They use brooms and dustpans for litter and damp rags for tables and chairs.

Jim Lunsford operated a stand selling cedar playhouses and spent part of Saturday making sure rocks and other debris didn't damage a water hose he was using for his camper.

"Whoever does the cleaning at the fair does a good job," he said. "That's a big job."

Criddle has been working as a fair janitor with his wife, Mary. He said the job pays $6.75 an hour. Last week he worked 108 hours.

"I go in at 6 a.m. and leave at 11 o'clock at night," he said.

The crew also cleared the roadsides from Capaha Park to Arena Park after Monday's parade, gathering up discarded flyers, paper cups and candy. During the fair, he watched size of the crowd moving through the midway to determine how often barrels needed emptying.

"Lots of 'em use the barrels but after dark, when they get to drinking, it gets pretty bad," he said.

This year, in addition to lots of scattered paper cups, he's seen more funnel cakes than usual strewn on the ground. The cleaners carried full bags, some punctured by used corn dog sticks, to one of six dumpsters scattered around Arena Park.

Mary Criddle, who works nights at Huck's Gas Station, said the long hours and ache-inducing work has some bonuses.

Last year, while cleaning the park after the fair closed, the couple found an air compressor. The machine, worth about $400, was left behind because its belt was broken. It could have ended up in the trash, but the Criddles took it home and spent $60 for a new belt. Gene Criddle has used it for everything from painting to fixing neighborhood children's bike tires.

They said another worker, a volunteer, found a $50 bill in the grandstands last year.

The clean-up crew will continue working through Wednesday. By then, Mary Criddle said, "You'll come out here and never know the fair was here."

While the fair was underway, Tim Arbeiter, vice president of community development for Cape Girardeau's Chamber of Commerce, met with city officials for a wider litter abatement plan.

Arbeiter is spokesman for the Keep Southeast Missouri Beautiful, comprised of Cape Girardeau, Scott City and Cape Girardeau County.

On Friday, he and city officials began developing an adopt-an-area program. They chose four major streets, Kingshighway, William, Broadway and the Mount Auburn/Lexington loop, with hopes of finding enough volunteers to clean half-mile sections of each.

"We're looking for a brief commitment from a group to take on that area," Arbeiter said. "Ideally, we'd like groups to commit to having someone or some people once a month go out and do litter pick up."

He said he'll be meeting with Cape Girardeau's Vision 2020 Community Relations board this month. Vision 2020 members have agreed to spread the beautification word to local service clubs.

"Vision 2020 sets a good example," he said, citing the group's ongoing cleanup on North Kingshighway. They will also help recruit volunteers for more cleanup crews.

Connie Hanner, news director for Withers Broadcasting and chairwoman of Vision 2020, said her board adopted a half-mile stretch of North Kingshighway, from Cape Girardeau County Park to Interstate 55, though the Missouri Department of Transportation.

The first few cleanup dates along that roadside took nearly three hours and resulted in more than 10 bags of trash, she said.

"When we first began, it was a lot of work, but as people see you cleaning up, they seem to throw out less," she said. "What used to take us two or three hours takes about 45 minutes with three or four people."

She said Vision 2020 members will work with the Keep Southeast Missouri Beautiful to develop a litter prevention program.

Arbeiter said Keep Southeast Missouri Beautiful volunteers will get, free of charge, the use of safety gear, such as bright orange vests, and trash bags.

According to Keep America Beautiful's Web site, www.kab.org, cigarette butts account for the most litter, 34 percent. The site also lists seven main causes of litter: people who don't use receptacles; motorists who don't use car ashtrays or litter bags; improperly covered business dumpsters; inadequate receptacles at loading docks and marinas; construction and demolition sites without receptacles or tarps to cover debris; trucks traveling with uncovered loads; and household trash scattered before or during collection.

To join Keep Southeast Missouri Beautiful, call Arbeiter at 335-3312; to join Vision 2020, call Hanner at 651-6286 or the city of Cape Girardeau at 334-1212.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127