Where a clean start is in the bag

Clean-up volunteers in downtown Cape Girardeau discovered lost treasures on Saturday.

High school student Murielle Wyman found a love note from 2004 to an individual named Doyle. She read it, highlighting the spots with really bad grammar.

Other finds weren't so treasured.

"I no longer care about people who smoke cigarettes but about what they do with them after," David Jones said. "Today I had to bend over about 1,000 times for all the people who smoke cigarettes."

Ultimately, the work made downtown a cleaner place to be.

Two hundred hours were donated by 55 volunteers on Saturday. The orange-vested teams were tackling trash from Water to Sprigg streets and from Morgan Oak Street to Broadway by 10:30 a.m. equipped with 33-gallon trash bags, leaf blowers, safety goggles, weed trimmers, dustpans for glass, and rubber gloves.

Tim Arbeiter, executive director of the downtown development organization Old Town Cape, said he'd been planning the cleanup since mid-January and received a lot of help with organization from his wife, Pam.

Originally four groups were scheduled to pick up Saturday, but with additional volunteers the crowd of cleaners was divided into six groups. Organizations that participated Saturday included the South Side Optimists, the Zonta International organization of professional women, Sigma Nu fraternity members, Central High School students and members of the Mormon church.

Before heading out to different locations, volunteers were briefed by Arbeiter concerning assigned areas with an emphasis on safety.

"If it looks dangerous, it is dangerous. Don't pick it up," he said. "Just tell me about it, and we'll try to make other arrangements."

Some of the items found left volunteers disgusted: used condoms, diapers, ladies underwear, tampons.

Besides a $10 bill, three old tires, an antique iron, a broken-off syringe, an engine block, an air conditioner and a hair weave, Marvin McBride found a 2005 Illinois driver registration card, which will be mailed back to the owner.

To keep volunteers motivated, competition for prizes also included the most interesting trash item, largest amount of trash and the team that finished first.

Breakaways Club owner Michael Hess saw the orange-vested cleanup crews out working and donated $100 to offset lunch expenses. He said, "I'm not looking for any promotion of any kind, but this was my way of saying thanks to the people out there doing this. I love the things Old Town Cape is doing. Maybe this can happen more frequently."

cpagano@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 133