Natchez Mayor Darryl Grennell strode across Memorial Park Saturday morning with an air of accomplishment and pride.

Grennell and other volunteers spent Saturday working on a citywide clean up project.

“Downtown Natchez is clean today,” Grennell said. “Now we just have to keep it that way.”

The solution, I suggested to the mayor, is simple: “You probably are going to have to lock a few people up to put a dent in the problem.”

Grennell nodded and said figuring out how to enforce litter laws was key to keeping the city clean.

And there’s the rub, as Shakespeare wrote.

Litter is a problem in our area, a big problem, but it’s a problem caused by a very few people.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is catching those few folks is complicated and difficult.

For some of us, understanding why people would just toss their trash out indiscriminately seems difficult to fathom. We’re simply wired differently than those folks.

It’s equally as difficult for me to understand why recycling is so infrequently done here. It just makes sense to me, but everyone isn’t me.

We have laws against littering, but catching the person in the act is difficult.

Short of wiring up security cameras to cover every square inch of downtown, I don’t see an easy solution to being able to nab every litterbug.

I’ve thought for years about this problem in Natchez, as it’s not a new one.

I’ve sat at the traffic light at the intersection of John R. Junkin Drive and Canal Street and watched as motorists flagrantly toss their cigarette butts into the street, on top of a big pile of other cigarette butts.

Trashy people aren’t born; they’re made. In other words, we don’t come into this world with an inherently neat or inherently sloppy gene. We’re a creature formed by our parents, teachers and others.

When we don’t expect much from young people, and we do not instill in them personal responsibility, we wind up raising sloppy adults that just don’t give a flip about how their actions may affect others.

The effect of this is evident all over the place — people who ride around with music blaring so loudly that everyone within half a mile can feel it, people who pull a gun over trivial matters and, yes, even people who toss their trash on the ground without a second thought.

So many of our community’s problems seem all tied back to something simple, but complex — personal responsibility.

As the traditional social structure of our country has broken down over time so has our once high level of personal responsibility.

No one seems to have figured out how to address this yet, particularly with the young.

Do you lock up teenagers?

That hardly seems logical.

Going after the parents, while on some level seems wise, also would seem more harmful. If the parents wound up behind bars their inability to parent would only become more hindered.

Perhaps somehow a combination of cameras to nab the worst offenders, along with harsh justice that forces litterers, for example, to have to clean up their messes and those of others, would make the most sense.

Maybe if enough of that enforcement occurs over time the worst offenders will learn their lessons.

Until then, many thanks go to the many volunteers who worked Saturday to make the community shine a little brighter.
Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.