WHEN IT BROKE in the press, Ken Squier, president of the Vermont Radio Group, said he was "fraught with anxiety" to learn that picking up roadside trash is against the law. He addressed the issue on his radio show, Music to go to the Dump By. He admitted to being a Trash Alcoholic and that he lives with the compulsive-obsessive disorder.

In the past, as Mr. Squier walked the countryside, he said he collected roadside trash and took it home to dispose of it properly. He said some walkers even bring a plastic bag to hold the stuff. Therefore, he was disturbed to learn that in order to pick up roadside trash a person needs a permit from the Agency of Transportation (AOT).

The news opened a veritable dam of public opinion on the subject. Someone called the show to tell about a Garbage Grabbers support group. He described a 12-step program in which people take 12 steps without bending down to pick up any trash then take another 12 steps without bending down, then 12 more steps, forever.

One woman who telephoned the show called it "an asinine rule that should be repealed" and pledged to go to jail with Mr. Squire should it come to that. Mr. Squier said he hoped that she was a nubile thing but she had hung up so that was not determined.

A man called to ask how much of his lawn near the road belonged to him and how much belonged to the town so that he could mark it properly. He wanted to be able to clean up the litter that was legally his but leave the rest so that he wouldn't incur the wrath of the law.

Mr. Squier said he felt he needed to "come clean" about his transgression even though his only intention was to tidy the shun pikes and turn pikes of Vermont which we all love so dearly.

He noted that there is a $10,000 fine for those trashaholics who cannot break the habit. He thought it odd that prisoners are sent out to lift trash but otherwise law-abiding citizens cannot.

Personally, I thought it was our Vermont-given right, when taking exercise--even part of the exercise--to pick up the beer cans that slobs toss out, to pull down the decomposing lawn sale signs nailed to utility poles or the home-made signs pounded into the roadside as if the sign were meant to stand for five years, to gather the plastic bottles and trash blown in from who knows where, to amass the half-eaten hot dogs and bananas, the rotting socks and gloves that spoil the roadsides. When we were kids, we made our living picking up cans and bottles. Then, people usually ate in their own homes so there was not much actual garbage or paper dinnerware and plastic utensils cluttering the breakdown lanes.

Needing a permit strikes this reporter as odd since she's never seen an AOT employee pick up even one of the beer cans that land like rain around here. If they made beer cans in the shape of a boomerang, it would solve that litter crisis.

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