This land is your land, this land is my land

Continuing with the Guthrie family theme, here’s a couple of stories related to public property.

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December 12, 2004 (coincidentally Chris Achilles’ birthday): A citizen (who happened to be an off-duty employee from another municipal agency) called reporting a man had cut down a tree from a municipal park, loaded it up into his vehicle, and then drove off. The caller noted the plate number and description of the suspect vehicle and the description of the suspect driver. *

An officer (whom I like and admire for several reasons) arrived at the suspect residence later to discover the tree already up, decorated, and sitting in front of the front window.


The officer, feeling embarrassed for the kids at the house, asked the man about the tree. He said the tree had “already been knocked down” and he had “just cut it loose.” The officer gave him a stern lecture (well, not really all that stern, she felt bad for the kids) and told the man she had to write up the report. As far as I know he was never prosecuted.

It’s one thing to go out to the boonies to cut down a tree for Christmas but it’s quite another to go into a local park, in full view of other citizens, and stealing yourself a tree. Sheesh. "Public" does not mean "free for the taking."

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On a similar note, Anchorage has a Community Garden program. There are two gardens in town but it’s the same set-up for both: For the fee of $30 for the growing season (pretty darn short in Alaska) one gets a 20 by 10 foot plot of land and water. The idea is that you can grow vegetables and fruit on your plot to eat and thereby a) lower your food cost and b) provide you all the joys of gardening. The plots are particularly attractive to the Hmong immigrants in the densely populated, land-poor Mountain View neighborhood. The Salvation Army picks up most of the cost of the plots for some families and the plot-renters visit their little piece of garden every day or two.

Pretty cool really.

Unfortunately once in a while we get calls from irate gardeners reporting cabbage theft and the like. I vividly remember one guy nearly raving mad because this woman was going from plot to plot and picking herself enough of everything for a salad. When confronted, the woman said “the sign says ‘Community Garden’ and I’m a member of the community” and kept on picking.

Aaaaaaaaaarggggggggggggggggggggh!

The trick is that once the vegetables are picked, what are we going to do? The damage has been done. I suppose you could put everything back in the ground and hope it continues to grow but if I had been tending a crop of asparagus and some chick came along and pulled them up, I would be nearly raving mad myself. Plus there might not be time to plant another crop.

Imagine all of your hard work ending up under Italian dressing at some anonymous ig'nant's dinner table.

Grrrrr.

So maybe this holiday season the lesson is to leave as few tracks in the snow as you can, so that others can enjoy the public lands as they were meant to be enjoyed: by everyone and as fresh today as they were yesterday.

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* Here's a trick for all of you trained observers out there: If you get a license plate of any suspect vehicle it's great but you need two more things. First you need a description of the vehicle bearing that plate. A lot of folks tend to transpose numbers or cannot remember them for a very long time (we're talking seconds here). If you come close on the plate but note the type, color, and any unique characteristics of the vehicle then you are a good witness. Second you need to get a look at the driver. The registered owner of a vehicle can easily claim to not have been the driver during the criminal rampage you witnessed. The better look you get, the better chance you'll have to place them behind the wheel when asked to point them out of a photo line-up.

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Photos:
Woody Guthrie
Christmas Tree Close-Up
Hmong Woman in her Mountain View Garden by Marc Lester, Anchorage Daily News