A Brighter Tomorrow: My Journey with Julie

I have no idea how to help Julie with her family worries. I have enough of these problems myself. I take a closer look at the newspaper article about the beach, and I can’t help feeling disappointed. Ever since we arrived in San Francisco, I’ve been dying to go to the beach. I’ve never even seen the ocean before. Lake Erie doesn’t count. If the beach closes now, will it ever reopen? If I visit in the 21st century, will it be cleaned up? Or is it just another parking lot?

I tell Julie maybe it’s not as bad as they say. It can’t be that difficult to pick up some paper cups and plastic bags. Julie replies that it looks pretty bad to her. I tell her there’s only one way to find out. Julie looks doubtful. She asks if I’m suggesting we go to the beach to start cleaning it up ourselves. I say that I am.

We dash inside to Gladrags to gather supplies. Julie’s mom watches us as we scrounge around the utility room with the back of the store, gathering garbage bags and rubber gloves. Julie explains we’re headed to Ocean Beach to pick up litter. Mrs. Albright is impressed. What a great idea.

Julie asks where Tracy is. Maybe she can come with us. We could use help. I see the hope in Julie’s eyes. Maybe she can convince Tracy to go to their dad’s tonight, too. Mrs. Albright said she left early in the morning to go to tennis practice. Then she’ll be at the library all day working on a community service project with a friend. Julie’s shoulders slump. Her mom gives her a sympathetic shoulder squeeze and pops open the drawer of the cash register. She says there’s some money for the shuttle bus. If we walk, we’ll never get back in time for her dad to pick her up at five. She tells us not to be late.

Julie thanks her mom for the money and we head out the door to catch the shuttle a few blocks away. The bus winds us through the streets. There’s so much to see I can hardly take it all in. A gigantic rainbow-colored peace-sign is chalked on a brick wall. Girls in long dresses are dancing to a song on the radio. It sounds like Elton John. I think about my dad, who loves the oldies, and I try to figure out how old he was in 1975. I realize he was just a kid, like me. For him, they’re not oldies. They’re the songs he grew up with.

We arrive at Ocean Beach and Julie and I hop off the shuttle to cross the street to the entrance. The beach is much bigger than it seems in the newspaper picture. Cups, wrappers, bags, newspapers, and all sorts of litter are scattered across the sand, blowing around in the wind. I take a deep breath. Maybe it was a mistake to bring Julie here. The litter problem seems much bigger than the two of us can solve. Julie says we can pick up garbage for a week and it wouldn’t make a difference. Then, she pulls out a garbage bag and hands one to me. But we might as well get started.

I take my first steps onto the beach and feel a brush of excitement. The Pacific Ocean is so close. I can almost taste the salt water. I start taking my gym shoes off. Julie suggests I keep them on. There’s bottles lying all around and there could be broken glass in the sand. I’m disappointed I won’t feel the ocean between my toes, but she’s right.

We start plucking litter out of the sand and toss it into trash bags. We haven’t been working for long when two park rangers approach us. One introduces herself as Kimberly, while the other is named Chip. Chip asks if we came to clean up the beach. Julie tells them we did. We saw the picture in the paper and felt like we had to do something. Kimberly nods and says the article has really called attention to the litter problem at the beach. We’re not the only ones who showed up to pitch in.

For the first time, I notice other people farther down the beach, similarly armed with trash bags. They’re picking up litter, too. Chip says that they decided to get people organized so that we can make this as efficient as possible. He tells us to try to keep cans and bottles separate for recycling. If a bag fills up or gets too heavy, haul it to the parking lot. There are two green pickup trucks parked near the beach entrance. Kimberly says that she and Chip will load the bags into the trucks to take them to the recycling center.

Now that we know there are others helping clean the beach, we don’t feel quite so discouraged. There’s a lot to clean up, but the task no longer seems impossible. However, after picking up the last piece of garbage from a spit of rocks at the end of a beach, we look down into a small cove on the other side of the spit and see a ton of garbage trapped against the rocks at low tide. Yikes. We have our work cut out for us.