Chappy Beach clean-up is this Saturday, Sept. 20 sponsored by Beach Befrienders. Rain date is the next day. Meet at the Chappy Ferry at 9 a.m. Transportation will be provided to East Beach and Wasque. Trash tally at the Chappy Firehouse is at 11 a.m.

Past beach and roadside clean-ups have reaped astonishing amounts of trash. When I was a kid, civic organizations were passing out free cloth bags that you could hang from your car dash board to encourage us to not be litter bugs. There was a graphic of a fictional critter throwing trash out of the car window. Even as late as the 1980s, people were still tossing stuff out as they drove. One day as I was waving a New Jersey license plate car onto the ferry, the passenger dropped a wrapper out of her window. I stopped them, picked up the wrapper and handed it back to her. She said that she was so excited about getting on the ferry that she forgot that we don’t litter anymore. We humans are a funny bunch!

I recommend that if you or someone you know is feeling homesick for Chappy, check out the Chappy Community Center online store. You will find Dana Gaines’ note cards, including eight books by Chappy authors. There are half a dozen copies of Steven Raichlin’s novel The Hermit of Chappaquiddick left on the shelf. It’s a love story with a, you guessed it, cooking based plot!