You learn a lot about human nature and old habits walking the streets of your neighborhood with a trash picker in your hand.
One day people are telling you it’s so nice that you’re picking up trash on your morning walk; the next day the same people are leaving their dog’s poop bag in the bushes or on somebody’s lawn.
When you ask them what they’re doing, they get embarrassed, and fall back on the same old, lame excuse. “It’s an old habit,” they joke, and you know what they say about old habits – they’re hard to break.
Not really. Take your dog’s poop bag home with you and throw it on your own lawn for a few weeks. That’ll break that old habit fast.
“So many people tell me they wish everybody was like me, and I want to tell them you have to start with yourself, but I’m nice so I just thank them,” Hans Svanoe says.
For the last eight years, the 73-year-old, retired, private butler has been the human street sweeper of his Encino Park neighborhood.
He’s from Norway, one of the cleanest countries in the world, but it rains a lot there so he moved to sunny Southern California where the weather’s great, but the streets and sidewalks are catch basins for litter thrown out of car windows by people who just don’t give a damn.
Hans does. He was in the hotel service business most of his life until he realized there wasn’t much money to be made, so he began working as a private butler – a “My Man Godfrey” for people who had serious money.
He was comedian Milton Berle’s go-to-guy for 15 years, serving as road manager, secretary, confidant and butler, before moving over to the corporate world where he made enough as a private butler to the rich to retire comfortably at 66.
He began to put on a little weight and decided he needed to exercise more so he started taking morning walks through his neighborhood. He didn’t like what he was seeing.
“Being from Norway, I’m used to a clean environment. I saw this trash lying around and I just couldn’t have it. It’s my neighborhood, and I have to keep my neighborhood clean. I thought if I walk and pick up trash at the same time, I’m doing two good things.”
Besides the Styrofoam cups, paper plates, plastic food containers, old clothes and bags of doggie poop, he occasionally also picks up some money.
“I make about $40 to $50 a year in coins and crumpled up bills,” he laughs. “One day I found $400 in an envelope with a name on it. I gave the gas station attendant where I found the envelope my name and phone number, and told him if anyone asks about some money they lost to give me a call.
“A couple of hours later an old man calls. He knew the name on the envelope and the exact amount of cash in it. He was so grateful to get it back he wanted to give me $100, but I couldn’t take his money.
“I always refuse money and just thank people for offering. A few days ago, though, I did accept a box of chocolates from a man who came out of his house to thank me.”
With that, the most popular, recognizable man in Encino Park slips on his “I pick up litter” t-shirt, and goes out to walk off that box of chocolates with a trash picker in one hand and a litter bag in the other that he’ll deposit in a municipal receptacle a few miles later.
Waving to people along the way who honk their horns and stick their heads out the car window to thank him for keeping their streets clean.
Learning a lot on his walk about human nature and old habits that are hard to break.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.