I was walking down Branch Street in San Luis Obispo the other day and passed a house that had an apricot tree with overarching branches loaded with fruit growing in the front lawn. The tree had dropped many apricots on the sidewalk and I had to step carefully to not soil my shoes on the rotting fruit.
Also on the front lawn was a sign that read, in summary: “Do not take any fruit and do not ask the owners if you can have any, because you can not.”
It is a sad state of affairs when people are so possessive of something that they would rather see it go to waste than share—a trend that sadly is becoming more prevalent in our closed-minded material society. To the owners of this tree I say: If you want to keep your fruit to yourself, fine, just clean up the damn sidewalk.
This article appears in Jun 19-26, 2008.
