Grapes of Wrath

And as I'm driving out of the corner of my eye, I see in the back corner of a movie theater parking lot.

And mind you, this movie theater is still in business, but it was earlier in the day.

So there was very few people in the parking lot.

And these parking lots, when they built these theaters in the 90s, were huge.

We're talking multiple football fields.

In the back corner, there were branches from a tree that was across a fence in private property.

So the back of this movie theater parking lot bumps up into somebody's house.

And there's a fence there.

And the tree that was inside of the fenced property reaches over the fence into the movie theater parking lot as if it's reaching for popcorn.

But it creates this little area of shade, the size of a car where you could pull up and have lunch or a conversation.

Or you can smooch a little bit with your loved one.

But as we pull up, Corey and I noticed something that was a bit disturbing.

There is so much trash in this corner.

It was as if we were parked next to the dump.

Empty plastic Gatorade bottles, paper plates, dirty socks, shoestring laces, pieces of pizza, beer cans, soda cans, plastic bags.

I mean, it was the grossest thing I've ever seen.

Because in my mind, I know that there needs to be a separation.

There needs to be a separation between the trash and between the parking lot, between beauty and between stuff that's disgusting.

And then we started talking.

We said, how did this get here? I mean, did they just have a party here in the parking lot? Is this purely environmental, meaning the wind because of where this parking lot is situated, that the wind throughout the entire.

entire road and the entire part of this county just blows all of this trash and it all collects into this little pocket.

And this is where all the excess trash from our city goes before somebody at some point maybe picks it up.

I said, Corey, I'm not sure if I can eat here.

She said, We've come this far.

We have the shade.