Picking up for community pride

By: 
Staff Writer Kate Wehlann

If you drive around much in Salem, you’ve probably seen him at some point. John Reich, a man in his 50s, with a stick and a bag, wandering through town, picking up trash and recyclables. Sometimes, he has a wheelbarrow, which he uses to “junkerneck,” defined as “a form of rubbernecking used to determine if roadside junk is trash or treasure.”

Some people see him and assume he’s homeless or that he’s completing community service, but Reich said he does it as an exercise in civic and community pride and also … well, exercise.

“We always recycled,” said Reich. “Glass bottles, aluminum cans and newspaper and stuff like that. Having parents with a European upbringing, it’s always respecting what you have. It’s just continued. Both of my sons are strong advocates regarding recycling … Being stationed in Germany and coming back to see how dirty everything is here … This is something I can do that’s productive. Salem is a beautiful town.”

His service in the Army (1983-88) was primarily in Germany, though he also served stateside.

He said he’s dedicated to appreciating what he has and that includes Salem. Reich said he and his sons loved living on the Gulf of Mexico in Florida, but lost everything after surviving Hurricane Katrina and then an oil spill. After moving to West Virginia, they lost most of what they had again due to hate crimes, including a business and a lot of property. The home he found on Elizabeth Street in November 2017 is the first he’s ever owned.

“We’re still trying to clean up the area and organize things,” he said. “I have a lot of ongoing art projects and landscaping and home repairs.”

So working hard to reduce what’s going in the landfills and clean up the trash discarded on the street is important to him. The most common thing Reich picks up in Salem? Plastic.

“It’s about 75 percent plastic,” he said. “Easily … You wouldn’t believe the number of fountain drink cups. McDonald’s is the leader in fountain drink cups by at least five to one. The straws go right through my bags. With the fair coming up, the recycling is going to be massive with the lemonade and Pit Stop cups.”

The bigger things he finds sitting by the side of the road are “junkernecked” (what he calls “a form of rubbernecking used to determine if roadside junk is trash or treasure) and brought back to his home on Elizabeth Street, which he shares with his son, 25, three dogs, a cat and his art.

It started with “A Family of Potheads” — a set of sculptures with flower pots for the heads. There’s also a band — Mopley Crue (the heads and hair of the musicians are all mop-related) — Jimi Hendrix, special guest Frosty the Guitar Man, Elton John, John Entwhistle, Pete Townshend, Leta Ford and John Bonham. He paints rocks, marked with the hashtag #NeedfulThingz and #WashCoRocks, and scattered them throughout town when the rock-hunting trend was in vogue in 2017.

The art began as a prescription from the VA while he was living in West Virginia, where he sold many sculptures.

“It’s VA-prescribed art and music therapy,” said Reich. He said the pothead sculptures were inspired by his own foray into medical cannabis, which has been shown to have a positive effect on seizures and seizure-related conditions.

“I was misdiagnosed with epilepsy in 2006,” said Reich. “Through the VA, I was prescribed for eight years every kind of seizure medication in massive doses. It tore my body apart. They told me I would lose my hair and that’s what started me growing my hair out really long. I rebelled. … Thanks to Clarksburg and Pittsburg VA, they sent me to the VA epilepsy center in Connecticut. In 2014, they determined it wasn’t epilepsy, but I was having seizures due to the PTSD and anxiety. They took me off the medication and told me I was better off smoking weed, which was legal in West Virginia for medical purposes. I haven’t done that since May 2018.”

One of his sculptures is a racecar that appeared in a float in the Halloween parade. There’s “The Thinker,” a man sitting on an old, discarded toilet. He’s sold other sculptures. There’s two sculptures that relate specifically to veterans, one wearing his old Army jacket. One of his art installations shows 22 American flags, representing the number of veterans who die daily from suicide, 52 percent of whom served in the Army, like he did. All of his sculptures include a dog tag with the Veterans Crisis Line phone number (1-800-273-8255, then press 1) and all are made entirely from recycled and repurposed materials.

Reich said he has plans to help lift up the Elizabeth Street neighborhood. He hopes to purchase two lots beside his home and start a neighborhood garden, something he tried on a smaller scale last summer.

“We want to purchase those lots, give part of it back to the city to widen that intersection at the railroad crossing and repair the ditch down there in dire need of replacing,” he said. “We want to do that in exchange for the house and all that stuff. We want to do a neighborhood garden. Just improve the neighborhood. It’s about taking pride in your neighborhood and your community …

“I enjoy doing it,” Reich said. “There’s beautiful things to see. People don’t notice or just drive by … I’m just trying to do positive things and give back to the community. The Speedway, the fair, Thunder Valley — they all bring people to the community. I’d rather them see something nice than the trash.”

 

You can see the full version of this story in this week's Salem Democrat!

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