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Spring (leaning 70 — Mercer involvement The first Saturday of May was hit in Macon. The side walks were lined with newly disearced trash A crane was lifting junked autos onto a flat bed and a black man’s face was spattered with white paint. A 1948 newspaper ar ' an old log were cleared from an empty lot while a little kid painted his house from the foundation up to the window sills — as high as he could reach Co-eds cleared out an overgrown backyard Someone braced up a fallen porch. Hundreds of smali child ren wore new tee shirts reading "SPRING CLEANING 70," and gawked as the C & S heli copter sat down al the Green Street Elementary School headquarters. Everyone was caught resting one time or an other, away from the dust, the cleaning and the sun Spring Cleaning, sponsored by the C & S Bank of Macon was a hearty success May 2, when over 90 Mercer students were involved in cleaning and fixing up the section of Macon from Forsyth Street to River side Drive and from Madison Street to 1-75. I’he goals of Spring Cleaning 70 are many and varied The program, with the aid of Mer cer’s Chi Omega and Alpha Delta Pi sororities, Kappa Alpha and Phi Delta Theta fra ternities, student volunteers and ROTC I who acted as block captains) was designed to help approximately 7,000 dis advantaged people living in the area to help themselves The day and the clean up were not an end in themselves, but a starting point for improving the lives of the indigent people in the area By including all classes, races and ages at every stage of the program the development of mutual understanding and trust bet ween rich and poor, black and while, young and old toppled some of the traditional social barriers of distrust and prejudice which have acted as a barrier of improvement for the impoverished Spring Cleaning is an annual project in yh irh the entire Macon community partici pales Sponsored by the Citi zen's and Southern National Bank the program seeks to in spire personal pride in the resi dents of impoverished areas The concept was first tried in Savannah in 1968 by the C & S Bank there That year 10,000 people got together to clean up a 109 block area, and the re suits were so spectacular that 11 other Georgia cities had Spring Cleaning programs in 1969 Fhis year more than 50 cities participated in the dean up Dramatic changes were seen to take place in the appearance of the neighborhood which in turn served as a stimulus to make people want to keep their property in order Em phasis was on hauling away junked cars and appliance.,, cleaning up the debris which had been allowed to accumu late along thoroughfares and painting and fixing houses To compliment the clean up effort the C & S Bank has established and capitalized a wholly-owned subsidiary, the Community De velopment Corporation, which lends money to disadvantaged people to start' business and buy homes. .Spring Cleaning is not a “hand out" or "give away” program. Some financial ba< k mg Is gjven and many commun ity. volunteers, such as the stu dents at Mercer, pitch in to provide manpower and equip ment, but the individual resi dents must actively join m the work to participate in the pro gram At each house, almost without exception, the owner or tenant could be found out in front watching the proceed ings In many cases, the child ren of the families pitched in themselves with a paint brush or a hand in cleaning out junk and weeds The most impor tant aspect of Spring Cleaning is that rt is not in any way a government implemented "poverty program " An elderly woman in a new- concrete house who had placed some old trunks on the curb was asked if she thought Spring Cleaning was a good thing. “Yes ma’am,” she replied, looking out at the activity in the empty lot next door, "sure is Across the street an elderly man in a neat hpuse which did not appear to need extensive fixing i.p. had vestured himself in hi, Sunday best to cut his grass with a scythe. The streets were lined with stacks ol discarded junk, inter mingled with barrels of white wash, true':s picking up the trash and paint spattered people of all ages and descrip tions. A woman whose house was being painted commented. 'It's a wonderful joo they're doing I In- first tnnu it’s been painted in hifty y'ears i appro dale what you all are doing Mercer sophomore Mike Maffeo related the tale of his involvement in Spring Clean ing "A friend .got me up al ,'i am and asked me to clean up a slum. I didn't Inow I was a sanitation engineer but I ended up painting three houses and rebuilding two porches today ’ In the next block a young woman debated with herself and passers by whether or not she could paint a house She watched at the distance of a street width but, was too shy to cross over and ask for a.paint brush What did she think? "This is good an' it s free!" John Costello, a Mercer stu dent from Hollywood, Ha dis cussed some of the minor pro ’ blems he experienced as block captain “Some of the volun teers weren t strong enough for heavier clean up but were a great help doing such things as raking and crawling under houses." From an efficiency stand point Costello saw the program this wav "We were pretty suc cessful but some of the people weren't home and we couldn’t clean out under the houses. We didn’t know what they wanted to throw away. At the houses where the people told us what to take everything went along pretty smoothly. As far as J’m concerned, we got a great deal (Continued on Page 6)