39 bottles of wine by the road, 39 bottles of wine ...

There's an otherwise scenic country road near my home that holds great appeal for aficionados of cheap wine. And not just any wine, but Arbor Mist. While I've never drank the stuff, I now know this much. It costs around $4 a bottle, rarely shatters on impact and comes in 12 tooty-fruity flavors that eventually all smell like putrid Kool Aid.

Now there's no reason to feel morally superior because your buzz comes from a $20 bottle of Merlot with a genuine cork instead of a screw cap. When times are this hard, there's a legitimate need for some cheap happy. Besides, mix in a little slow dance and Michigan might even achieve positive population growth.

My problem concerns the containers that all that cheap happy comes in. On a walk last Sunday with my wife and two daughters, we picked up 39 empty Arbor Mist bottles -- 39! -- that were scattered along a two-mile stretch of road. We'd brought along two empty trash bags, but they got so heavy and foul-smelling that we had to come back with my car and get them later.

After some initial grousing the kids even made a game of it. They'd chant Ar-bor Mist, Ar-bor Mist, Ar-bor Mist until they found another dead soldier -- about every 200 feet or so. And they kept track of the most popular varieties. Like a truck stop sommelier, my 8-year-old daughter's vocabulary now includes the terms Exotic Fruit and Sangria Zinfandel (which won hands-down). Although I'm afraid the moldy dregs she found inside the bottles may make her swear off fermented beverages forever.

But we also talked about the sad truth behind all this dismal litter. There's likely no romance here, just some lonely soul who's in a deadly hurry to get joylessly inebriated. So it's drink, drive, toss out window and repeat as necessary. I just pray that he keeps one steady hand on the wheel since the road's lined with big, obstinate trees that do not suffer fools gladly. That's the dark side to cheap wine and anyone who makes or sells this stuff must know that.

For the kids, this was also good practice but for reasons that they can't presently fathom. Soon enough they'll have to clean up numerous messes that were not of their own making: trillions in ill-spent government debt; two or three unfinished wars; the occasional oil spill or nuclear catastrophe; and once they're parents, the dank surprises that they'll encounter inside several years' worth of loaded diapers.

After their Dad-mandated community service, the girls were proud and even a bit self-righteous about what we'd accomplished. A little of that's fine by me, though. Because after someone trashes your home ground, they've got no right tell you to put a cork in it.