On perhaps the last fine Saturday of the year, about four dozen folk assembled in a parking lot behind Allegheny General Hospital, plastic garbage bags at the ready, eager to ascend the hill behind us.

"We gotta take his hill,'' I told them. "Now, we could fight litter with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a stupid and futile gesture be done on somebody's part.

"Looking out at this crowd, I have to believe you are just the people who can do it.''

Students of American oratory will recognize that speech as the one Eric Stratton, rush chairman, gave toward the end of the movie "Animal House.'' I changed only a couple of words to suit this occasion, as it encapsulated both my enthusiasm for and doubts about the first "Trashapalooza.''

We came. We had coffee and bagels. We donned gloves, signed waivers, split into teams, grabbed bags and collected 185 bags of litter from hillside steps and streets in 90 minutes. Then we walked back down, wiped our hands with moist towelettes, wolfed down free pizza and beer, handed out goofy awards, laughed and left.

Was it an empty gesture or the start of something good? Long sloping stretches of the Fineview neighborhood are cleaner, but as I ambled home with another participant, picking up the odd empty can or water bottle along North Avenue as we walked, it occurred to me that a like amount of litter was being dumped blithely across the city, one can or bottle at a time, by thousands.

Did we make any difference at all?

"How do you eat an elephant?'' Greg Minion of the South Side answered rhetorically. "One bite at a time.''

An odd calling, but people arrived from afar to spiff up a neighborhood few knew. Only a handful were from Fineview itself. A pair of sisters arrived from Mt. Washington and Westwood. Another guy rolled down from Bellevue, looking for ideas he might bring back to his borough. A large contingent came from the East End.

The youngest was 10-month-old Talia Gelman of Squirrel Hill, who frankly didn't do all that much work, hanging sweetly from her mother Eva the entire time. But the father, Dan Gelman, won a pair of Pitt-Louisville football tickets for rolling a big ol' chair down the steps.

The oldest volunteer was probably Boris Weinstein, 74, the retired marketing executive from Shadyside whose idea of relaxation is a pair of gloves, a plastic bag and 90 minutes with his long-handled litter picker.

I had sore shoulders Sunday from lugging cement buckets and rimmed tires left on the road long ago by random sociopaths, but Mr. Weinstein, founder of Citizens Against Litter, was like a kid in a sandbox.

"I can't wait for the next Trashapalooza,'' he e-mailed later. " I felt wonderful, friendly vibes right from the start, like we were all friends for years.''

Common cause can do that for strangers. It was Mr. Weinstein's wise counsel that persuaded me to rein in my half-baked proposal for a citywide, day-long, anti-litter event. Then it was Matt Galluzzo of the Northside Leadership Conference who organized this pickup, the Hash House Harriers who pledged a small core of volunteer pickers, PA Cleanways of Allegheny County and the Pennsylvania Resources Council that provided bags and gloves, the Church Brew Works of Lawrenceville that sprang for the beer, Einstein Brothers that provided the bagels, and so on.

The city Public Works Department hauled away our 94 bags of trash and 91 more of recyclables, plus the tires and broken-down furniture, Monday morning. That won't mean diddly if this stops there.

Listening to Mr. Weinstein describe how Shadyside and Squirrel Hill have been broken into zones, with small teams scouring curbsides and sidewalks on a regular basis, was like finding George Patton had turned in his riding crop for a litter picker, but few share his resolve.

A nickel deposit on all cans and bottles could cut litter in half, but don't look for that soon. There should be another Trashapalooza in the spring, though we don't know where. Until then, to all anonymous trash-picking patriots, thanks a ton, maybe two.