Two surprisingly young brothers, Jose and Rafael, came because they saw a flyer on their school bulletin board.

One Palace Amusements fan drove all the way from Rye, New York.

Members of the Chamber, Merchants Guild, New Jersey Natural Gas, the UEZ, cookmanave.com, and VFW Post 1333 fanned out in the business districts and around the train station.

The Smallwood, Johnson, Stevens, Alvogado, and Butler families combed Bangs Avenue, while the Historical Society, Homeowners Association and Atonement Lutheran Church concentrated on Library Square.

Armed with rakes, brooms, gloves, trash bags, and donuts dispensed by Public Works and city hall's perennially cheerful Denise Brown, crews of Asbury Park residents and business owners turned out for a citywide cleanup Saturday morning.

And when they limped home several hours later, they left behind hundreds of neatly tied bags filled with leaves, cigarette butts, vodka bottles, car tires, food wrappers, and numerous unsavory items that can't be mentioned on a family friendly web site.

Save Tillie members carefully piled up fallen neon from the Palace's peeling bumper car ladies.

Volunteers cleaning city parks bemoaned the overpowering accumulation of dog droppings.

And the 4-H team cleaning abandoned lots on Sewall Avenue had no trouble naming the yuckiest thing they saw. "A worm!" they immediately agreed.

Meanwhile, Interim City Manager Hazel Samuels - our very own "Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove" - went door to door, handing out her card and pleasantly convincing owners of litter-strewn properties that it might be prudent to join the team.

Samuels will keep visiting businesses, schools, churches, and residents in coming weeks, convincing the owners to clean up their properties and to consider adopting a neighboring spot as part of the city's new Adopt-a-Spot program. (Check out asburyparkpride.com or call 732-502-5196 for more information.)

She and I will also be contacting city children and local organizations, asking them to sign a letter addressed to large landowners with littered properties ranging from Springwood Avenue to the train tracks, urging them to take better care of their property.

"I want to make sure our new anti-litter campaign doesn't lose any steam," Samuels said. "We'll target specific areas of town for person-to-person, face-to-face contact to say we're really serious about getting this city clean."

And what if friendly persuasion won't work?

City police are now issuing about 40 tickets a week for alternate-side-of-the-street parking infractions to ensure that city street sweepers can do their job, according to Police Captain Gilbert Reed, and officers can ticket individual litterers and their pets.

In addition, the city plans to hire a part-time code enforcement intern in the next few weeks to issue violations for overgrown grass and littered lots.

Code Enforcement director Bill Gray estimates that last year's summer intern brought in over $6,000 in tickets, and the intern's salary cost less than half that amount.

As for me, with every muscle in my body still screaming after last Saturday's trash-picking adventure, I realize that our next city-sponsored cleanup needs one major addition: an army of volunteer massage therapists for those of us in the over-40-and-definitely-out-of-shape set.

Anybody have a heating pad?