DIRT

Dirt is uniquely fascinating for small children.  As parents, we invest a tremendous amount of energy in our children's cleanliness.  This is entirely at odds with a child's natural attraction to dirt as a source of entertainment.  Not to mention that dirt is known to be able to detect clean children up to 100 feet away.  (Remember 'Pigpen' from 'Peanuts'?)  Dirt comes in an endless variety of colors and textures.  Just add water and you have something even more useful: mud.  So many things can be made from mud.  At the beach, in the yard, in parking lots, children head directly for sand, dirt, mud and water with parents trailing along behind shouting such foolish admonitions as 'don't get sand in your hair' or 'don't splash in that puddle'.  Why not?  I have never heard of a child suffering serious harm from too much [external] dirt.  Yet, as a parent, I persist in the age-old battle.

"My" Tonka Buggy

All that to say, I was a normal child in my own appreciation for dirt.  On one side of our trailer was a small asphalt parking space, on the other a small plot of grass yard.  But, underneath was dirt.  Some trailers of the nicer variety had aluminum 'skirting' to lend an air of permanence to these houses with wheels and axles temporarily set up on blocks. Ours lacked such cosmetic elegance.  With the trailer somewhere between two and three feet off the ground, there was plenty of room for a small boy to sit underneath and play.  The dirt underneath our trailer was plain brown dirt.  It wasn’t the dark and rich kind farmers like to roll through their fingers or light and gravelly decomposed rock or even gray with lots of clay.  It was just medium brown dirt.  It was packed pretty firmly, but on the surface was a layer of loose stuff -- just right to grade roads with.  One Christmas, both my younger brother and I received Tonka Toy dune buggies.  Dune buggies were quite the rage in those days, and these were small-scale models of the ‘real thing’, right down to the flower decal on the hood.  My hand was just wide enough to match the width of the dune buggy.  So, I would sit for hours in the cool shade underneath our trailer carving elaborate roadways for my dune buggy and making those odd ‘vroom’ sounds boys favor that are so incomprehensible to mothers and girls.  When I was under there, it was my own little world.  I can only imagine what it looked like: a small boy running his hands in the dirt or pushing a small, metal toy car endlessly.  Either Philip was too small or just didn’t find dirt as appealing as I did, because I don’t remember spending much time with him down in the dirt.

I discovered that the dirt underneath the trailer had a mind of its own.  At one point, I had some boyhood treasure that I wanted to hide.  Now, why it is important to hide treasure is obvious: you don’t want the pirates to steal it.  Pirates always know how to find treasure unless you bury it.  My treasure was some kind of small medallion, an award from Sunday School.  It was in a little hinged plastic box.  You know the kind.  The bottom half was opaque and the top was clear to display the ‘treasure’.  Secretly, I fetched a large spoon from the kitchen and headed for my refuge underneath the trailer.  After making sure no pirates were watching,  I dug a small hole and reverently placed my treasure down inside.  Then, I covered the hole carefully to make it appear as if no hole had ever been dug.  Now in my simple mind, I made sure I buried it in the center of a line going down the middle of the trailer, just a little way from the rear.  Not wanting to risk it, I didn’t draw a map or take measurements -- pirates might find the information.  Sometime later, after the danger had passed, I went back to recover my treasure.  But, it wasn’t there.  After digging down in what I was sure was the right spot and finding nothing, I expanded my search until there was quite a large hole.  But, I never found my treasure.  I concluded that there had been a shift in the tectonic plates of the earth and my treasure was probably miles away, perhaps under the sea bed.  Like the parable Jesus told, I found that burying one’s treasure is a sure way to lose it.  Treasure is meant to be shared, not hoarded, and when I buried my treasure, it was taken away.  Now, that ‘treasure’, if it still exists, is decayed and ruined and neither I nor anyone else got any enjoyment out of it.  So now, I try to put my treasures to use to bring joy to others.  Except, of course, for pirates.