Wisdom from My Dad – A Peck Of Dirt

My dad, Norman Todd, was a smart man. No, he didn’t have a great education. He quit public school after eighth grade, which was sort of a standard for many people around 1930. He went to work for “Old Man Angel” in East Providence, Rhode Island, as a farm hand. He worked the five weekdays and a half day on Saturday, and for this he got “a dollar a day plus my dinner” (by which he meant lunch). I’ll talk more about that in a future edition of Wisdom From My Dad.

He didn’t stay out of school, however. He entered a trade school to learn the trade of a linotype operator. When he finished, he started work at this trade, and worked at it till his forced early retirement at age 60, interrupted only by his time in the army during World War 2.

As I said, though only moderately well educated, Dad was smart. He had these sayings he used to say. One of them was “You have to eat a peck of dirt before you croak.”

I never asked him to elaborate on that. And I’m not sure whether this was one of those things he said to be witty, or if he really believed it. But I see in it a lot of wisdom. A lot of people will recoil at the idea of eating a peck of dirt. For those who don’t know, a peck is two gallons (eight quarts). Unless you’re an unsupervised and adventurous kid playing in mud puddles, you’re going to ingest this dirt grain by grain over the years. A lot of food goes in, along with a little dirt. You don’t notice the dirt.

So, is there any wisdom in Dad’s saying? Do you actually have to eat a peck of dirt before you can hang up your cares in this world and move on to the next?

To me, it means you have to live life. Don’t shrink back and be a wallflower. Don’t let others run your life. It might also mean don’t avoid things in life that are messy. Not everything you need or want comes in a pretty box with a bow on it. Sometimes you must get your hands dirty to accomplish anything.

I wonder if it also can be taken literally. Not everything you eat or drink is pure. Some of it has dirt on it. Eat it anyway. The dirt and a few germs will make you stronger. We have a tendency now to try to make our personal environment as sterile as possible. In a noon hour class yesterday I watched a man go to adjust the thermostat when several people complained about the temperature in the room. He took a key from his pocket and tapped the thermostat key. I thought that was odd. Then I remembered this is a guy who touches nothing in a bathroom without a paper towel covering his hand. When he washes his hands he turns the water on full blast for a minute or more, scouring his hand until the last germ he might have encountered has reached a distant sewer. He fears picking up a germ on the thermostat button, so he won’t touch it directly. Of course, no germs would be transferred from the button to the key to his pocket and later to his hand.

Can we totally avoid germs in our lives? I don’t think so. Should we take reasonable efforts to avoid contacting germs? Yes, for sure. Should we take extreme measures to avoid contacting germs? I think, for the normal person with normally functioning immune system, germ avoidance can indeed be taken to an extreme. Take in a few germs; build up some anti-bodies; keep stressing that immune system to help it grow stronger; get your hands dirty; live a long life.

Thanks, Dad, for this bit of wisdom.