Everybody who comes here means business. We come with what we have - trucks, cars and trailers, armed with shovels, gloves, containers and the determination to get the job done quickly, efficiently and leave.
Except for the scraping
of our shovels it’s usually quiet. The sound of silence a therapeutic backdrop for
the rhythmic scrape-thump-scrape of
the tools. When I pause to catch my
breath and look around, I realize my neighbors are a miniature cross-section of
the United Nations. Maybe that’s why we don’t talk – we may not speak the same
language! And yet, there is a sense of comradery here, you can almost scoop it
in the palms of your hands and feel its weight and texture.
I wonder what it is about
this uncomely spot that melts the barriers and unites us.
Part of me thinks we all
are a little (or perhaps a LOT) crazy. Who in their right mind leaves the comfort of their air
conditioned home and braves Florida summer heat and humidity to get… dirt???
Of course, as Shakespeare
warned us, where there is madness, there could be very well be a method hiding behind.
I look at my sweaty, filthy
dirt-mates with fresh eyes and I see not the raggedy crazies but visionaries of
the worlds that for right now exist only inside their heads. But give it a month or
two, those visions will sprout and grow, change and transform, from dirt and
seed, into a stalk of tomato, a cucumber vine, a daisy and a marigold.It was on one such day that I met first Cris and soon after Joe and his friend Sam.
