Dirt

Wake up in the morning in the moonlight grey
We got dirt to break, we got a note to pay
Gonna plow, plow to the end of the row
Wake up in the morning and plow to the end of the row
-Adrienne Young "Plow to the End of the Row"

I have never seen my father's hands entirely clean.

Thirty years as a diesel mechanic does that to a man. Five years will do it. My younger brother is starting to have the same problem, and he's only been working as a mechanic for a few years. It's a combination of callouses, dry hands, poor working conditions, grease, oil, gasoline, antifreeze, you name it, and it's probably somewhere on their hands. Even on holidays, when Dad had a few days off to scrub up, his hands were dirty. He was usually trying to keep one of our five hundred dollar cars running, or chopping wood next to the house, or if he were really on vacation, digging worms and going fishing. There was always a faint line of dirt under his nails or ground into the callouses on his palms.

It wasn't until I started working at Common Ground that I realized the beauty of a good layer of permadirt. That good Sterns County soil found its way deep into the cracks on my hands and built up around newly made callouses. My nails were usually short and cracked and I have more than one scar from a mishandled tool that summer.

That summer I learned the value of working with your hands. I had spent three years removed from my blue-collar roots, and had become pretty soft. I toughened up a little that summer; remembered what it was like to drive a truck, tell stories, speak slowly, find the wisdom in a bee-keeper and a chicken farmer. I discovered what it was like to watch something grow out of a seed an into food that would make someone's week a little bit better. I picked squash, weeded beets, and cut lettuce.

I've started to distrust women with manicures or men whose hands are too well-groomed. There's something suspicious about someone who has never snagged a finger on a barbed fish hook or planted something and helped it to grow.

I think about my father's hands while I'm at work. The calluses from Common Ground have worn away by now and my nails are always clean. I want hands like Pa's when I grow up. The kind of hands you can tell a story from. I want hands that show that I worked for my life at something difficult and rewarding that didn't require transferring large piles of money from one account to another.

I want hands that never get entirely clean.

I got rocks in my shoes, dirt in my eyes
Working like a dog til the day I die
You got to plow, plow to the end of the row
I got rocks in my shoes when I plow to the end of the row
-Adrienne Young "Plow to the End of the Row"