Omari's Blog

While I was home in Denver, my mom asked my brother whether he would like to go out to eat at a particular Denver pizza restaurant. "I'd rather eat dirt," he declared.

Dirt would be a pretty cheap meal compared to pizza, but the gritty stuff you'd ingest is more valuable than you might at first expect. One day my dad and I were riding down Peña Boulevard, the access road to Denver International Airport. The road sits in the middle of a huge right-of-way, and Dad pointed to the expanse of land between the shoulder and barbed-wire fence. See how that land looks scooped-out? he asked. Well, he said, that land used to be flat. But the city actually sold the dirt to real estate developers.

"Dirt is valuable here," he said. Builders might need the dirt to improve property--to raise land so it is out of a floodplain, for example. Hauling the necessary dirt is a huge expense, and adjoining landowners typically don't have the dirt that a builder will need for a particular project. So the folks who are building hotels, strip malls, and houses close to Peña Boulevard made a deal with the city, allowing them to scoop dirt from the right of way. The land has been reseeded and I doubt I would have noticed this if Dad hadn't pointed it out.

I had never thought of dirt as being valuable.

My brother's declaration regarding eating dirt also evoked another hilarious story, but I shall not reveal it in order to protect the innocent.

posted at: 16:35 | path: / | permanent link to this entry