Who in the hell eats dirt? Well chances are we all have | Eastern North Carolina Now

    However, some people just bypass the drug companies and go straight to the source. They eat Kaolin or "White Gold" as the Georgians in Sandersville call it.

    Click here for a primer on the old practice of eating dirt.

    As part of my sales territory in Georgia, I had the good fortune to visit and call on many old southern towns. One of my favorite Georgia towns was Sandersville, a city in Washington County Georgia. . Its claim to fame is that it is the "Kaolin Capital of the World".

    Sandersville was and is a small town in Georgia that played a very minor part in the War of Northern Aggression. "In 1864, during the War, General William T. Sherman skirmished and then paused in Sandersville during his March to the Sea. Brief resistance to the advancing Union forces was centered on the courthouse. As they left, Sherman's troops burned both it and jail, but left the rest of the town intact" (Wiki).

    When I was working the territory, the town did not have a motel but they did have a boarding house for single night visits. I will never forget my first stay at the old converted house. The check in counter was just inside the entrance hall of a house. The lady that owned the place had a small counter set up. I checked in and she told me which room to go to. There were no numbers on the doors and no locks on the rooms. I may be embellishing the story somewhat but I believe some version of it to be true. After I signed the register, I asked her if I could leave a wakeup call? She reached under the counter and handed me a wind up alarm clock. "Don't worry, if you ain't up and about by 7:00 AM, I'll knock on the door, cause I gotta get it ready for the next night." Don't you just love country folk. I returned the clock the next morning.

    Like all southern towns, Sandersville was highly segregated. A few wealthy white families owned the Kaolin Mines and allowed the Black folk to live on the land as caretakers. This was in the late 1970's but I suspect the practice had not changed in many years.

    Sandersville produced several notable athletes, most of which are unknown today. However, it also was the birthplace of a name that is recognizable almost anywhere in America. Elijah Muhammad and Ruby Muhammad, leaders of the Nation of Islam were born there. It goes to prove that you should be careful what you sow as you are bound to reap it someday.

    What is Kaolin, you ask?

    "Kaolin is most commonly used in the paper-coating industry. It is also used as a filler (added to plastics, for example, and rubber compounds), as a pigment additive in paints, in ceramics (tile, chinaware, and bathroom toilets and sinks), and in pharmaceuticals. Depending upon the application, kaolins are typically processed to remove such naturally coexisting materials as quartz, iron oxides, titanium oxides, other clay minerals, and organic matter. Kaolin is often further modified from its natural state by chemical treatments, physical delaminating, and high temperature heating to more than 1,000 degrees centigrade. These latter modifications are designed to enhance chemical bonding properties of the kaolin when mixed with other components and/or to improve the brightness of kaolin-based products."

    If you have ever taken Kaopectate for an upset stomach, then you have eaten dirt or at least a highly refined version of it. It was not unusual for me to see some of the folks, scoop up a handful of Kaolin and throw it from hand to hand to get rid of the rocks, then pinch off a bit and eat it. They say that pregnant used it to settle their stomach. I ain't lying here.

    The other main usage of Kaolin is in papermaking. It adds to the gloss in the paper process. Highly glossy paper like magazines and brochures use Kaolin. All I know was the process used many high horsepower AC motors and a good bit of my company's products, so a visit to Sandersville was always a combination of old world meets new world. But you had better had a book to read because they rolled up the streets after dark.

    Here is a forty-minute film on the history of eating Dirt, which features Greensboro, Georgia; another city that I loved to visit in my territory.

   PS, just for the record, I did not wear the Saturday Night Fever suit on these sales calls. That was reserved for the Florida Territory.