Picking strawberries: how I sometimes ate dirt

I ate some strawberries for an afternoon snack today, and it made me think about the strawberry patch we had behind our house growing up. We didn't really live in the city, or in the country. Sort of that small sweet spot in between. There was a garden in the back and among other things there were strawberries. Sharen and I would go out and help dad pick them during the summers.
As an aside, my dad had bought us teeny tiny kid gardening equipment so that when mom was away or at work he could just put us to work alongside him. Almost 20 years later when they were moving from the house in Clyde to Bowling Green we found these little tiny hoes (I never know how to spell that word so it doesn't indicate a hooker, what a difference an "e" makes!) behind his office desk and he teared up. So sweet.
But I digress...
So Sharen and I would take these little green container out (the kind you got with store bought strawberries) and would have to fill them. Sharen always got done first, because I would pick one and place it in the container, then I would pick one and walk all the way around the pool fence and dunk it in the pool to wash it off, then I would eat it.
I remember later Dad telling me that the neighbors were mad because they could never get a garden as fertile as his, and dad telling me that he had made it that way with straw, a lot of water and manure. I was mortified and thought for a long time that the "dirt" I washed off the strawberries was really poop. I was even more mortified when I would think about all the strawberries I just popped in my mouth thinking that the dirt just made it crunchy.**




**the last part of the story may answer quite a few questions some of you may have about me**