Toms River, N.J. – The sentiment as well as the sediment appealed to Douglas Fisher, chairman of the state Assembly’s Agriculture Committee.
Encouraged by David Friedman, who runs the Ocean County soil-conservation district here on the coastal plain between New York and Atlantic City, Fisher co-sponsored a bill naming a sandy loam called Downer soil as New Jersey’s official dirt.
Also known as “sugar sand,” Downer blankets Ocean County; it’s the commonest dirt in the state.
By unanimous vote, the Assembly passed the bill in May, prompting local resident Jay Lomberk to write to the Asbury Park Press: “State dirt? Are you kidding?”
Another local, Jackie Daly, wrote: “If it weren’t so pathetic, it would be funny.” There were lots of editorials, too.
Fisher is sure the mockery explains why no senator followed his dirt bill with one in the state’s upper chamber.
Earlier this year, Fisher nominated the tomato as New Jersey’s official vegetable. The tomato is a fruit, but Fisher cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1893 to prove that tomatoes are vegetables in the eyes of the law.
“The tomato didn’t go anywhere, either,” he says. “Didn’t even pass the Assembly.”
Hard at work across America, state legislatures have lately ordained official fossils, odes, dogs and doughnuts.
Bob Akerle of Netstate.com, a website that tracks these bills, says his count of new proposals is nearing 60 for this year. Where official symbols once stopped at flags, flowers and anthems, they total in the hundreds now. South Carolina recently made boiled peanuts its official snack food. Hawaii just made the humuhumunukunukuapua’a its official fish.
United Square Dancers of America has lobbied Congress to make the square dance a national symbol, alongside the flag, the rose and the bald eagle.
“What with the war, we were not able to pass it,” says Alitia Becker, the group’s Plains region vice president.
But it has persuaded 31 state legislatures – New Jersey’s included – that they need an official folk dance, and that the square dance is it.
Unlike rocks, snakes and poetry, the official-dirt movement, a loose amalgam of soil scientists, had run into little resistance up to now. Florida named a dirt (Myakka) in 1989. West Virginia did it (Monongahela) in 1997, and Illinois (Drummer) in 2001.
Georgia is getting set to name red clay. All told, 21 states have honored dirt.
