Eat dirt and live

Can you conceive of a doctor prescribing chewing tobacco for an eight or nine year old child?  You might if you knew the child was killing himself eating chimney dirt.  My dad told me that was the case with his brother, my uncle, Finis.  Eating chimney dirt was not uncommon.  Dad said girls who worked in the fields would crumble enough dirt into a tobacco sack to last until noon, replenishing the dirt after lunch.

 It would be unusual to find a dirt chimney outside of a museum today, but many chimneys once were a
wooden frame plastered with clay or other dirt. That dirt must have provided some mineral or nutrient that people were not getting from food grown on those poor Claiborne parish hills.

Did my dad eat dirt?  No, he ate chalk,  making sure on Friday to steal a piece to last him over the weekend.