Digging for dirt on Beto O'Rourke

The Washington Post ran a story Tuesday about Beto and Amy O’Rourke’s marriage that included the scoop that during his solo road trip in January to clear his head as he decided whether to run for president, Beto ate some dirt in New Mexico for its reputed regenerative powers.

The conservative Washington Examiner tweeted Tuesday, following the Post's revelation, that after losing to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, O’Rourke ate dirt, “actual dirt, as in tiny pieces of soil.”

“Words escape me,” retweeted Cruz.

I was aware of "earth eating" — it is called geophagy — because I covered former U.S. Rep. Bill Jefferson, D-New Orleans, who wrote about it in his memoir of growing up in Lake Providence, a small, poor, mostly black town in rural northeastern Louisiana. In the Deep South it is a remnant of a practice still common in West Africa. It's especially popular with pregnant women.

I’m not sure about Southwestern geophagy, but I suppose Cruz might say that in eating New Mexican dirt, O’Rourke was engaging in cultural appropriation, like calling himself Beto.

Following O’Rourke the first four days of his presidential campaign in Iowa and Wisconsin, I didn’t see him eat any dirt, except metaphorically, as a part of his ritual vetting as a candidate for president.

At a Sunday morning gaggle with reporters in Madison, Wis., we were told local press would go first, and the first question did come from someone local, judging by the nasality of his accent. But I don’t think he was a reporter.

“Will you promise during the campaign you’re not going to use the F-word, particularly in front of your kids like last weekend?” the man asked. “It’s very offensive.”

Cruz ran an ad about O’Rourke’s public profanity. I learned from the Post story that Amy is also on him about that.

But it's authentic. Crowds love it.

“Great point,” O'Rourke responded. “I don’t intend to use the F-word going forward.”

Emboldened, his local interrogator pressed on.

“What have you not told the Texas voters in the last eight years that the media has not caught that you want to acknowledge here in Wisconsin so that it won't blow up in five or six months or worse a year from now?”

“The answer is nothing,” O’Rourke said. “No, there’s nothing else.”

As the gaggle broke, O’Rourke signed a skateboard for a guy who leaned in and in a stage whisper asked, “You ever taken acid?”

“No, I’ve never taken acid,” O’Rourke replied. "Thanks for asking."

I approached the skateboarder. He is Tyler Boggins — “like Frodo” the hobbit, he said — carpenter, pro wrestler, standup comedian and Alex Jones troll.

The day after O’Rourke announced, Reuters reported that as a teenage member of a hacking group called the Cult of the Dead Cow, O’Rourke had written under the pseudonym Psychedelic Warlord.

“Alex Jones put out the call, ‘Somebody better ask this guy if he’s ever tripped on LSD,’ ” Boggins said.

On Monday, Boggins was on InfoWars reporting that O’Rourke had looked him in the eyes and lied to him because O’Rourke just must have done acid.

But if Boggins really wanted to know if a Southwestern dirt-eater tripped, he probably should have asked if he ever ingested peyote or mushrooms.

That night I flew home and, in the approach to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, over a 2-acre earth art likeness of O'Rourke — “BETO 2020,” it says — that was unveiled Sunday.

On Tuesday I went out to talk to Stan Herd, the Kansas artist who created it at Carson Creek Ranch, which is also home to Levitation Fest, formerly known as Austin Psych Fest.

Walking on Beto earth work, it doesn't look like much, an arrangement of grass, clay, rocks, pecan shells, top soil and what Herd, sifting some through his fingers, calls the "good Texas soil," that accounts for O'Rourke's complexion. Up close, it's just dirt. But seen from the right distance, it's pretty awesome.