The Sandwich Story

Something I didn't get one tape: the Sandwich Story.

Ester and her co-plaintiffs were in a school board meeting one day, listening to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) director discuss the sanity of superfund soil. The director said that the soil was so safe that one of their children could drop a sandwich on the ground, pick it up and eat it.

Ester, both insulted that the director would characterize her children as uneducated bottom-feeders and livid that the man would flatly deny the gross contamination of the soil, decided to make the director eat his words. That night she went home and prepared a beautiful ham and cheese sandwich. She also dug up a patch of toxic dirt. She placed both sandwich and dirt in a tupperware container, sealed it (the smell of the chemicals was overpowering) and rotated the container until the sandwich was bien saturado with the chemical-laced dirt. She let the meal marinate overnight.

The next day at a town meeting, the director once again took the stand. He began to present his same position, but Ester wouldn't have it. She brought the director his sandwich, and she told him to eat it. The man looked at the sandwich, not knowing what to do. "Eat it," Ester said. "Eat your words. If the soil's so safe, then eat it."

The man began to quibble. "Eat it," Ester said. The man began to shake. "EAT IT," Ester said. The man looked at the sandwich, not knowing what to do.

And Ester: "Don't you ever, ever insult me and my people that way. And you know just as well as I do what's in that soil."

It's a hard truth to swallow.