Mentoring and Ramping It Up

The enigmatic Miss Havisham has challenged me to explore the theme, “If I could have met with a mentor on a weekly basis when I was a teenager, I . . . "

I grew up in Clarksburg, West Virginia. I'm tempted to write, "I grew up poor," because that's what people from outside of the Mountain State expect. I suspect we were, but I never knew it at the time. My (once-well-to-do) mother from Tokyo could outdress and outclass anyone. She insisted on buying my clothes from Claurice's Boutique, not from Sears or the five-and-dime like all the other girls at Broadway Elementary. So, even though our family income may have been below the magical line, we didn't look or act the part.

My hard-working dad, like most of the dads in our neighborhood, lugged a metal lunch pail to work each day to a blue collar job at a glass factory. That is, when the factory wasn't shut down. Even in the 60s, the economy was dicy in WV, and it seems there were always layoffs and plant closures.

My world was small. Women were housewives or spinster teachers and dads worked at factories. I knew of just three exceptions. At the time, they seemed to be in a "privileged set," but looking back now I can see that they were scraping by. Jennifer Andy's dad owned Pete Andy's, a little corner grocer. Bobby Lindsay was the son of a fireman. And Allen Saoud's dad owned and drove a small candy truck that heralded, "Here comes Marcelle the Candy Man."

I didn't know much about what laid outside the 'burg, but school assemblies changed all that. I was impressionable and easily impressed, in awe of every one of the speakers who flung up windows to whole new worlds. Most students looked at assemblies as a ticket out of classwork, but not me. I can still vividly recall presentations I heard more than four decades ago.

If I could have chosen a mentor it would have been my favorite assembly speaker, Jim Comstock, publisher and editor of the West Virginia Hillbilly.

I was probably nine at the time, and he must have been in his fifties, but I was mesmerized by his wit, his energy and his passion for writing and publishing. His newspaper was published in Richwood, a small town in southern West Virginia known for its annual wild ramp festival. One year the mischievious Comstock decided to celebrate the pungent wild onion by infusing ramp juice into the ink of the newspaper. He stunk up post offices all over the state. The Post Master made him promise never to pull that stunt again.

Oh, how I loved that story! It demonstrated to me so many possibilities. Of being wildly creative and fearless. Of leaving your mark (and your scent). Of loving the outcome. These were all things that had not occurred to me before hearing Comstock. I felt intoxicated and would have loved nothing more than getting drunk on him every week.

I smile now every time I see humble ramps on the menu of fancy-schmancy restaurants. I wonder what my "mentor" would have to say about their new lofty status. I think about those West Virginia post offices that must have smelled like "wild onions and bear piss." Then I take a big, imaginary whiff, and I'm still intoxicated by the aroma. For me, ramps will always smell like the sweetest scent of all - possibility.

***

• Kathy at Healthy. Happy. Life has an excellent post and photo essay about her wild ramp tasting.
• Brooklyn Farmhouse uses the bulb part to make ramp aioli.
  

Kathy's fresh approach is a far cry from our family's springtime tradition. We ate our wild ramps scrambled with eggs and rolled in flat bread purchased from one of the several Lebanese families in our neighborhood. We were, apparently, early food fusion trendies.