If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

Ah, the Rite of Spring!

No, not the ballet and concert work by Stravinsky. I refer to that ritual so well known in our region, the gathering and consuming of leeks.

The treks up hillsides to favorite leek patches (locations kept secret). The cleaning, the dark forest humus being shaken and washed off and the roots trimmed. The separating of the greens from the bulbs.

The ham and leek dinners, the stink fests by various names, the leek dips and sausage and other specialties.

Some people still can or freeze leek greens, some pickle leek bulbs for those long months between leek seasons. The leeks must be frozen in airtight wrappings lest the odor escape and migrate into strawberries or frozen apple pies.

My mother was a great believer in leeks and dandelion greens as spring tonics. Not that she mixed them, of course. We went on our leek gathering treks up Annin Creek, on Harry and Lena Evans’ farm, and filled burlap feed bags with leeks. Everyone dug.

That night and for the next week or so we ate leeks with every meal. Maybe not breakfast, although I am not sure of that. If anyone was going to be exposed to leek breath, it seemed prudent to eat leeks defensively.

Pity the poor area resident who, for some reason or other, could not eat leeks. Maybe it had to do with a health problem. In certain jobs one was not permitted to eat leeks.

But we found that once we kids were going to school in town, leeks and school did not mix. Even though the principal of Liberty Consolidated was “Aunt Own” Caskey, and probably had grown up eating leeks, she saw to it that the rule against leek breath in the classroom was enforced. Perhaps it was a county-wide rule, right from the superintendent.

Some years we were allowed to ride the school bus after eating leeks, but then that was forbidden too. If we got to school we had to sit on a bench in the hall, to do our work.

It took days for leek breath to fade. Homes where people had eaten leeks took on the ambiance, and where leeks were cooked definitely had a certain air. Going about the community we would be aware during the week that some people who waited on us in stores or at the post office had indulged on the previous Friday night or Saturday morning, then had abstained so as not to be too offensive in church, or Monday on the job. But the memory lingered on.

Huh! Mother thought it couldn’t be worse than garlic breath. In fact, sometimes during the months between leek seasons she would eat some raw garlic with bread and butter, or garlic sandwiches. She encouraged Dad to eat a little raw garlic so as not to suffer. But I figured cooked garlic, as in spaghetti sauce or meat loaf, was about the limit, if I was going to school, or had piano students.

One spring when I was in grade school there was a perfect storm of olfactory calamity.

It was leek season and leek eating and cooking and canning had been going on for a week or so.

A skunk had been raiding our chicken coop, stealing eggs. Dad shot it, but it managed to crawl under our back porch before expiring, belatedly utilizing its weaponry in revenge.

The bottle of McNess citronella fell out of the corner cupboard over the sink, hit the enameled cast iron and broke, and part of the bottle and some of the contents bounced onto the wood floor and soaked in.

The fumes made our eyes burn, and permeated our hair and all the clothing in the house. Mother thought it might taint the leek greens she was canning. (I believe they turned out okay, though).

Dad claimed that he was afraid our milk would be rejected at Abbott’s, once the quality control guy tapped the lid of each can ajar and gave it a sniff with his well trained nose.  When Dad came back from the milk run, Mother asked him whether the milk had been rejected. He said, poker faced, “No. But I was.”

As for us kids, we were banned from the bus and the school for the duration. There might have been smell-well air sprays back then, but I believe we just tried to launder and air the clothes, shampoo our hair and wait for the powerful scents to fade. I think Mother might have burned pine incense pellets in the little “log cabin” burner.

For many years it has not been appropriate for me to indulge in leeks because of teaching, running a business, working around other people as a consultant, and doing news work.

I notice the annual rites, though. Always there are articles in area papers, and now there are online comments. People discuss the issues of whether leeks are the same plant called ramps, elsewhere. (They are: call them leeks or ramps, they are Allium tricoccum.) Are they similar to cultivated leeks? (No.) Are they wild onions? (Broadly speaking, yes.) Why do they smell so strong? (Sulfur, I think.) Are they good for us? (They do contain minerals and other valuable nutrients.) When digging leeks, how can we be sure to keep them coming back in good quantity year after year? (Never dig a whole patch; always just “thin” it.) Is there an effective way of off-setting the after-effects?

Those controversies will rage on for generations to come, I suspect. As for the perennial questions, does eating parsley or celery leaves counteract leek breath, because of the high chlorophyll content—or is there a tablet? I confess my skepticism, as Richard Armour did in this quatrain:

Why reeks the goat

On yonder hill

Who seems to dote

On chlorophyll.

Peace.