RICHWOOD, W.Va. -- If you eat a ramp-and-egg biscuit for breakfast, you taste it until suppertime. And though the smell from the King of Stink won't last forever, it seems to linger longer if you happen to share bed and board with an anti-ramp guy or gal.

Unless, of course, you're from West Virginia, where a spring day without ramps might as well be a weekend without whitewater. Perhaps you were among the more than 1,100 who traveled south last weekend to revel in the sun-drenched ramp-filled weekend in Richwood, which lays claim to the title of Ramp Capital of the World.

"I thought a ramp was something you drove your car up to change the oil," jokes Robert Shumate, who drove 7 1/2 hours from Huntington, Ind., to taste his first ramps, though he had grown up in Hensley, W.Va. Leaning on a pickup, where you could buy a bushel of ramps for $33, dirt and all, Shumate nods toward the Richwood High School cafeteria, center for the ramp-eating festivities. "They feed you like hogs in there. Anyone who likes onion or garlic would like these. I liked 'em."

	Jon C. Hancock, AP photo
	Glen Facemire Jr., holds his hoe and a sample of his spring harvest of West Virginia ramps at his home and ramp farm in Richwood, W.Va. last April. RELATED STORY Revving up for more ramps

He grins. "My wife? She stayed in the car."

So there you have it. Some love ramps, others don't, and ne'er the tastes shall meet. Attempting to explain what all the excitement is about, eager eaters describe a ramp as something like an onion, or maybe garlic, or perhaps a leek. In truth, it is a taste all its own.

Smell, too.

"You can't get rid of it," says Anne Linaberger, assistant news director of KDKA-TV. She became a ramp convert after working two years in Clarksburg, W.Va. "There are ramp festivals all over West Virginia."

In some sort of record for a Pittsburgher, I ate ramps three times in 16 hours, then came back for more on Sunday while testing two recipes. Friday night, after a two-hour stint watching ramps steaming in bacon grease, another food editor and I had stopped for a late dinner at Rails to Trails Custard Stand, whose handmade sign advertised "Ramp Burgers." The stand has sold 300 of them -- ground beef, ramps, egg and bacon patty, lettuce, tomato, Miracle Whip, sesame seed bun -- since they were put on the menu for $2.99 three weeks ago.

Says co-owner Heather Elam: "This is what the Big Mac did for McDonald's, what the Whopper did for Burger King. We're on the map with this."

My companion's half of the ramp burger spent the night in her van, so in the morning, the odor made me hungry for another taste of the edible identified as Allium tricoccum. Stopping at the same stand, I had a breakfast biscuit (the best biscuits are always south of the Mason-Dixon line) with an egg and sausage patty, potato patty, ramps and melted American cheese for $2.99. Coffee cost 10 cents.

A ripe history
The ramp is a spring tonic in these parts. "It gets my saliva up," says Glen Facemire, who comes as close to "farming" ramps as anybody. Facemire says a ramp farm is "nothing but seeding wild ramps. We don't fertilize; we don't water. You don't cultivate ramps.

"I like to eat 'em 'til my speech starts to slur. There's a certain high you get out of ramps. There's something to these little rascals."

	Online Map: Richwood and Elkins are ramp hotspots in West Virginia and the scene of annual ramp festivals.

Though ramps grow in Pennsylvania, they may be more familiar to immigrants from Wales. The ramp in bloom is Wales' national emblem. Known as the "wild leek," it is not a tuber like its cousins, the garlic and the onion, Facemire says. It has a bulb that resembles a shallot or green onion but grows leaves like a lily. Rapt ramp-eaters eat it all.

If, indeed, Richwood is the "capitol," as its T-shirt proclaims, its "kitchen Cabinet" begins with Don McClung, a retired coal miner who knows what it is to slave over a steaming coffin-shaped stove to prepare for the 66th annual Feast of the Ramson. The Richwood Chamber of Commerce cooks more than 2,000 pounds of ramps, fries 216 pounds of bacon and bakes 21 hams.

Spring hits, and Chamber president McClung announces, "I reckon the ramps are up. I got a few favorite places I like to go alone. ... It's like you take your vehicle to a garage for a tune-up. This is a spring tune-up for a human being."

Also part of the kitchen cabinet is Rita Pieri, one of the 75 volunteers it takes to keep the ramps steaming and the Chamber gears oiled.

Pieri portrays herself as pro-ramp, though she doesn't actually eat them. She says it takes three weeks to clean this mountain of ramps, which are cooked in five-bushel batches. "First they have to be washed four times," she says. "My husband -- he's from Akron -- won't let me in the house with these clothes. To get the smell out, I have to wash my clothes four times."

On this Friday night before the Ramp Feed, she's wearing a Cherry River Festival 2003 T-shirt (it's in August). Richwood is obviously a party town.

For this particular party, 2,239 pounds of ramps are cooked, though the county commissioner candidate claims 2,385. "He's a politician -- what do you expect?" Pieri jokes.

It comes down to this: "We cook a ton of ramps," McClung says.

Like an old Western sourdough saving his starter, McClung freezes three gallons of bacon fat from last year's event. The cleaned ramps are frozen over at Four Seasons Outfitters and Adventure Sports, which used to be a grocery store, before Richwood's population of 6,000 people dropped to the present 2,700.

Richwood is a beautiful town, slipped as it is among the Appalachian Mountains, sitting beside the Cherry River, which had the temerity to flood in November. "We don't even have a ballfield, but we're working on it," says McClung.

There are 60 members of the Chamber, though there aren't nearly that many businesses. But if it takes something to hold a town together, a Ramp Feed is more help than hurt. Last weekend was really the second celebration for Richwood, which two weeks ago welcomed back its 1092nd Richwood Batallion of the National Guard. All the way along Route 39 from Summersville, yellow ribbons waved and handmade signs sang "Welcome home."

We didn't lose a one, people would tell you, gratitude in their voices, relief in their faces.

The area has a little coal mining, a rubber fabrication and electronics plant and two hardwood mills. And this time of year, there's ramps. The wild ramps were all dug by local entrepreneurs on either private lands or in the Monongahela National Forest.

At Donaldson's Blooming Land Greenhouse in Richwood, Melissa Hodgson is asked if she eats ramps. She gives an adamant "Nooooo!" But when she was a kid of, say, 9 or so, she went with her family to South Fork to dig ramps.

"I was just playing in the woods," she says, showing us a modern two-headed ramp hoe that sells for $12.49.

How much did she make in a day? "Oh, $50," she says, "but I was just playing."

Who says there isn't money in child labor? The going wholesale rate today is about $1 a pound -- with dirt -- though in February or early March, when the snow melts and the first ramps show their pretty heads, they may go for $3.

"I don't buy them until they get down to a dollar," says McClung, though the old softie admits he paid a 6-year-old $6 for her bag that very week. "Well, she was 6 years old!"

Not just a job
G&N Ramps was 60-year-old Glen Facemire's "little job out in the woods" after he retired from the post office, though it's becoming a vocation. His 50-acre farm has drawn Japanese visitors, and he had an outing to the governor's mansion. He and his wife, Norene, sell many products, including fresh ramps that they ship Priority Mail, dehydrated ramps, ramp gravy mix and ramp jewelry.

Their ramps are dug with hoes Facemire creates from a 1929 Ford car spring and handles of either ash or hickory. Their farm has the north slope and deciduous trees that ramps love. "They can't grow under pines," he says. "Too acidy."

His wife, a Huntsville, Ala., native, wrote a ramp cookbook, though she didn't take to ramps right off.

"I said, 'What in the world is that smell?' " she recalls.

The man who would become her husband told her, "Ramps don't stink -- that's just the way they smell."

Benefits at the root?
Like many West Virginians who like to tell tall tales to the tourists, Facemire recites a well-worn tale: "We were poor, you know, though there's nothing wrong with that. So our dad would pay us 50 cents not to eat breakfast."

Pause. "Then he'd charge us 50 cents for that day's dinner."

He can't help kidding any ramp nouveau, like his preacher from Ohio. "I gave him a ramp plant for his desk and stuck a plastic lily-of-the-valley flower in the middle. He watered it, took good care of it. Finally he said, 'The flower sure stays pretty a long time.' "

After tales like that, when Facemire tells you ramps could be the next garlic pill, you wonder. "Ramps have lots of selenium," he insists.

Whatever, you couldn't beat the crowd, who lined up to pay $10 for a filling -- some would say gut-busting -- meal.

They arrive early because "they're afraid we'll run out," says Maxine Folk Corbett, who grew up in Somerset.

And one year, during her 14 years as Chamber executive secretary, they did. The Ramp Feed was the first weekend in April, and there was a late snow. "We had half as many ramps as we needed," she recalls. So she called a chamber office somewhere in North Carolina.

"Well, if the Ramp Capital of the World needs ramps, we'll try to help," the woman promised. As it turned out, North Carolina and Tennessee use ramps more as seasoning than as a side dish and simply didn't have a thousand pounds of ramps to share.

So Richwood told its ramp-lovers that people who didn't get their fill of could get a free ticket for next year. "There were about 200 people who just got a spoonful, but not one person asked for a free ticket," Corbett says."You know how nice people can be."

There were ramps aplenty Saturday -- more than a cup and a half plus seconds, if you wanted. They were served with two pieces of ham, three slices of bacon, pinto beans, JoJo potatoes (tubers cut in wedges, dipped in bread crumbs and deep-fried) and a huge slab of corn bread. For dessert, homemade sassafras tea -- sassy-fras in these parts -- and squares of iced cake. All homemade and not a salad in sight.

Whether the Red Hat Club of Charleston knew it or not, the secret to the delicious corn bread is three parts Hudson Cream Self-Rising Flour to two parts Martha White cornmeal, reports Susan Mace, whose sister made it.

Mace puts herself in the loves-ramps category.

"I grew up here," she says, "and when you're in the Ramp Capital of the World ... ."

Jane Snow, food editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, contributed to this story.

RELATED RECIPES

RAMP HUSH PUPPIES

• 2 cups cornmeal
  
• 1 tablespoon flour
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
  
• 3 tablespoons minced onion
  
• 1/3 cup chopped ramps
  
• 1 cup buttermilk
  
• 1 egg, beaten
  
• Oil for deep frying

Heat oil (we used canola oil preheated to 350 degrees). Combine dry ingredients and add onion and ramps. Add buttermilk, then egg. Drop by spoonfuls into hot oil. Fry until golden brown. Hush puppies will float to the top when done.

Dehydrated ramps may be substituted for fresh ramps.

Note: We used 1 package of G & N Ramp Farm dehydrated ramps. Fill liquid mixing cup with 1/3 cup hot water, then add dehydrated ramps; let set 15 minutes. Drain off excess water. Norene Facemire of G&N Ramp Farm says 1/2 cup dehydrated ramps equals about 1 cup fresh ramps.

"Ramps A Cookin' " by Norene Facemire

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RAMP MEATLOAF

• 1 1/2 pounds ground beef (we used ground chuck)
  
• 1 cup tomato juice
  
• 2/3 cup uncooked oatmeal
  
• 1 egg, beaten
  
• 1/2 cup chopped ramps
  
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Mix ground beef, tomato juice, oatmeal, beaten egg, chopped ramps (we used mostly the white part with a little bit of the green tops), onion and salt.

Bake in 350-degree oven for 1 hour.

Drain off fat, slice and serve.

"Ramps A Cookin' " by Norene Facemire