Some Sniff at Its Popularity, to Others It’s Good Taste

--People from miles around, many with wry looks and pinched nostrils, gathered in Richwood, W. Va., to taste and toast the Southern mountains’ most maligned delicacy--the ramp. The aroma of the simmering ramps is like onions and leeks. The vegetable grows among the hills in central West Virginia and several other mountain states and is one of the first edible wild plants of spring. It was detectable for miles as a thousand visitors trooped to Richwood for a taste. Cook Maxine Corbett said Richwood High School students took three weeks to gather 100 bushels of ramps. Her face flushed and sweaty from cooking the ramps in a huge skillet in the high school’s kitchen, Corbett refused to comment on ramps. “I usually take the Fifth (Amendment) when asked that,” she said, waving a hand in front of her nose. Hundreds of people crowded into the cafeteria to sample the ramps and eat corn bread and ham. “Me? I love them,” said Wanda Facemire, 65, taking another bite of the soggy, steamed vegetable. Carolyn Scarber nodded in agreement. “I love them too,” she said. “My husband hates them. But, of course, he’s from Georgia.”

--Some fans lined up through a frosty night and hundreds more crowded around the Moscow Conservatory for coveted tickets to see pianist Vladimir Horowitz. When the 81-year-old musician arrives today, he will be the first major artist ever to have emigrated from the Soviet Union and come back to perform. He left in 1925. He will play Sunday in Moscow and April 27 in Leningrad. Horowitz is coming under the U.S.-Soviet cultural exchange agreement signed after the Geneva summit last November. “I heard him before he went abroad,” said a 78-year-old woman who gave only her first name, Zinaida. “It was so wonderful that I stood in line all night now to make sure I’d get a ticket to hear him again.”

--Former Interior Secretary James G. Watt said in a speech in Casper, Wyo., that he will return to his native Wyoming to practice law and to work toward ridding the state’s Wind River Indian Reservation of “government socialism,” which he said has caused problems among American Indians. Watt said he will open a law office in Jackson this spring.