So, I put on my writing sweater, lit up my pipe and sat down to pound out this week’s Street Talk. Suddenly, I was stricken with a sense of horror that sounded something like this: OH, MY GOD! I’VE BEEN WRITING THIS COLUMN FOR 10 YEARS! THERE’S NO WAY I CAN COME UP WITH SOMETHING I HAVEN’T COVERED BEFORE!
Then I took an Anacin, felt better, and thought about fiddleheads, so everything’s fine.
It’s almost fiddlehead season and you know what that means.
You get to listen to me tell a pointless, long-winded story about my history with the peculiar plant.
You couldn’t be more excited.
You always remember your first time. I was a young boy, a fickle eater whose diet consisted mainly of pizza and borderline food items found under sofa cushions. My mother (or some stranger off the street; it’s all very hazy) put a bowl of ugly weeds in front of me and instructed me to eat them. It went like this:
“GROSS! I WON’T EAT IT! IT LOOKS LIKE ELF INTESTINES!”
“Try it with some vinegar and butter.”
“AHHH! GIVE ME MORE FIDDLEHEADS, OR I’LL KILL YOU!”
And I’ve been hooked ever since. Which really freaks people out because I generally don’t eat vegetables. Or greens, or anything, really, that’s good for you.
Fiddleheads is (are?) one of those foods, like the disgusting clam, where you wonder about the first person to sample them.
It’s 1567 in New England. Explorers are prowling the rivers along the Androscoggin Valley, an area that has been deemed an All-America City, even though America does not yet exist. It’s just that good.
“Claudius! Come hither and behold thine plant growing in yonder bog.”
“Why, it looks like the head of a fiddle, good sir. Or like the intestines of thine elf. Verily!”
“Indeed. Let’s eat them.”
And 400-something years later, we’re still eating them by the pound. Fiddlehead season lasts about as long as a human sneeze, though, so you have to be quick. If you’ve read to this point in my column, you’ve already missed it. Your wife now hates you and your children will starve.
One of the great things about fiddleheads is that you can buy them on the street. When you do it, it feels like you’re out there dealing in highly illegal narcotics. Just follow the signs — which are always black magic marker on ragged squares of cardboard — and find your friendly neighborhood dealer. He’ll be standing next to his garage, the door half open, an exciting rectangle of darkness.
“So,” you say in your best haggling voice. “Two-seventy-five a pound? You know, a guy over on Farwell is selling them for half that.”
Fiddlehead Frank will only shrug. “That’s swamp weed, my friend. Pure crap. What I’m selling is green gold. Comes from the banks of a pristine stream that nobody knows about but the deer, the butterflies and me. Beautiful stuff. Like nothing you’ve ever had.”
You eye him narrowly and ask to see his stuff. He opens the garage door — just a little, mind you — and ducks in to fetch a paper bag crammed full of the exotic plants. You sniff it. You pick up a handful and feel the slickness of those tight curls. You hold it up to the sun. Nodding, you reach for your wallet.
“Keep your money in your pocket,” the shrewd vendor advises. “First one is free, my friend.”
Two weeks later, you’re in detox, your bank account cleaned out, your wife gone. Even three days clean, you can still taste the vinegar on your lips. At night (the nights are the worst) you dream you’re a stick of butter, slowly melting into a steaming pot of the plants that hooked you.
The Head of the Fiddle is a monster, man. It will put hair on your chest and meat on your bones, or maybe it’s the other way around. The Drug Enforcement Agency has fiddleheads on its list of “substances that may be troublesome but also quite delicious.”
I was so damned impressed with the green stuff, I once went out and tried to pick my own. I spent hours battling mosquitoes and thorns but came home with a garbage bag full of salubrious greens. Unfortunately, they weren’t fiddleheads. Turned out it was the ugly twin of the fiddlehead, Jack in the Pulpit. Or possibly Jake in the Plaza or James on the Pole Dancer.
It’s all very hazy.
Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. You can email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com for the best fiddle head shops.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
