Every April asparagus season begins in Germany. This event—trumpeted by the shouts of delight usually reserved for firework displays on the Rhine—marks the arrival of a two month national frenzy. The normally reserved German adults and children, anxious to tuck into that first bite of the stalky white “king of vegetables,” hover in the produce aisles of local markets, discussing recipes for cream of asparagus soup, asparagus salad, and whether or not a raspberry vinaigrette might enhance the flavor of the already perfect vegetable.
When I play a piano job in a German restaurant during the two month period between April and June, I’m sure to find myself caught in the madness. As guests order platters of asparagus, typically accompanied by new potatoes, thinly sliced ham, and an obscene amount of hollandaise sauce, I check my watch and wonder how much notice I need to give the waiter so that the kitchen can time my dinner with my break. I once reserved this kind of obsession for cigarettes and alcohol. Now it’s asparagus. This is what happens when you leave New York City. You stop smoking and drinking and start analyzing cooking times for vegetables.
Flashback to 1986: While playing at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan, I noticed a display in a glass-enclosed case in the lobby. Inside the 4x4 window—built into one of the marble walls lining the hallway—was an entire asparagus village. Over 200 (I counted) asparagus people inhabited the village, each skinny green person hand-painted, and dressed in a little asparagus outfit.
“Insane,” I said to the bass player from the lobby trio. “Truly the work of a madman.”
“Check it out,” he replied. “That one has a briefcase.”
By this point the sax player had joined us.
“Whoa. What a trip. It’s like—uh—an international scene. See that cat sitting on the motorcycle? He’s wearing a sombrero. Dig the brother hanging out the window—they painted his face black. And that asparagus chick on the lounge chair? She looks hot in that bikini.”
Asparagus children played in the asparagus village sandbox, each one with an expression of delight painted onto its tiny face. In the back, asparagus policemen loomed, wearing uniforms made of tiny scraps of brown fabric, with matching hats.
Imagine making hats for stalks of asparagus. The hats even had little badges on them. The whole thing reminded me of those monks who carve the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin.
I spent every break peering into the village, fascinated by the amount of work that must have gone into a display that was pretty much ignored by the business people and tourists waddling though the granite lobby.
“Look Steve, an asparagus people village.”
“That’s nice, hon.”
As far as I was concerned, the asparagus people were there specifically to entertain me. But then again, I drank too much in those days.
For several years every spring, the village—with all new costumes and themes—graced the Hyatt hallway. One year it was cowboys and Indians, the next it was an amusement park (imagine a Ferris wheel full of tranquil asparagus girls wearing shorts and halter tops), once it was a Broadway show, complete with cast, crew, and audience.
Then, as so often happens in the hotel-music world, tragedy struck. April arrived and the asparagus village failed to appear in the showcase window. Shortly thereafter, most of the musicians were fired, which made me wonder if all along there had been a strange correlation between asparagus and lounge music. As was the case in most big New York hotels, I didn’t have much contact with the corporate bigwigs in charge of decisions like bar snacks or asparagus villages, so I never did figure out who had masterminded the display.
Although I missed the village, my intrigue with it was quickly replaced by some other New York City hotel oddity—a quirky waiter/dancer at the Marriott Marquis who was afraid to turn his back on midgets. But that’s another story.
Years later, after I had moved to Germany and had begun understanding and appreciating the annual asparagus mania, the asparagus village at the Hyatt flopped back into my mind. Suddenly, it all made sense. The Food and Beverage director during the Manhattan Hyatt asparagus siege had been a German man named Joachim Prang. He was a cold fish, that guy, scowling at us whenever he clip-clopped through the lobby. He had cleats on his shiny black pointed-toe shoes, so we always knew when he was circling the marble fountain, usually on his way to fire somebody. But now I think I understand his miserable attitude. He was homesick and pining for his beloved asparagus season back in Deutschland. As a quick fix for his malaise, he designed the village.
Twenty years later, I sit at the piano in a German castle playing songs about spring for my hollandaise-guzzling guests, and I wonder about Mr. Prang. I envision him barking orders and supervising the painting of all those asparagus people faces, forcing the baffled New York Hispanic staff to draw miniscule eyebrow hairs onto asparagus stalks the size of a pinky finger. Or perhaps Mr. Prang accomplished the work himself, painstakingly dressing each asparagus person, frustrated by a perceived American lack of respect for his prized vegetable, and dreaming of the day when he might escape to Germany in time for the start of asparagus season. I can see him now, followed by an army of hopeful asparagus people, breaking out of their glass cage and marching through the hotel lobby, dodging the sharp ankles and clodhopper feet of dazed and apathetic tourists, rushing for the exit, trying not to get caught and squashed in the revolving doors of a different culture.
Robin Goldsby is the author of PIANO GIRL: A Memoir
