MANNINGTON – So, you think your grandma has the drop on pepperoni rolls?
Think again.
Unless you already know Ben Kolb, that is.
Kolb is the Mannington artist who created the 250-pound aluminum, LED-laden, pepperoni roll sculpture that will drop – a la Times Square – in his hometown this evening to bring in the New Year.
“I mean, how ‘West Virginia’ can you get?” said Kolb, who operates his Nativibes and Hollered Ground studios out of the former B&O station on Railroad Street in the heart of the northern Marion County town.
This year marks the seventh annual for the drop, which happens precisely at midnight, at Wintergarden Park.
Food trucks and family-fun games will also be part of the proceedings that run from 7 p.m.-12:30 a.m. at the park. Local musicians Cody Clayton Eagle of “American Idol” fame and Cody Wickline, who competed on “The Voice,” will also perform on stage.
“It’s a good evening and a good way to bring everyone together,” Kolb said.
When Mannington Main Street, the community booster organization that is hosting tonight’s event with the Buffalo Artist Coalition, asked Kolb “to come up with something” six years ago for a uniquely local New Year’s – it didn’t take him long.
“Pepperoni rolls,” he said.
“Everybody loves them. Your grandma bakes them. You load them down with peppers and sauce for your tailgates. The best thing is, they’re a celebration of our Italian heritage and coal mining culture.”
That goes back to the culinary origin story of what became the Mountain State’s iconic, signature snack food.
According to lore, immigrant miners, walking from their company houses to their shift in the mine, carried sticks of pepperoni and slices of bread for breakfast to go.
Somebody had the idea of baking said sticks into the bread, so the deal would be easier to eat and a Fairmont bakery followed suit – thus giving birth to the (sort of) calzone-looking creation that West Virginians, natives and adopted sons and daughters alike, now regard as an integral layer in the regional food pyramid.
“Yep,” the artist said.
Kolb, who also works as a machinist, has long been regarded for his industrial-themed creations.
The aforementioned Mannington New Year’s pepperoni roll, he allows, just might be his favorite.
There’s the aluminum framing, welded just so, and the quilting material for that just-out-of-Grandma’s-kitchen “fluffiness,” he said.
Mix in about 1,000 LEDs, and a plastic wrap – complete the requisite tie – and you’ve got yourself a pepperoni roll, of the Ben Kolb-Wintergarden Park variety.
And the best part, the artist said, is when the roll arrives.
The 100-foot descent via crane isn’t to “Auld Lang Syne” but rather “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” Mr. Denver’s opus to all things Appalachia, even if some of the name-checked West Virginia landmarks aren’t exactly correct, geographically.
“Never gets old,” Kolb said.
