Another Brief Memoir
By Jake Jakubuwski

Today it is hard to imagine horses on the streets of Baltimore, but when I was a kid they were so common that no one took any real notice. It was not unusual to hear a horse plodding up our alley with its harness bells tinkling, and the steel banded wagon wheels making a metallic racket all their own on the Belgian block pavement stones. Most often, the fellow driving the wagon was the “Junk Man,” looking for old newspapers, magazines, scrap metal, used clothes — anything that he could turn into cash. Also, of course, there were the “Arabbers” — hucksters that sold produce from their colorful (bright reds, yellows and blues) horse-drawn wagons. Like many kids in Baltimore, I used to work for the Arabbers. The pay wasn’t the greatest, but it was usually enough for a movie and a candy bar, and, perhaps, a Coke.

When we were living on Light Street, in South Baltimore, even the ice man delivered his ice from a horse-drawn wagon. Ice man? Yeah, ice man. In the late 1940s there were still lots of folks that didn’t have electric “Frigidaires,” but they did have thick-walled ice boxes, and the ice in them needed to be replaced on a regular basis. The ice man would come every other day or so, driving his wagon loaded with huge blocks of crystal-clear frozen water, a heavy canvas tarpaulin thrown over it to slow the melt. And you could hear him coming because, besides the clangor of his wagon wheels, he had his own chant to alert his customers. Slowly moving down the street or up the alley (with a dozen kids following behind, trying to snatch a piece of ice out of the wagon’s bed, the shards being viewed by them as a cool summer treat) he’d yell: “EyeEESE-mannnnnn! EyeEESE-mannnnnn!”

Many residents had signs with changeable numbers on them in their front window, so the ice man could tell how much the customer wanted. If you needed ice and didn’t have a sign, you could just holler and tell him how much. A dime’s worth? A quarter’s worth? Or, maybe a fifty cent block, if you thought that would be enough to make it through the weekend. The ice man would stop his wagon (shooing the kids away from the back ) and begin using an icepick to hack at one of the larger blocks to give the customer whatever amount they were willing to pay for — 25, 50, 75, even 100 pounds. After chopping the larger block to the proper size, the ice man, or his helper, would grab it with a large pair of black tongs and, using a burlap bag on his shoulder to help protect him form the cold, he’d leverage it onto his shoulder and carry it into the house and put it in the icebox.

During the winter months, we didn’t need to buy ice because our family had a window box. That was a box with a wire bottom to allow for drainage that hung outside of a window on the shady side of the house, in which we stored our eggs, butter, milk and other perishables. The window closed down on the top of the box and had a door in the front so you could easily get to the stored items. Folks that didn’t have a window box often had an open back porch where they would keep perishables in a crate, or other container. On top of the container would be a piece of wood with a brick or stone or piece of scrap iron holding the “lid” down so that stray cats and dogs — and any other free-roaming urban creatures — could not get at the goodies.

Our ice man came around even in the winter, too, with the difference being that he now delivered coal. If you had a coal stove or furnace, as we did, he’d back up to the basement window (or coal chute if you had one) and shovel the coal into the coal bin. Then, suddenly it seemed, when I was about eight or so, the ice man showed up driving a truck — the end of an era! The ice/coal truck had a large wooden body, and when delivering coal in the winter it backed up to the coal chute, the man raised the bed of the truck with a crank and the black lumps of energy ran out of the truck like a noisy, dusty river.

It was only a couple of summers until we had a Frigidaire and didn’t need the ice anymore. I guess a lot of folks in the neighborhood bought Frigidaires as well, because I have no memory of the ice man making his rounds after that.

Copyright © 2009 Jake Jakubuwski.

Jake Jakubuwski spent nearly two decades as an active locksmith and door service technician. He has been writing physical security related articles since 1991. Seventeen years ago, Jake wrote his first article for the National Locksmith Magazine and has been their technical editor for fifteen years. Pure Jake Learning Seminars©, his nationally conducted classes, are designed for locksmiths and professional door and hardware installers. For more information, click the “Pure Jake” link in the sidebar blogroll and under the “business” label. (And to read about Jake’s adventures as an “Arabber’s” assistant, check out a short piece on the subject — it was the September 14, 2009 post on this blog.)

From the Baltimore Sun

by Patrick R. Lynch, Baltimore

Some traditions just don’t fade away as readily as others.

My reference is to the latest confrontation between the arabbers and the city of Baltimore (“City closes largest a-rab stable, seizes horses,” Nov. 11). One of my fondest memories of growing up in Parkville was when the arabbers would come ambling up the alley with their trademark barking of “cantaloupes, watermelons,” as they wended their horse carts throughout the Loch Raven Village community. I can still hear the clomping of the horses’ hooves… and the sing-song way the a-rab would promote his wares. The booming voice and the sound of hooves on concrete were detected by ear long before they came into sight.

With bittersweet feelings on this topic, I say it’s time to put this long-honored tradition to rest. The horses are subjected to squalid, harsh-working conditions. Some are not appropriately cared for or groomed properly.

Yes, this is another Baltimore tradition that has outlived itself must come to a halt. It’s only fair to the horses and their overall wellbeing.

Yes, I loved the tradition as a youngster, but as an adult have shuddered at the reality in respect to the horses’ welfare these past few years.

So what are you going to do with these horses? Shoot them and glue them up? This is their calling in life don’t take it away. And what about the livelihood of the arabbers themselves? You’re just gonna take that away too, Baltimore City? And you wonder why this city is crumbling apart. – The Valley 1640

A Brief Memoir
By Jake Jakubuwski

In the early 1950s I was living with my parents, grandparents and youngest aunt on Battery Avenue, in South Baltimore. Money was not exactly tight in our house, but there was nothing to squander on movies and other stuff that kids our age were convinced we couldn’t live without.

If you were not a pre-teen or teen in the early ‘50’s, you probably have no concept how far a half dollar could take you in the pursuit of peanuts, Cracker Jacks, hot dogs, soda and, of course, movies. The trick was to find ways to earn the money. Aunt Pat, who was four years older than me, had it easy. (Well, I thought so at the time.) She was in demand as a baby sitter, laundress, or house cleaner. Being male meant that I had to scrounge for other work, usually outside the house. If I wanted to hear change jingle in my pockets for the Saturday shows I had to take it to the streets.

Being the clever lad I was in those days, I constructed a wagon from a beer crate (long necks), a couple of two-by-fours and four baby carriage wheels. On Friday evenings and all day on Saturdays, I pulled the wagon by its rope “harness” to the A & P on Fort Avenue and hauled groceries home for shoppers. My efforts would generally get me a nickel or dime per trip. On a good Saturday I could earn as much as fifty cents. The problem was if I worked all day Saturday, I would miss the movies. That was when the theaters showed double features with “selected short subjects,” ten minute films such as cartoons, newsreels and at least one serial, perhaps Rocket Man, Jungle Queen, or Captain America — all this for a dime.

I also used my wagon to scavenge for old newspapers, magazines, scrap metal and rags that folks would put out for the trash man. But I had to get up early on trash days to beat the Rag Man to the good stuff. The Rag Man was a guy who wandered through the back streets and alleys, usually with a horse and wagon, collecting the same stuff I was trying to gather up to sell at the junk yard on Cross Street.

To the best of my recollection iron was worth about two cents a pound, newspaper would bring half a cent, and magazines were worth a penny a pound. It took a fair amount of scavenging to come up with fifty cents or so for a week’s effort. Most of that work had to be done on school days, which meant I had to get up around five in the morning if I wanted to put in a couple of hours of “Gar-BAHGE-ing” before it was time to go to school.

At one time or another, I also sold newspapers on the Northeast corner of Cross Street at Light Street, between a bank and a movie theater. The newspaper vendor hired boys like me (no girls allowed) to help him increase his sales. We would walk the streets and ride the trolley cars hustling the product. We were allowed on the trolleys free but could only ride a block or two, and then had to get off and catch one going in the opposite direction. The daily papers sold for a nickel each and I earned a half-cent. The Sunday editions cost a quarter and my share was a nickel. Again, on a good week, I could earn as much as seventy-five cents, but if I only sold dailies it was usually closer to fifty.

My all-around favorite way to make money was to work for the “Arabbers”. These were the guys that sold fresh produce from horse-drawn wagons. They would make their rounds through the neighborhoods chanting: ‘Watermelluun! Can’elope! Nice fresh corn, pic’d this very morn. Watermelluun!” The chant would vary depending on what he was pushing on a given day. The Arrabber would usually ride on the wagon seat, or walk at the horse’s head as he went up one street and down another, singing the song of his farm-fresh stock.

The Arabber would stop in the middle or the end of the block so that the housewives could come out and poke, prod and look over his offerings. I would bag the selections, keep the produce looking good, straighten the wagon and occasionally run produce up to Mrs. Rosen’s when she called down an order from her apartment window on the second or third floor.

For instance, the Arabber might be chanting: ‘I got ‘taters, I got corn, I got Anne ‘rundels pic’d this very morn! Anne ‘rundels a nickel a piece or three for a dime!” (“Anne ‘rundels” were tomatoes grown in nearby Anne Arundel County.) Mrs. Rosen might yell down: “Hon, I only need two. Send ‘em up and make sure they’s firm, now.” Of course it was my job to run the tomatoes up to Mrs. Rosen’s apartment, collect the money and run back down to the wagon to give it to the boss. If Mrs. Rosen gave me a quarter, I had to make another trip up the steps with her change.

Usually, a day’s work on the wagon was worth a quarter. With the occasional nickel tip, I could pull down half a buck on a good Saturday. I remember one Saturday the boss paid me and the other helper in oranges. It had been a bad week for orange sales and these were beginning to get a bit soft. We each got a dozen oranges and had to carry them home in our shirts because, the Arabber said, ” . . . bags is expensive.” If I didn’t learn anything else from my Arabber days, I discovered that it was better to be the guy that owned or rented the wagon than the kid who did the running.

Overall, though, I have no complaints. During that productive period of my childhood I learned how to work hard and earn spending money — and how to depend on myself to get those things I wanted that my folks, for whatever reason, couldn’t afford to provide for me.

Copyright © 2009 Jake Jakubuwski.

Jake Jakubuwski spent nearly two decades as an active locksmith and door service technician. He has been writing physical security related articles since 1991. Seventeen years ago, Jake wrote his first article for the National Locksmith Magazine and has been their technical editor for fifteen years. Pure Jake Learning Seminars©, his nationally conducted classes, are designed for locksmiths and professional door and hardware installers. For more information, click the “Pure Jake” link in the sidebar blogroll and under the “business” label.

A common Tokyo summer sight are mini pick-up trucks parked near train stations selling fruit, like this peach truck in Jiyugaoka. The sign on the back says “Directly from Yamanashi, cheap, cheap.”

The summer fruit vendor remains me of the “Arabbers” of Baltimore, who since the early 1800s have sold fruit and vegetables on highly decorated horse-drawn carts. According to the preservation society, the numbers have recently increased from one to six arabbers still working today.

Ordinarily, I’d be writing about horses here. And, as odd as it is to imagine, HBO’s gritty urban blight series “The Wire” had a horse in its final couple of episodes.

Teenaged Duquan (“Dukie”) joins forces with an Arabber, one of the now only-in-Baltimore street vendors who work out of horse-drawn carts. Although the Arrabber on the show collects scrap metal, the few that remain in real life Baltimore reportedly sell fresh produce in neighborhoods not serviced by supermarkets. FWIW, that street horse looked healthier than some of the characters.

Anyway, I won’t spoil any more surprises for the only-on-DVD crowd, but Dukie’s situation provoked emotional reactions among Wire fans.

We’ll probably feel sad for a day or two and then move on. After all, Dukie is a fictional character. But I wonder how many Dukies are out there, also having been born under an unlucky star?

Show co-creator David Simon posted a message to Wire fans that was part “thank you” note and part call-to- arms.

“The Wire is about the America we pay for and tolerate,” Simon said in his letter. “Perhaps it is possible to pay for, and demand, something more.”

But the show also demonstrates that those who try to change the system end up either damaged, corrupted or both. So, the terrible truth is that it’s much easier and smarter for us to weep for Dukie — and then move on. Or to outlaw the Arabbers with the intent of protecting the horses.

It’s possible that more people look out for the street horses than the street kids like Dukie.

photo from HBO

A few times over the course of its run, The Wire has briefly shone its light on “A-rabs”, street peddlers who sell fruits and vegetables on carts pulled by horses and a fixture in Baltimore life.

Bubbles, during one of his many short-lived forays into sobriety and legality, is one of those peddlers. “You A-rabbing now, Bubs?” Jonny asks him before inviting him on a caper.

Two weeks ago, Dukie picks up Bug from school on the back of a junk man’s horse-drawn carriage. “Duke, you A-rabbing?” Bug jokes.

Okay, so what is an A-rabber? And isn’t that kinda racist? John McIntyre of The Baltimore Sun’s copy desk breaks it down.

The word arab in the sense of a peddler appears to derive from street arab, or, according to the unabridged Webster’s New International Dictionary, a “homeless vagabond in the streets of a city or esp. an outcast boy or girl: GAMIN.” The Oxford English Dictionary locates this sense of “a homeless little wanderer, a child of the street” in a citation from 1848. That’s the sense in which the term can be found in the Sherlock Holmes stories from the Victorian era.

This association of wanderers with Arabs likely reflects the sense of the nomadic life historically led by the peoples on the Arabian Peninsula. By extension, the person wandering the streets has been transformed from a vagrant to a vendor. The term street arab has fallen largely into disuse over the past century.

The Sun’s insistence in its house style that the Baltimore street peddlers are to be referred to as A-rabs, not Arabs, is a means of differentiating the local patois from the ethnic term. Whatever stereotypes of Arabs may be current in American culture, the Baltimore terms, A-rab and Arabber, indicate a respect for people who work very hard to make a living, and also an affectionate respect for a local tradition.

Nevertheless, since A-rab can look jarring in headline type, we are revising our stylebook to give preference to the alternative Arabber.

Ah.

Interestingly, Arabbers are usually black men, and Arabbing was one of the few jobs available for blacks in many cities, though government officials and animal rights activists who didn’t want horses on city streets cracked down on the practice, making Baltimore the only city with Arabbers left. But even there, the practice is close to extinction.