Baltimore's 'arabbers' keep horse-cart vending alive
Baltimore (AFP) - On a crisp cool autumn day in inner-city Baltimore, Yusuf "BJ" Abdullah guides his colorful horse-drawn produce cart into Orchard Street and Jerry "Lawlaw" Powell raises his voice to rustle up some customers.
"You can't hold us down! We've got the best fruit around! Comin' to your block! All over town!" hollers Powell, knocking on the doors of the brick row houses as Abdullah bags some mangos and grapes for a passer-by.
The pair will work until every apple, orange, banana, cabbage, tomato, cucumber and pomegranate is sold, and Tony the horse is back at the stables.
Powell and Abdullah are arabbers, the itinerant African-American grocers of Baltimore. Once a common sight in American streets, the number of arabbers is fast dwindling, but not in Charm City.
"I've never doubted that arabbing will continue here in Baltimore," said Dan Van Allen of the Arabber Preservation Society, founded in 1994 to support the horse-cart vendors and their stables.
"We've gone in the past few years from one or two wagons (after one of the stables was closed for urban renewal) back up to eight wagons on the street," he told AFP. "And hopefully we'll have more out on the streets next year."
No one knows where the word arabber comes from -- one theory holds it's archaic slang for street urchin, and the legendary Baltimore journalist H.L. Mencken, born in 1880, recalled hearing it in his youth.
For generations, before the advent of suburbs and shopping malls and supermarkets, selling food off horse-drawn carts was commonplace in American cities -- but Baltimore is the last place where the tradition endures.
"When I started, oh man, there were a good 20 wagons, and the economy wasn't so messed up," said Powell, 47, an arabber for more than 20 years, as Abdullah, 25, hitched Tony to the cart.
The duo, along with several other arabbers, work out of the North Fremont Avenue stables, one of three up and running in this industrial port city of 621,000, an hour's drive north of Washington.
Fresh produce arrives early in the morning in pickup trucks from Baltimore's wholesale food market, and is then painstakingly arranged on the brightly colored wagons as the arabbers exchange salty banter.
Once a cart is deemed "tight" and well-balanced, it's ready to go out through neighborhoods better known as the backdrop for the gritty TV series "The Wire" than for an abundance of grocery stores.
"A lot of older folks can't get out. We bring it to them. That's the thing," said Powell, who's worked all kinds of jobs in his life and ranks arabbing the best of all.
The day's first customers, however, are more likely to be passing motorists who buy a piece of fruit or two for a late morning snack. Powell also makes a sale at a corner diner that features smoothies on its otherwise greasy-spoon menu.
Abdullah keeps the prices in his head, and does the math too. With no landlord or utility bills, his overhead is low, and thus he can sell for less than the big supermarkets several miles (kilometers) away.
It doesn't hurt the arabbers that another tight-knit community with a passion for authentic horse power, the Amish, are a few hours' drive away in Pennsylvania -- a reliable source for horses, wooden-wheeled wagons and parts.
Up on Baltimore's Marble Hill, where vintage row houses are either boarded up or splendidly restored, Powell hollers "straaaaw-berries" and checks in with a regular customer, educator Bryant Alexander, 67.
"It's convenient for me," Alexander said, "and the product they sell is of a quality higher than in stores... I really feel they (arabbers) should be given some historical status."
