At 14th Place, just off Halsted, a crooked street-sign arrow that would direct traffic to South Water Market if it were straight points instead to the absence of light in the western sky. At four in the morning, the streets surrounding Chicago’s oldest and busiest wholesale produce market are dark. Only the glowing headlights and idling engines of refrigerated trucks suggest the presence of life. They line up in long convoys, rumbling in the dark, encircling the dirty, rubble-filled lots that on Sunday will fill with carts and people and become the Maxwell Street bazaar.
“I was shot in the eye with a BB gun when I was 12. I needed surgery. My father said that if everything went well, he would rename the family business.”
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“My grandfather started the business in 1898,” he recites. “He stood at State and Roosevelt and sold banana bunches for 15 cents a dozen. A cop came by and called him a dirty Jew, so my grandfather hit him over the head with a banana stalk and ended up in jail. He spoke no English. He stayed there a week until an interpreter got him out. After that he moved to South Water Street, bought a horse, and started the business. He rented a wagon for two dollars a day and did business right from the wagon.” As if all this required documentation, Ronnie points to faded photographs framed on the wall above him.
“That’ll do, but I owe you four cents,” says Ronnie, snatching the nickel from my hand and disappearing behind a stack of round red potatoes. The warehouse is clogged with workers bearing crates of vegetables or handfuls of receipts. Ronnie reappears from the reds and tosses to me what looks like a pocketknife. He says he’ll be right back. It is a knife, and I flick it open, wondering why he gave it to me.
“We are an early family,” Margo says with her chin in her hands. “Go home early. Eat early. Watch TV early. Go to sleep early. Early. Early.”
“I got a brother and a sister. Never met my sister, but my brother gots a good job being a salesman for cars,” says Noel as he begins tossing bags of onions onto a skid. “I’m not like the average guy, gettin’ in and out of jail. A lot of people I grew up with are in jail now. I like workin’.”
