Detroit's Forgotten Western Market

[Pam]

http://detroit.curbed.com/archives/2...arket.php#more

[rb336]

gone before my time. what a waste

[EastsideAl]

A couple of old threads on the Western Market:

http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthr...Western-Market

http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthr...et-pics-anyone

I believe that frequent poster Ray1936 used to patrol the area as a member of the DPD.

[Ray1936]

I believe that frequent poster Ray1936 used to patrol the area as a member of the DPD.

Yup, that was my favorite beats, beats 9 & 10. Michigan from 14th to the Boulevard and the Western market area. It was between 18th and Humboldt, and between Michigan and Butternut. Lot of wholesale stores there besides the daily farmers who set up shop around 4:00 a.m. every morning. One greasy spoon restaurant on the Humboldt side named "Gus'" Homely waitress named Norma who kind of threw your order at you. Gus was an old Greek with a heavy accent. Never used prepositions. "Norma, gif boy bowl oats" for oatmeal. But at 4:30 on a cold winter morning, the place was heaven.

One wholesale place on the 18th street side was Nor-Les Wholesale. They had huge double doors in the back alley. I learned that if you shook them too hard on your rounds, you'd set off the ADT silent alarm. So when I wanted the sergeants off my back for a while, I'd shake the doors hard at 2 a.m. and two cars and the 70 [[sergeants) always responded. I'd walk up innocently and say, "Oh, gosh, I must have shook those doors too hard...did the alarm trip?" And the sergeants would say...."Good job, kid, checking those alley doors at 2 a.m.". Then they'd drive off and I could hole up in the front seat of a truck for a couple hours.

In the very early sixties, the Hygrade's rendering plant was on Michigan across the street from Western Market. On a foggy, damp day or night, the odor was extremely strong. Not particularly unpleasant, but not particularly helpful to your appetite. It was where they turned animal organs into soap and other products. I think it closed down about 1962 and torn down the next year. Huge brick building; covered the whole block.

Used to be lots of vagrants hung out in the area. We'd round them up from time to time, march them to the call box at 18th and Pine, and check them all for warrants. You'd usually score one or two. In the winter the jail trip probably saved a few of them from freezing to death.

Except during the very rare bitterest nights when temperatures got down around zero, I was never really cold. You just dressed for it; long johns, two t shirts and a sweat shirt, and your uniform over it....wasn't a problem. Had nice ear flaps that fit the uniform hat, also.

Thanks for provoking some memories for this old fart.

[canuck]

Thanks EastsideAl' for prompting Ray1936's post. Very funny and so unPC. You forgot to tell us about picking free apples from the apple cart vendors at the market!!!

[sumas]

Thanks for sharing memories. I never knew about the western market.

[Honky Tonk]

I remember going there a few times with the folks as a young'n. Back then they went because it was a place to get good produce cheap. Unlike what Eastern Mark-Up is turning into with designer fruit.

[jackie5275]

Unlike what Eastern Mark-Up is turning into with designer fruit.

No kidding. I don't see prices there much different from the grocery stores.

[EastsideAl]

My mother grew up mostly on Brooklyn near Temple [[roughly where the Motor City Casino is today) until she was a teenager. She just turned 84 yesterday and she spoke briefly about her childhood on the west side during the depression.

She said that she and her father would walk over to the Western Market on Saturdays a little later in the day, after the big market crowds had gone. Her father would either bargain with farmers for what they had left over [[and didn't want to put back on their trucks to rot), or look for one of them looking to discard some food and helpfully take it off his hands. She'd then put it all on her little red wagon and haul it home for the week to come.

Explains why when I was a kid we never seemed to show up at the Eastern Market until the farmers were packing up to go home.

[p69rrh51]

My mother grew up mostly on Brooklyn near Temple [[roughly where the Motor City Casino is today) until she was a teenager. She just turned 84 yesterday and she spoke briefly about her childhood on the west side during the depression.

She said that she and her father would walk over to the Western Market on Saturdays a little later in the day, after the big market crowds had gone. Her father would either bargain with farmers for what they had left over [[and didn't want to put back on their trucks to rot), or look for one of them looking to discard some food and helpfully take it off his hands. She'd then put it all on her little red wagon and haul it home for the week to come.

Explains why when I was a kid we never seemed to show up at the Eastern Market until the farmers were packing up to go home.

EastsideAl at least you were at the market at a far more civilized time of the day. My father was ex military, 6:30AM was late for us to be arriving at Eastern Market on Saturdays.

[Ray1936]

Another old memory triggered. The Second [[Vernor) precinct had two police officers assigned to the Western Market back around 1960. They both had about a hundred years on the job, and from remembering the looks of them, they never missed a meal. Anyway, outside of writing an occasional parking ticket, all they ever did was sit in the Market Master's office and play gin rummy. They wouldn't give a rookie like me the time of day. They 'worked' 6 am to 2 pm. I imagine they're both long gone by now, and danged if I can remember either name. But their faces are yet in my mind.

Then there was the time a cattle truck overturned there, and it was like the Keystone Cops trying to round them up. My partner waved a straw car seat at one trying to shoo him into a pen, and the cow picked up the seat with his horn and tossed it onto the roof of Gus' grill in the neatest move I ever saw. Larry, my partner, was pissed to the gills..........it was his car seat; one of those things with the springs inside to keep your butt cool in summer.

Shit, life was good.

[sumas]

No clue if this is a good memory or a bad one. The two cops assigned to Eastern Market spent their time at Joey's drinking and ignoring the hookers belying trade.

[Django]

Anyone know of the market on Ferry just West of Chene?

[gnome]

Another old memory triggered. The Second [[Vernor) precinct had two police officers assigned to the Western Market back around 1960. They both had about a hundred years on the job, and from remembering the looks of them, they never missed a meal. Anyway, outside of writing an occasional parking ticket, all they ever did was sit in the Market Master's office and play gin rummy. They wouldn't give a rookie like me the time of day. They 'worked' 6 am to 2 pm. I imagine they're both long gone by now, and danged if I can remember either name. But their faces are yet in my mind.

Then there was the time a cattle truck overturned there, and it was like the Keystone Cops trying to round them up. My partner waved a straw car seat at one trying to shoo him into a pen, and the cow picked up the seat with his horn and tossed it onto the roof of Gus' grill in the neatest move I ever saw. Larry, my partner, was pissed to the gills..........it was his car seat; one of those things with the springs inside to keep your butt cool in summer.

Shit, life was good.

haha, growing up we called those seat things, "little-old-man-seats" and I still call them that. Now they are tough to find and no one knows what I'm talking about when looking for a little-old-man-seat.

[marshamusic]

Anyone know of the market on Ferry just West of Chene?

You mean this one? I remembered this thread that you were in before, because I was so shocked that this place had existed, just like I am about this Western Market. There has been a lot of loss in this city.
http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthr...ighlight=chene

[Ray1936]

haha, growing up we called those seat things, "little-old-man-seats" and I still call them that. Now they are tough to find and no one knows what I'm talking about when looking for a little-old-man-seat.

Yeah, that was what they were, gnome. But in the days with no car a/c, they were the berries on a hot day.

[EastsideAl]

My grandfather, who I mentioned above, always had those straw car seats. He moved to Florida after he retired from Ford, but still never bought a car with air conditioning [[a waste of money, and a drain on the engine and on gas mileage he would say). Among my childhood memories are sitting on one of those seats and being battered by the hot wind through the open windows as we cruised down I-95 in his "new car" - a 1967 Fairlane.

[EastsideAl]

Anyone know of the market on Ferry just West of Chene?

My great uncle [[brother of that same grandfather) used to sell regularly at the Chene-Ferry market from the farm he owned out by Belleville, until his death in the late '60s. He had to learn a few words of Polish, which he never failed to demonstrate at family parties, in order to communicate with many of his customers there.

[Brock7]

Anyone know of the market on Ferry just West of Chene?

I recall being there in the 60's and a young guy at a poultry stall being puzzled when my mother asked for duck's blood. She wanted it to make czarnina. The older guy in charge said he still put some aside in the refrigerator in back and got her a pint carton.

[Django]

LOL, Thanks Marsha, I totally forgot about that thread.

EastsideAl. Thats interesting. My Grandfather had a farm in Belleville right on Rawsonville Rd next to the Huron River. May I ask your Uncles last name? My Grandfathers name was Rowe. He used to take me to sell mellons, maters, cuc's and corn at the Eastern Market in the mid 70s. He knew all the farmers in the area.I only remember a few of their names though.