sheeny man, [[1950's junk dealer with horse-drawn wagon)

[the rock]

We had a sheeny man in Grosse Pointe too, but he was British and wore a tuxedo.

Seriously, I remember the guy that game around with a push cart and sharpened knives.

Did he visit the Blue Star Home?

[JenniferL]

My mom has mentioned the sheeny man. She did not grow up in the Detroit area. Her family moved around different parts of Ohio, mostly rural, but they did spend a few years in Toledo and a few in Canton [[Canton, Ohio, not Michigan). I'm guessing the Sheeny man was in one or both of those cities, not in the little cornfield towns.

[Honky Tonk]

My mom has mentioned the sheeny man. She did not grow up in the Detroit area. Her family moved around different parts of Ohio, mostly rural, but they did spend a few years in Toledo and a few in Canton [[Canton, Ohio, not Michigan). I'm guessing the Sheeny man was in one or both of those cities, not in the little cornfield towns.

Ohio? That guy had one great horse!

[kanfar]

We had him in Chicago also.

[Bobl]

We had an older Italian guy who walked the east side neighborhood every few weeks, with a foot operated grinding wheel which he used to sharpen knives and scissors.
The "sheeny man" worked the alleys at our cousins' neighborhoods near City Airport. I can still remember visiting them when he showed up in the alley, for the first time without a horse.
Yes, Ray, even ten years later, it was a different world.

[Gistok]

As a kid growing up in the 60s, in the Balduck Park area of the far east side... I remember one of our neighbors on Marseilles St.... a Mr. Lappacola manned a produce truck... with stripped awnings... I can still hear "Strawberries Strawberries... 3 quarts for a dollar... Tomatoes, Peaches Sweetcorn"... as he drove down the street with his bells and loudspeaker. We also had a knife sharpener man come by occasionally [[no alley's in our neighborhood)... and our neighborhood Ice Cream man was called "Uncle George"... who looked like Hoss Cartright.

I also remember later spending summers in Germany visiting relatives... where they had a baker come by in his truck every morning... with fresh baked "semmel" [[crusty rolls)... and still warm square cheese cake slices with raisins in it. Wouldn't have breakfast until "der Bäcker" came by first with the fresh breakfast fare.

[kathy2trips]

This is a great thread, by the way. I'm going to copy it and send it to my older relatives that aren't too Internet savvy. I know they'll love it.

Gistok, I remember Mr. Lappacola, too! Haven't thought of him in years! Even though we lived within walking distance of the Food Fair on Harper, and the Wrigley's and Kroger's at 7-Mack, Nonna still bought produce from him, if he carried what she needed. She said he told her it was "fresh from the farm" and it sure tasted like it! She'd speak to him in Italian and try to get some of it at a discount, playing the piasano card, as it were. In return, she'd give him some biscotti or whatever she was baking to munch on his rounds.

Mr. Springer lived 2 doors down and he sharpened lawn movers and such as a side business, so we always went to him for our sharpening needs. He hung a sign on the back of his garage that faced the service drive of I-94, so he got a lot of business. I remember Uncle George, too, though I can't remember if he was an independent or Good Humor. Thanks for the memory jog!

[canuck]

I wuv this fread.


In Montreal, there is this one guy who does the sharpening bit doing the rounds and chiming to attract customers. I have seen him doing this since i was a pup and saw him last week on my street. The only other ones to chime a bell are the city guys announcing a water shut-off for repairs.

Tony's sharpening has been around since 1958 according to comments on this thread, http://spacing.ca/montreal/2008/08/2...iguisage-tony/
and there are t-shirts made in his effigy sold at a trendy shop in the Mile-End neighborhood. This guy rides the same old truck with hand-painted lettering and illustrations that I saw when I was a little kid. My dad used to tell me about the ragpickers and they were mostly jewish and they would do the alleys like Detroit. I helped an elderly jamaican guy put old aluminum doors and gutters to trash today after a neighbor of mine spotted us putting them out there.

On garbage day, there are also lots of folks picking the recycling bins to check for cans and bottles for refunds. I started putting mine in there and sometimes check if they are gone before the trucks come. Sure enough, they are picked clean. Amazing to think that there is a whole ecology of folks doing the rounds to survive or thrive depending on wits and wherewithal. I noticed when I moved to the city last yaer that a lot of people were out there in all kinds of weather picking 5cent cans and 10 cent bottles. It is sad but also nice that there is an opportunity in that kind of recycling. I often see men or women walking around with huge transparent bags filled with a hundred cans worth maybe a tenner if mixed with 20cent kingcans. Jeezus Lard, look upon us kindly, poor humans that we are.

[Jimaz]

Okay, now I'm pondering planting a GPS device in the trash to track down exactly where our trash lands. Why don't we know this beforehand? Future archaeologists need to know. Peristalsis comes to mind.

Please, stop me before I ponder again.

[old guy]

I've been wondering the same thing. The town I live in had a recycling system where you separated certain items. A new company came in, I'm assuming at a lower bid and now you just dump all of it together. I am going to attempt to track it.

Sorry to somewhat threadjack. This is the best thread I've seen for a few hours or so.

[wilderness]

In the late 50's my Grandfather had a side-business with another gent as a fruit vendor and a market [[at least until the partner got his hands in the till). My Uncle and I rode the truck and worked the market. Nearly all the produce was purchased at both Eastern Market and the Western Produce Terminal [[Fort & Green) despite claims of FRESH . For years Grandfather still had some of those old wooden Banana crates that he'd paid deposit on stored in his garage.

[kathy2trips]

In the late 50's my Grandfather had a side-business with another gent as a fruit vendor and a market.....

Just wondering where your grandfather's territory was. East side, west side, all around the town?

[wilderness]

Just wondering where your grandfather's territory was. East side, west side, all around the town?

We were all over the place, however mostly west side and suburbs. I recall one day through Herman Gardens. The store didn't last long and was a rented building at Ecorse and Inkster [[today a truck stop). I was 7-8 years old and to see the Eastern Market in the wee hours of the morning was memorable. Lots of farmers in those days sold their own produce.

[Dumpling]

Clover Hill Park Cemetery has a note on their webpage that Beth Olam Cemetery
is to be open this September 20th from 10 am until 1 pm.
Also, when I was young, in the sixties or seventies, there used to be a "Raimi's Curtains"
store at Oakland Mall. While casually researching the Raimi family [[I don't personally
know any of them) I came across a story that readers of this particular thread may
enjoy:

http://www.math.rochester.edu/people...rm/zalman.html

[Brock7]

I don't know if my grandmother could understand Yiddish. She wasn't Jewish, but she did work in Germany for some time as girl, so I suppose she knew some German. The village she came from was Jastkowice. She said the nearest large town was Nisko.

[EASTSIDE CAT 67-83]

Ray1936
We had the knife sharping guy with his grindstone hand cart as late as the early 70's in my Jefferson/Chalmers neighborhood as well as "Charlies Produce" truck, you could hear him on his trucks loud speaker calling out...Apples, Oranges, Waaaaaaaaaatamellon. Great memories of a
by gone era.

[Pontiac6000]

I remember Charlie's. They came as north as Fenkell in the '70s. Wasn't he the same guy selling those cement planters, the mahogany picnic stuff- and later- the barrel bbq pits? There had to be nothing to 'pick' from once the Lyndon industries slowed down and KMart blue-lighted them away.

Ray1936
We had the knife sharping guy with his grindstone hand cart as late as the early 70's in my Jefferson/Chalmers neighborhood as well as "Charlies Produce" truck, you could hear him on his trucks loud speaker calling out...Apples, Oranges, Waaaaaaaaaatamellon. Great memories of a
by gone era.

[CassTechGrad]

Burning the trash in the alley in that big wire basket with my father in the late 50’s and early 60’s was always something I looked forward to. You could poke the trash through the wires with a stick and make embers fly high into the air. It’s a miracle that the garage never burned down. Happy simple time gone forever.

[lpg]

Burning the trash in the alley in that big wire basket with my father in the late 50’s and early 60’s was always something I looked forward to. You could poke the trash through the wires with a stick and make embers fly high into the air. It’s a miracle that the garage never burned down. Happy simple time gone forever.

As a kid I was always next to my mom when it was time to burn the trash in the wire basket. I bugged her to let me poke the fire to make sure everything burned. One day she said OK. I carefully did what I was supposed to until I touched her arm with the red hot poker to see if it was really that hot. That was the end of my trash burning career. It also earned me a first class ass whoopin'.

[Parkguy]

I moved into Rosedale Park in 1978, and I was surprised to see a knife sharpener pushing a small cart with a grinding wheel down the street ringing a bell. I saw him maybe three times over the first couple of years I lived here, but not since then. I remember as a kid in the suburbs in the '50s, we had "the bread man," a vegetable truck, and several milk different trucks make the rounds. I remember the coffee cakes from the bread truck, and I remember that we got our milk from the Borden truck. Other dairy trucks I remember were Twin Pines and Sealtest.

[Király]

I found these artworks and remembered this thread.

[GPCharles]

We had a gas incinerator in the basement to burn the trash. Cleaning out the ashes was one of my jobs.

[gnome]

My dad built a type of outdoor fireplace out of cinder block because those cheap burner barrels would disintegrate.

Instead of mortaring the blocks together he used rebar to hold the blocks in place. In theory it's a good idea because the heat from the fire woul destroy the mortar.

Theory only works so good.

Being young and adventurous and wearing a Have Gun Will Travel outfit. I decided to lasso one of the blocks that protruded like the crenellations of 15th Century castle. I put my foot on the side of the contraption so as to climb up side and yanked.

Walking in the side door with my hand holding together the side of my head brought a look on my poor sainted mother's face I will never forget.

The scream was pretty unforgettable too.

It wasn't my first trip to the hospital, which progressively became so frequent the hospital gave her a separate parking spot near the door, did I say my mother is a saint?

[CassTechGrad]

If you remember the wire baskets then what about your trash cans having the letters G & R painted on them.
The G stood for Garbage and the R stood for Rubbish.

[expatriate]

Yes, we had an elderly black man with a horse and wagon that traversed the alley on Alter rd [[and I assume other east side streets) in the 1950s. He would let the kids give his horse carrots and sugar.