Mister Okra

Mister okra.

By

Phil LaMancusa

New Orleans, La.

Arthur ‘Mister Okra’ Robinson

Born: June 8^th 1943

Transitioned into Eternal Rest: Feb 15th 2018.

And so it occurred; a seventy-four year old black man with a catchy moniker kicked the bucket. And this concerns us how? Consider this: the obituary was picked up no less than by the New York Times, changing the question to: ‘who was Mister Okra and how did his passing relate to us as New Orleanians?’  As a vehicle to your awareness, Mister Okra may have been the last of the New Orleans street vegetable vendors.

As Sophia Petrillo would say “Picture it! New Orleanians for hundreds of years before the advent of super markets and box stores had their own network of commodity sales people; back road entrepreneurs with mule drawn wagons, pushcarts, old flatbed trucks and even wheelbarrows.” To get services into the neighborhoods in need of everyday necessities; peddlers, collectors, hawkers and hucksters roamed the streets. The ice man, the tin man, bread, seafood, produce, poultry, coal and comestibles coming around the corner and down your block bringing supplies to your door; any dinner diva, culinary consort or harried housewife would look forward to having a visit from the vegetable wagon singing out with the produce of the day. Such was Mister Okra; threading the streets of New Orleans singing “I got the mangoooz, I got caaaabidge, I got onions and watermelon red to the rind!”

Not only in the French Quarter on Levee St. (Decatur St.), where a visitor wrote in 1816 that he saw at least five hundred merchants selling their wares, but in Back-a-town, Pidgin Town, Gert Town, Bucktown, Treme and the lower wards, seven through nine (upper and lower) independent merchants looking to turn a profit by offering selection and quality to the populace. Such a man was Mister Okra, his father before him and his daughter after him; you’ll have to look close and patiently on our streets to realize that for all their disappearances, vendors still exist; walking our streets, driving through our neighborhoods, parked by the side of the road.

It’s a fact that most people can walk down the street and be unaware of things going on around them that their brain registers as S.E.P. (Someone Else’s Problem); so I challenge you. Walk through the French Quarter as many times as you have and tell me if you’ve seen Clarence on his never-ending route, selling bananas and other fruit to shop keepers, store owners and even street performers; most folks just call him ‘The Banana Man’. Have you seen the ‘Tamale Man’? ‘The Cake Man’, ‘Empanada Lady’ and where the heck has the ‘Pie Lady’ gotten off to? There’s a guy that shows up on street corners in the lower French Quarter with a scale and coolers of fresh shrimp; seen him? The vegetable man parked on Carrolton?

Nowadays, food trucks, pop-ups and side of the road pickup trucks with fresh produce can be seen and registered in people’s minds who know such things exist; the rest who stroll with purpose, drive with abandon or just are apprehensive about paying too much attention to their surroundings miss this heartbeat of the city. They side step beggars, drunks, hustlers and the homeless with a blind eye hoping that by not seeing, they won’t be seen in return (S.E.P.); I don’t blame them, the city can be a scary place.

Mister Okra was an anomaly, animatingly dissimilar, you almost didn’t think that he was real; I mean, who goes around through neighborhoods selling produce from the back of a garishly painted truck (with an a-frame roof no less)? It must be some kind of joke or stunt, Candid Camera, right? Wrong.

Mister Okra picked up his produce from a produce company. Years ago this was not singularly the case. Pre-Katrina, ladies in the neighborhoods would grow stuff in their back yards; one might be growing greens or tomatoes, okra, herbs etc and the produce sellers crisscrossing the city would also barter with them, trading goods for goods and selling any excesses to others. Also savvy produce companies would sell, for cheap, cosmetically imperfect, near ripe or sometimes over ripe items to these journeyman entrepreneurs; tomatoes, bananas, onions, potatoes and other vegetables that wouldn’t last over time at a brick and mortar retail market.

Mister Okra’s father sold in the street, he was known as ‘Okra Man’. Mister Okra has passed and his daughter now has taken over the business; Lady Okra.

The question is: are we getting too civilized for such shenanigans? I think not,  almost thirty percent of our population here lives below the poverty level and it seems like the time for real people selling real food to real people at reasonable prices is more than ripe; convenience stores are just that, a convenience, and they actually raise their prices almost twice that of super markets; however, there are those folks that don’t have the means to get to those larger outlets and besides there are still large areas that still don’t have larger markets (since Katrina!). Farmer’s markets are trying to pick up the slack; but, where is the new generation of street peddlers (we need them) or are we too good for that?

What we want to do now is what, as citizens, we do best: support our local street vendors, ice cream trucks, grilled oysters, food trucks , lemonade stands, and of course, Lady okra when she passes by. Look into your neighborhood for the grandma that still makes and sells huck-a-bucks (ice cups) to the kids after school or the family having a supper, barbecue or fish fry right up the street. Learn who your people are and help yourself by helping them; after all, what is a second line without a hot off the grill pork chop sandwich and a cold one from the back of somebody’s pickup?