Crabtown Observed #2
Oct 20th, 2009 | By Rafael Alvarez | Category: Crabtown Observed
Lexington Market / 11 a.m. / Friday October 9, 2009 / 400 West Lexington Street
While enjoying a Polock Johnny’s polish sausage for breakfast with my old friend Tyrone “Mr. 49%” Crawley – immersed in humanity buying doughnuts and lottery tickets and others selling cigarettes (two for a buck), I noticed this photocopied sign taped to the counter of the hot dog stand.
Keep in mind that Polock Johnny’s carries virtually none of the things for which the requests are so very necessary.
Additional Items Also for Sale:
- Napkin to blow your nose: 5 cents
- Squirt of mustard for corned beef: 20 cents
- Straw for bottled drink: 10 cents
- Butter for your bagel: 25 cents
- Spoon of sugar for fruit salad: 25 cents
- Hot water for Oddles of Noodles: 25 cents. [Note: this is not a typo. The sign says “oddles,” which I find especially poetic for Crabtown.]
- Ketchup for onion ring: 10 cents. [Note: “ring” is singular, implying that you may need more ketchup for additional rings. Knowing this, Polack Johnny’s charges 25 cents for three packets of ketchup.]
- A bag because yours is breaking: 25 cents.
The last one is my favorite. It acknowledges the despair of a shopper with a bag that, through no fault of their own (most likely owning to a drink lid not affixed properly) in which the bottom, like so many lives, is dropping out.
After eating our “un-burgers” (locals of a certain age will understand), Tyrone and I walked up to tables on the second floor of the market to eat Berger cookies and talk about the days when we canvassed all the neighborhoods of Baltimore selling short stories for a dollar a piece.
There, I witnessed the cherry on top of our brief visit to the world-famous market.
A sign advised that patrons should not sit on more than one plastic chair – the kind that can be stacked 10 and 20 high – at a time.
In front of the sign sat a security guard, three stacked chairs beneath her tired, uniformed butt.
Seen a good one lately? Send it to Rafael Alvarez via observed@alvarezfiction.com.
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My boy Rafe is downing a Polock Johnny’s for breakfast at Lex Market…hmmm..centuries ago, Polock Johnny hosted an annual hot dog eating contest in front of his sausage emporium on Baltimore Street, when they still had strippers who had dental plans. On the day of one such extravaganza, a guy from my old neighborhood — Belair and Erdman…Elmley Playground — made the trek downtown to enter the contest. He was known as Crazy Ricky and he had smoked about four joints of sticky Ho Chi Minh tobacco. His eyes were so blood shot HE thought that he was looking at a map of Bowlegs, Oklahoma. Ricky was ravenous, just ate and smiled. No matter. Ricky got beat by a guy who sweated a lot and who was sporting a Department of Sanitation t-shirt.