A clattering procession of carts, wagons and trucks rolled through Akron’s neighborhoods.
Most of the time, residents didn’t know the names of the peddlers, vendors and deliverers who paraded up and down the streets in the early 20th century.
Their generic nicknames — based entirely on services and wares — included the Junk Man, Rag Man, Ice Man, Fish Man, Milk Man, Coal Man, Popcorn Man, Watermelon Man and Potato Man.
Some made regular calls and some arrived unannounced. All were memorable characters who left lasting impressions on children.
Robert M. Kraus, 93, of West Akron, remembers several regular visitors to his neighborhood when he was growing up on Fernwood Drive in the late 1920s.
The Rag Man collected old rags in a burlap bag and resold them for a modest profit.
“The guy came down the street,” Kraus said. “You could hardly understand him. ‘Raaaags!’ he kind of whined. ‘Raaaags!’ … He was uncouth, you might describe him. A dirty kind of guy. Maybe he wasn’t shaved and his clothes were kind of worn out. It wasn’t a good business, but he made a go of it, I guess.”
Kraus also recalls how his mother, Marie Kraus, looked forward to visits once or twice a week from the Huckster, an Italian peddler from North Hill who brought fresh vegetables on a specially built truck with open sides to display the produce. Kraus believes the man’s real name was Angelo Mazzola.
“My mother always looked forward to him because he had good stuff, see?” he said.
In June or July, neighbors welcomed visits from the Strawberry Man, a sturdy fellow who shouldered a wooden crate loaded with 15 to 20 quarts of fresh strawberries.
“Wait a minute,” Kraus said. “I can hear the guy yet. ‘Strawberries. Two quarts for a quarter.’ He’d sing it out. Folks that heard him would come if they wanted to buy some strawberries.”
Frank Salvatore, 91, of Firestone Park, also recalls seeing vendors when he was growing up on Andrus Street. Perhaps the most memorable was the Fish Man, who barreled through the neighborhood on Fridays in an open-back truck filled with washtubs.
“That’s where he used to carry his fish,” Salvatore said. “See, his fish were fresh. They were in the water.”
The peddler announced his presence by blowing a trumpet that he kept on the front seat of his truck. He favored the “Charge” cavalry call.
“That was funny,” Salvatore said. “Bah-bah-bah-BAMP-bah-bah. … He’d blow his trumpet and people in that block knew the Fish Man was there.”
One Friday, Joe and Ann Salvatore entrusted their son to buy a fish. The peddler picked out a large carp from a washtub and put it in a paper bag for the boy.
“I know I carried it under my arm,” Salvatore said. “When I got home, the fish started to move.”
That caused pandemonium at home. Salvatore’s father filled a bathtub with water and allowed the fish to swim around until dinnertime.
The meal was absolutely dreadful — even worse from the carp’s perspective.
“My dad did the cooking,” Salvatore said. “It tasted horrible. We did not eat it. My mom never touched it, my dad maybe took one or two bites of it. We thought it was a funny-tasting fish.”
Salvatore remembers other Firestone Park peddlers, including Watermelon Man and Potato Man. One enterprising fellow was the Junk Man, who collected aluminum caps from glass jars used for home canning.
“When you opened a jar, you threw that aluminum away. You couldn’t reuse it,” Salvatore said. “You’d set it out separate, and he’d pick it up. But you had to stand there in order for him to pay you. It was only a couple of pennies. It depended on how many caps that you had.”
One of the most frequent visitors was the Milk Man, who made deliveries every day to people’s doorsteps.
“In the wintertime, the milk would expand because it would freeze outside, and it would raise the paper cap on the milk in the jug,” Salvatore said. “Back then, the milk was in glass jugs. Oh, yeah, I remember I loved the frozen part of milk.”
In the years before home refrigerators, residents didn’t have any problem keeping food cold during winter. They put it outside in boxes on porches and doorsteps.
During the summer, however, the Ice Man literally had his hands full.
Pat Marks, 82, of West Akron, remembers living upstairs in a Copley Road duplex in the mid-1930s when the driver pulled up in front of the home, opened the back of the truck and pulled out a heavy block of ice with tongs.
Residents put a card in the window so the driver knew how much to deliver.
“The Ice Man would talk to us outside in the hall,” Marks said. “When I think back, he wasn’t a very big man. … He parked on the street and he’d come in through the back door and up two flights of stairs. And I’d think ‘Gee, whiz, fellow, you’re not very big.’ ”
She can still picture the icebox in her home: a two-door receptacle of light-colored wood with a pan underneath.
“The ice was on the bottom and the food was on top,” she said. “There was nothing to plug in.”
As many who grew up during the Depression can attest, one of the thrills of childhood was swarming the ice truck during hot months. The driver often doled out ice shavings as a summer delicacy.
“Yeah, it was fun,” Marks said. “Of course, it cooled us off. We didn’t have air conditioning then.”
Another regular visitor was the Coal Man, who delivered down a chute into a basement window. Coal was stored in a bin and shoveled into the furnace for fuel.
“The Coal Man, I didn’t see him,” Marks said. “But I shoveled enough of that coal.”
Steve Saviolis, 86, of Tallmadge, has fond memories of growing up on Salome Avenue on Akron’s North Hill.
One of the most popular vendors was the Popcorn Man, a Greek immigrant who often pushed a two-wheeled cart from downtown Akron across the North Hill Viaduct. Saviolis thinks the peddler’s name was Harry Stelatos.
“I even remember what the cart looked like,” he said. “It had a handle on each side … and he was in the middle and would push this thing.”
A glass-enclosed popper made fresh popcorn as he pushed the old cart. The vendor roamed neighborhoods, schoolyards, ball fields and other places where people might want a snack. He rested his cart on two wooden back legs and used a big spoon to scoop popcorn into bags.
“You would smell it from a distance,” Saviolis said.
During cold months, the Popcorn Man changed his menu and became the Peanut Man and the Chestnut Man.
“He was quite the man,” Saviolis said. “And anytime he would see any people that were of Greek descent like me, he would stop and give you a bag of popcorn. Boy, that was a big thing back in the ’30s. Because we didn’t really have much in those days.”
Copy editor Mark J. Price is author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.