“The subject matter is so much more
important than the photographer.”
Gordon Parks, 1912-2006
The Great Cross Street Market Conflagration
(Click photograph to enlarge.)
On May 19, 1951, most of the Cross Street Market in South Baltimore burned to the ground, and the one third or so of the structure left standing was gutted. The fast moving blaze left Cross Street between Light and Charles Streets a pit of smoldering rubble. To my young eyes (I was 13 at the time), the aftermath looked like what I’d seen in movie newsreels of bombed-out European cities during World War II. The above newspaper photo shows the area on the morning after the fire. Firemen’s ladders are at the roof of the community hall, top right.
In 1951 I sold newspapers near the east entrances to the market, on the corner of Light and Cross Streets. The newsstand was in front of a bank, the roof of which can be glimpsed jutting into the bottom right corner of the photo. (There’s still a bank on that corner, which I use.) I often took my supper at one of the snack counters in the market, and my family, like most who lived in South Baltimore in those days, did their shopping there and in area stores. Then, as now, the commercial district in South Baltimore was arranged in the shape of a capital “I,” with Light Street being the top (east) horizontal bar, and Charles Street the bottom (west) and the market itself forming the long vertical down the middle of Cross Street. Then, unlike now, the market was constructed of wood and was anchored on the Charles Street end by a two-story brick community hall. On Saturdays police blocked traffic from Cross Street on either side of the market so merchants could set up temporary outside stalls. The market doubled in size on those days and there was as much activity outside the long, low shed as within. First light found sellers unloading trucks of fruits and vegetables and piling crates of fish, baked goods and poultry on the sidewalks. They posted signs, arranged displays, shouted orders to their employees and greetings to their competitors. Soon the shoppers began gathering from every direction, funneled into the market area by the narrow neighborhood streets. It was beautiful scene—teeming and festive—like a huge block party.
Early that Saturday morning in 1951—around 1:30 A.M.—the market night watchman discovered the fire. The flames had already consumed most of a wall just above a row of overflowing refuse cans in the fish market end of the building. The watchman ran to the fire firebox at the corner of Charles and Wyler Streets and sounded the alarm. “By the time I got back,” he was quoted in a newspaper interview as saying, “almost the whole thing was gone.”
When the fire started I was at home asleep. My older brother woke me and we ran the four blocks from our rented home at 807 William Street to the spectacle. We watched as the flames raced along the recently tarred roof of the block-long market building like an enormous fuse. The tar bubbled and popped as it heated and turned first to liquid, then to acrid black smoke, which blanketed the area and reduced visibility to less that 20 feet at times, depending on the breeze. I noticed that the blaze cast an eerie orange glow against the smoke and low clouds. Soon we heard a loud explosion on the south side of the market and all the electrical and telephone lines in the area went dead. My brother said it was a transformer blowing up in the intense heat. Sparks and small pieces of burning material flew through the air and landed on residential and commercial buildings south of the market. Homeowners were on their roofs pouring water on small fires. By 3 A. M., the flames had dropped down into the market building and within minutes the roof caved in, the walls collapsed, and Cross Street became an avenue of fire.
Flames from the upper floor of the community hall, a large 1871 Italianate Revival-style building, with arched windows and fancy brickwork, shot halfway across Charles Street toward the Garden Theater. Salvage Corps members entered the hall to drag out sleeping men who used the building as a flophouse. (In those pre-politically-correct days we called men who drank too much and slept wherever “winos” and smoke hounds.”) Rats, also occupants of the burning structure, deserted their nests and scampered through police lines and disappeared up dark alleys and into sidewalk crevices.
By dawn the fire was extinguished. According to the news reports, it had taken 12 alarms and hundreds of firefighters manning 70 pieces of equipment over six hours of furious activity to do the job. There were no deaths, but six firemen, one policeman and at least three volunteers were injured. An estimated 100 people who lived on Cross Street between Marshal and Patapsco Streets were now among the homeless. Two hundred and forty-seven stall owners or operators were put out of business. The market was a complete loss, as were 13 buildings on the south side of Cross Street, and many others in the area were damaged by the intense heat, flames and water. Inspecting the rubble, the Food Control Department found and condemned 6,500 pounds of meat and dairy products spoiled by the fire. The fire actually destroyed tons more. Less than one ton of foodstuffs was saved—including a box of fish found under the debris. By some strange quirk, the ice preserving the fish had not melted. In an interview, Benjamin Taylor, who operated four meat stalls in the market, claimed to have lost all his Saturday stock plus $700 in cash. Only pennies remained, he said, and estimated his total losses at about $10,000. J. L. Harvey, operator of a butter-and-egg stall in the market for 69 of his 81 years without a vacation (“Now I’ve got a vacation,” he said, “and I don’t want it”), had about $60 in a wooden box in his stall. All he recovered was a handful of pennies, nickels and quarters, and a bunch of hard-cooked eggs still warm to the touch.
About half of the stall keepers found temporary business locations nearby, others set up curbside stands along Cross Street, and still others went out of business for the duration. The “duration” turned out to be 18 months to the day. On Saturday, November 19, 1952, Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro, Sr. (now better known as the father of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House), witnessed by 20,000 celebrants—including my brother and me—dedicated the new steel and cinder block Cross Street Market. Eventually a 10-year-old boy was found guilty of setting the multi-million-dollar blaze. In court the boy, a chronic delinquent who was later sent to the Maryland Training School for Boys, explained his behavior by saying, “Something just tells me to do it.”
“An Avenue of Fire” was originally published in a slightly different form, and under a slightly different title, in the Baltimore Sunday Sun Magazine on May 11, 1980.
Copyright © 2008 Jim Sizemore.
Short Fiction/Part Three
We listened to “Sky King” together on the big floor model radio in the living room, almost like a real family. Afterwards, Ronnie whined at Ted about when he planned to buy a television. He kept on and kept on. Pretty soon Alice and Ted got sick of him and sent us both to bed. No fair. To say goodnight, Alice kissed Ronnie on his cheek and patted me on the shoulder. No fair again, but I didn’t care. She made us swear we’d do our homework until lights out at ten o’clock. Before we were even out of the room Alice made Ted put his paper off to one side, so they could talk. That was a bad news for him. Up in Ronnie’s room I could tell he was in a mood, too, because the first thing out of his mouth was, “Know who’s a better artist than you, Andy?” When I didn’t say anything, he answered himself. “Betsy the chimpanzee.”
“Who says?”
“Ever’body.”
I stayed quiet and took my shoes and socks off. Ronnie already had his off and was spreading and un-spreading his toes for exercise. We always did our homework barefoot. Ronnie said, “Just because you’re the best favorite in Miss Laura’s art class, that don’t make you—”
“Am not.”
“Well,” Ronnie said, “anyway, that monkey is twice as better than you. Three times as better.” I could care less what Ronnie thought since I knew he didn’t know anything about art. Anyway, Betsy couldn’t draw, she just smeared finger paints around to make a mess. Ate more paint than she painted with. “Betsy’s the real genius,” Ronnie said.
“You read that in the News Post—same as me.” I could tell something else was on Ronnie’s brain. When he got bothered by whatever, Ronnie liked to fight me and he had to win, to show who was the boss. It was pitiful.
“Betsy had her pictures printed in Life magazine,” Ronnie said. “And where was yours?”
I came back at him with a low blow: “Yeah, and how come your daddy don’t come home from work most nights anymore—huh, Ronnie?” Give back better than you get, that’s my motto. Why not? “Ain’t seen Ted at the dinner table with food in his mouth for days.”
Ronnie gave out a puny, “Don’t care,” then he cried some. He used first one sleeve and then the other to wipe off tears and snot, then he shut down and stayed quiet for a long time.
After awhile I said, “Look, Ronnie, I didn’t mean to say that, what I said.” He kept on real quiet and pretty soon I caught on that he was staring at my bare feet. That was so creepy I quick pulled them up under me. “You shithead, Ronnie!”
“Your feet are so little,” he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world to say that. “I’ve got ’em memorized.”
“You know, Ronnie, you’re really one dumb fucker.”
“In case you come up hurt or dead, see?” Ronnie did a laughing snort. “Say one foot gets cut off and mixed in with a bunch of other feet, in a war, say—or a train crash? You’re laid up in the hospital delirious from pain. They go to sew your foot on and there’s a whole pile to choose from, but you’re in no condition to say which one? I’d know the one to point to.”
“They don’t sew stuff back on people that’s been cut off.”
“How about Frankenstein?” Ronnie waited to see if I saw some sense in that dumb statement, but I kept quiet. Ronnie kept at me. “Say you come up dead in the harbor, your head cut off. Hands and arms gone. What’s left for identification?”
“Feet and legs and—”
“Forget legs,” Ronnie said. “Legs are no good for identification—but feet, especially if someone swears they know them particular feet, that would work. You’d be easy, Andy, ’cause your feet are perfect and tiny.”
It took all I had to keep calm and not tell him where to shove his dumb idea. I just said, “Millions of people have little feet.”
“Not in South Baltimore.” Ronnie smiled. “One hundred, tops.”
“At least five hundred.”
“Not perfect-shaped like yours!” Ronnie gave me an oily grin that flipped my stomach. “Don’t worry, Andy, if something happens to you I’ve got ’em in my brain.”
“Ronnie, you best quit with that feet shit.”
“Even better—how about if your feet were a special color? Think about it. Blue, maybe! Blue is lucky. Yeah! If your feet were the only perfect blue feet in South Baltimore, why, anybody could identify ’em, assuming they knew Andy Givens had perfect tiny blue—”
“Screw you, Ronnie!”
“Let me paint ’em Andy!”
When he begged like that I first wanted to gag, but instead I just yelled, “Go to hell!” That was part fake, though, ’cause I was really mad and happy all at once. Ronnie was crazy—yeah—but in a good-bad way. He made it be really strange fun sometimes, us two living in that room.
Some nights Ronnie couldn’t go to sleep if he knew Alice’s tall glasses were mixed in with her short glasses. He’d wait until his folks were conked out and sneak downstairs and go through the kitchen cabinets. We whispered about stuff until we heard their snores. Ted was easy to spot because he snored big. Alice did tiny grunt sounds. When Ronnie got back from his kitchen raid he always saluted me like John Wayne and said, “Mission accomplished.” The next morning Alice would find her glasses in neat rows, arranged by height and color. She must have wondered how they got that way, but as far as I know she never let on. Ronnie did other crazy stuff, too. Like, that one night when he came in and went straight to his bed like he didn’t see me. He turned around five times and sat down. I kept my mouth shut. After awhile he got up and went to his closet and stood there, just faced the closet door, didn’t open it. It was like he sleepwalked over there. He waited awhile, then went back to his bed and turned around five times and sat down.
Finally I couldn’t help myself. “You must be crazy,” I said.
“Uh, uh—Huh?” Ronnie said it like I had just woke him up out of a dream.
“You’re nuts, Ronnie.”
“What?”
“Another thing is, you’re also a big pussy.”
“Take it back,” Ronnie said.
“Make me.”
“I will, Andy, I will.”
“Yeah? You and who’s army?”
“The three of us,” He said. And of course I knew what came next. Sure enough Ronnie said, “Me, myself, and I.”
That was so lame. Sometimes Ronnie disgusted me too much to even bother with. “O. K.,” I said, “you win.”
“No, Andy—first take back what you said.”
“I do, Ronnie. I truly do take it back.”
“No, say, ‘You’re not a pussy, Ronnie.’”
“O. K., you’re not a pussy.”
“Say my name, too.”
“You’re not a pussy, Ronnie.”
“Good thing, too,” he said. “That was just in time.”
Yeah, right, like what if I didn’t take it back? Ronnie was hopeless, so I gave up and shut up. The next morning, as per usual, I felt his sheets. So far the average for his sheets being soaked was five days out of seven. By the time Alice changed the beds each week all Ronnie’s piss had dried into yellow stains that overlapped and made rusty patterns—kind of pretty designs—light to dark and back again. Alice never let on and neither did Ronnie. Neither did I. That would have been just too mean.
One night I watched Ronnie with one of my eyes, the other one blocked by my pillow. I had been in the middle of a good dream about earwax when some kind of noise woke me up. Ronnie was on his bed by the window, moonlight behind him that made him look like a cutout. At first I didn’t move, kept my head down, half-stuck in the pillow. Ronnie sat still on his bed except when he swayed. He’d be still for five seconds—listening for who knows what?—then he’d do small rocking moves side to side. The sways were so tiny you could hardly tell. He’d rock side to side some and then sit like a statue, then do more moves. The house was quiet. I think I saw a bat go by the window, but maybe not—they’re so fast. Ronnie claimed bats were nighttime swallows that wouldn’t suck your blood. No matter what I heard about bats, I shouldn’t believe that, Ronnie said. “Trust me,” he said, “no bat will every drink a drop of your blood.”
Another night, Alice screamed from down the hallway and Ronnie glanced up from his jigsaw puzzle at the bedroom door, then back down. It was so split-second I almost didn’t catch him—one smooth action—just his eyes moving. That jigsaw was humongous. It had all the animals in some African jungle, plus grass and trees and bugs, and huge-beaked birds. Ronnie had the edges done on three sides and some on the last side. It was a big jaggie rectangle, empty in the middle. He pretended to work at it for five minutes—zero talk, just tiny whimpers—the same puzzle piece in his hand the whole time. Ronnie’s hand didn’t move. More time. Then Alice screamed again and grunted real big—then a bunch of grunts that went from high-pitched to low and then back up again real high. In the nighttime quiet her grunts came down the hall like a church bell. Ronnie still kept still. Then Alice laughed a big screeching laugh and Ronnie smiled but didn’t look up. Then his hand moved over the jigsaw like a helicopter and dropped the puzzle piece in exactly the right spot.
Part four of The Last Dog will post tomorrow.
Lusting for Elvis
April 4, 2012By Jo-Ann Pilardi
It’s 1957. A guy holding a newspaper goes into his favorite bar. It’s my Uncle Lando, an ex-boxer in his mid-40s, but still full of vigor and still a performer. As reported to me later, he’s excited about what he found in the paper: a letter by one of his favorite nieces—me. “Hey, guys, my niece is in the paper!” He then proceeds to read my letter, a solid right jab in defense of Elvis against the sucker punch that was landed the week before by Spike Wallace, the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph’s music critic.
(Click images for larger views.)
So what began as an outbreak of teen-aged girls’ lust and hysterics, first infecting myself and my best friend Monica as we watched Elvis on TV that famous Sunday night in 1956, now had a public life. I was officially an Elvis Fan (though my Elvis Complimentary Fan Club Membership Card was in my wallet long before this). My printed defense of Elvis would become my first encounter with printer’s ink, something I love now as much as I loved Elvis then. Elvis + Publication: a match made in heaven.
But it was only Early Elvis I loved. Not Vegas Elvis. Vegas Elvis (1969 – 1976) was a pathetic nightclub singer, sweating in black leather or squeezed into bejeweled white jumpsuits. By the time Vegas Elvis emerged, this Elvis Fan had spent the latter half of the 1960s and all of the 1970s as, first, an anti-Vietnam-war protester, then a Women’s Liberation activist and Philosophy teacher—Area of Specialty: Existentialism. Among the literati, politicati, and philosophicati, Elvis was gauche. My lust for Elvis would have been embarrassing if it hadn’t already disappeared, thanks to Vegas Elvis. (I still love that tender, tremulous voice when I hear it, though; it embodied all that I hoped for in a man. That and his pout.)
Yet an astonishing truth has emerged. While my own Elvis lust vanished long ago, I’ve encountered another Elvis lust, an odd lusting for my Elvis lust: the passion of my family and friends for my legendary (if now non-existent) Elvis lust. And that has not only survived but thrived. Though I beg them to stop, they persist in depositing gaudy Elvis gifts on my English Tudor doorstep.
I deduce, then, that by some as yet unnamed law of the physical or psychological universe, my own Elvis lust has morphed into a troubling addiction to Elvis products by people whom I love and about whose mental health I care deeply (along with my own). So once more I’m sending out a “Stop!” plea—this time with some help from The King: “Don’t be cruel—Love me tender. If not, you ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog. And I swear on Old Shep’s grave, if it continues I’m gonna . . . Return to sender.”
Copyright © 2012 Jo-Ann Pilardi.