George Ade, "With the Market-Gardeners," in Franklin J. Meine, Stories of the Streets and of the Town: The Chicago Record 1893-1900 (Chicago: Caxton Club, 1941); 55-60.
ALL afternoon the Gruber family had been gathering the garden truck and washing it.
There was a bushel of spinach pulled from a patch that had simply leaped out of the ground under the influence of a heavy rain followed by two days of sunshine. As for the young onions, they were so white below and so rich in color above that they were as handsome as bouquets after being tied into bunches and packed away into crates. The rhubarb stalks came in bigger bunches. A bushel basket was filled with lettuce. There were also some horse-radish roots.
When the feed-bag had been filled the wagon was ready to go, but it was then only 6 o'clock in the evening, not a seasonable hour for starting to market. Mr. Gruber and the oldest boy, Herman, went to bed at once. They needed no alarm- [end page 55] clock to arouse them at midnight as Mrs. Gruber claimed to have the extraordinary power of awakening herself at any hour of the night, if she would only make a strong determination Just before retiring.
The Gruber family "worked" a ten-acre truck farm near Jefferson. It was a part of the great vegetable fringe lying inside the city limits. The Gruber cottage was on the continuation of a city street and it probably had a number somewhere up in the thousands, but no one had ever been able to calculate what it was. This family combined the tax-paying privileges of city life with all the charm and freedom of a residence in the country. They could see very little of the town, but they had the satisfaction of knowing they were a part of it.
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At 12 o'clock, almost to the minute, Mrs. Gruber rapped on the door of Herman's room. Five minutes later a man carrying a lantern came out of the kitchen door and started to the small shed known as the stable. The son lagged behind a little, but he was in time to assist in hitching up. Before they started they ate a bite in the kitchen and drank some of the steaming coffee hastily prepared by Mrs. Gruber. Then they climbed into the front seat and the wagon creaked away into
It was a long drive, but one that was never dull. The cool night breezes made the men wonderfully wide-awake and they had that adventurous feeling of one who travels deserted thoroughfares and knows that the darkened houses are full of sleeping people. At first they passed small farms and open stretches of prairie, then a few straggling suburbs, and finally they came into a closely built street with a half-filled nigh car bowling slowly along it. The street lamps were not so far apart and there were occasional restaurants, wide open and brilliantly lighted, and any number of open drinking places, with curtains drawn half way up, as a mild compromise with the law. The horses jogged through residence districts and at last turned into one of the thoroughfares that never sleeps, one of those streets where vice and commerce begin one day before another is ended. Other wagons had fallen in ahead and behind. It was a short procession feat turned into Hay- [end page 56] market Square, which was already noisy and busy in its preparation for another day of traffic.
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Some of the wagons holding the more favored positions next to Desplaines Street had been backed in as early as 8 o'clock on the previous evening. Those coming a little later had taken the next best stands so that when the Grubers arrived at about 2 o'clock the rows of wagons were forming to the west and they had to take the best location they could get, which was in a row next the pavement on the north side of the square and near Union Street. It must be known that Haymarket Square is a broadening of Randolph Street and extends from Desplaines Street to Halsted Street. Two parallel street-car lines slice it down the center. At the east end the car lines spread from each other and encircle a small inclosure within which is a pedestal. On top of the pedestal is a policeman made of stone. He stands with one hand uplifted and in the name of the state of Illinois he "commands peace" of the honest German gardeners who lounge in their wagons below. About 200 feet to the north, where an alley opens into Desplaines Street, the first dynamite bomb ever thrown in the United States did its destructive work. That was May 4, 1886. The Desplaines Street riot passed into history as the Haymarket riot, and the vegetable mart was given a bloodthirsty notoriety which it does not at all deserve.
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The first marketers came soon after daybreak, some with baskets and some with grocery wagons, to get the pick of the produce. Then came the commission-house wagons, which lined up close to the sidewalk, with some of the teams swung sidewise to economize space. From one end of the square to the other three narrow passageways are left open. The one in the middle permits the passage of cars, which run a gantlet of horses for two long blocks. The perspective of two rows of horses standing in military lines facing the car tracks, the animals almost nose to nose the entire distance, is something very nearly spectacular. In all the jumble at either side there is one cleared road large enough to allow the passage of a wagon, and this holds a moving line of trucks and delivery wagons the whole day. [end page 57]
Perhaps at 8 o'clock the big market has its largest business. Within two hours after that many of the wagons are sold out and have begun to push their way through the scramble in an effort to escape.
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Who are the truck farmers? Germans almost to a man, or woman, either, for that matter, for there are plenty of women who are independent producers and plenty of others who ride in on the wagons.
What do they sell? Every fruit or vegetable that grows in this climate, but in early May principally lettuce, radishes, spinach, onions, horseradish and the like. They sun themselves in the wagons until sold out, or, if trade drags and darkness is coming, they close a profitless bargain with one of the dealers along the street. Between them and the dealers the big western and northwestern sections of town are supplied with green stuff.
Haymarket Square is almost strictly vegetarian. There are no such displays of fish, wild game and poultry as will be found in South Water Street. Strewn before the open fronts and kept cool beneath the wide awning with its festoons of garlic are berries, potatoes, oranges, asparagus, radishes and cucumbers. The square is in possession of the fruit and produce dealers. There are a few stores and some saloons that came into notice during the anarchist excitement, when it was believed that many of the half-crazed conspirators lived in and about the square. The policemen who know the neighborhood say the old crowd of agitators who were associated with the men hanged in the county jail do not frequent the Haymarket saloons. These places depend on the teamsters and truck farmers. There is sand on the floor. Eight kinds of dark free lunch in bowls are on a table and the beer is served in large glasses known as "tubs."
Mr. Gruber and Herman had sold everything except the horseradish when the whistles over toward the river began tooting the noon hour.
"Horseradish is just as good one time as another," said Mr. Gruber as he put it back into the bucket and tucked the cloth around it. He and Herman had a lunch in a barroom resta- [end page 58] rant, spring onions and cheese being the principal courses. There was some buying to be done, but at 1 o'clock they were homeward bound. When they reached the quiet streets Herman was leaning heavily against his father and had passed into honest sleep, the result of fatigue and onions. A little farther on Mr. Gruber discovered, when the tongue jammed into a flour wagon ahead, that he, too, had been dozing. They always went home drowsy, and they were no exceptions to the [end page 59] rule, for out at suburban crossings one may often see, in the course of an afternoon, a dozen truck wagons with the driver of each nodding on his seat and allowing the lines to hang loose. [page 60]
