Dade County FlArchives History - Books .....Miami's Hucksters, Chapter 11 1965
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 April 5, 2009, 4:07 pm

Book Title: Memories Of Old Miami

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Miami's Hucksters

    IT was impossible for a boy to sleep late in the morning when Miami was just
a large town, its streets paved with white limestone.

    Billy Bewan came ringing a bell and hollering:

    "Oranges, oranges . . . grapefruit, grapefruit . . . limes, limes and many
other kinds . . ."

    Pretty soon you saw his little brown horse and covered wagon rounding the
corner from Flagler Street onto the Boulevard.

    Mr. Bewan always stopped in front of the Frazure House, because he never
failed to sell Mother loads of apples, pears and oranges, which she put in the
rooms of our boarders.

    We had several hucksters in Miami in those days, and everyone of them
stopped at the Frazure House.

    There was Mr. Burdeshaw, a tall and angular Georgian, who came up from
Cutler with fresh vegetables and grapefruit from the groves of South Dade.

    There was Mr. Rounds, as round as his name, bald and jovial. I don't know
where Mr. Rounds was from. He certainly wasn't from Georgia. Mother bought eggs
from him.

    And for awhile we had Mr. Hepburn, a Californian, whose son built a
sprawling mansion at NW 14th Street and 23rd Avenue that is now the headquarters
of the Miami Police Benevolent Association.

    I used to follow my mother around the wagons of the hucksters with a basket,
to hold the things that she bought. In those days a boy kept his mouth shut
unless he was asked something - and I wasn't asked. But nobody told me that I
couldn't listen.

    One day Mr. Burdeshaw complained to my mother that he had been forced to
send his son to school.

    "And I needed that boy to make a living," he said.

    "Mrs. Frazure," he added, "no good's coming out of schools these days. The
other night we were eating supper and I said, 'Son, pass the 'taters.'

    " 'Pa,' the boy said, 'don't say that. The teacher says that you must say
po'taters.'

    "Mrs. Frazure, dadburned if I don't think I'll take that boy out of school.
Next thing he'll be coming home and saying, 'Pa, pass the po'turnips.' "

    Mother bought loads of tomatoes, mustard and collard greens, beans and white
squash from Mr. Burdeshaw. He grew these on his farm and I remember how
wonderful they were when Mother cooked them.

    People ate more in those days, I believe, than they do now. We had grits and
eggs, bacon and hotcakes for breakfast. Mother baked a million biscuits. How
those Yankees loved the food. Nobody ever left Mother's table hungry.

    In the spring Mr. Burdeshaw used to bring up marble-sized potatoes and
mother cooked them in a white sauce. I used to look forward to seeing Mr.
Burdeshaw's covered wagon coming, its gray canvas top stained with splotches of
mildew.

    But I liked the other hucksters, too. Mr. Rounds was more of a talker than
Mr. Burdeshaw, and he and Mother were always engaged in conversation while she
walked around his wagon to pick out what she wanted.

    One day Mr. Rounds told Mother about stopping at Waddell Street (now NE 14th
Street), settled mainly by Conchs - Key Westers.

    "Mrs. Frazure, one of them conchs asked me what kind of eggs I was selling,"
he said.

    " 'I sell chicken eggs,' I said. 'What other kind of eggs are there?'

    " 'Well, Mr. Rounds,' one of them said, 'they's egg-bird eggs, they's johnny
crane eggs, and they's turtle eggs.'

    "I said, 'I'm sorry but I don't have nothing but chicken eggs.' "

    Later I learned that the egg-bird is the tern, that the johnny crane, is the
great white heron, and, of course, I already knew that turtle eggs were laid by
the loggerhead turtles that came up on the beaches, usually in the summer.

    The turtles came up on the beaches at high tide, during a full moon. A
turtle would dig a hole in the sand, lay about 300 eggs, cover them with her
flippers, smooth over the sand, and return to the sea. People often robbed these
nests and ate the eggs, which were very good.

    Mr. Hepburn was polished and businesslike. He told Mother that he had come
here for his health. I knew that he was from California because, as with most
Californians and Texans, he wasn't long in telling us where he was from.

    He bought fruits and vegetables wholesale from the Eason and Turner Produce
Company, in the northwest section near where the farmer's market is located
today. Mr. Hepburn was strictly a merchant. He produced nothing himself.

    Then his son came from California, bought 20 acres of land and built a
rambling ranch style house - the first California type house in the Miami area,
I suppose. It had several rooms and a huge fire place.

    Eventually the son sold the picturesque place and took his parents back to
California. The house was then turned into a night club, the Silver Slipper, and
became widely known for the way its chief entertainer, Sophie Tucker, welcomed
guests with her "Come On, you suckers."

    (Texas Guinan later made a variation of this greeting famous in her New York
night club during the 1920's.)

    Just after the end of World War I the city commission decided to pave
Miami's streets with wooden blocks. The blocks, about eight inches long by four
inches square, were laid like bricks on top of a layer of white sand which had
been spread over a rolled limestone base.

    Part of Flagler and several other downtown streets were paved with the
wooden blocks, including First and Second avenues.

    The block-paved streets proved to be quite smooth and provided easy rising
for the cars, buggies and wagons that used them.

    Then it rained - a real Florida rain. It came down in torrents, flooding the
streets and even the sidewalks.

    The wooden blocks began to swell and it wasn't long before little hills were
bulging up all over the streets. Pretty soon the hills began popping like cannon
shots, with the blocks flying in all directions. By the time the rain was over
everything was a mess.

    "This isn't going to happen again," the city fathers said.

    So the blocks were reset with more space between them. When cars and buggies
rolled over them you could hear the clatter as the loose blocks banged against
one another.

    Again it rained and again the hills formed and exploded, sending blocks in
all directions.

    We had rain for 21 days straight. People began to talk about another Noah's
flood. The whole countryside except for a narrow strip along the coast was under
water.

    A newspaper carried a story about a talking newborn baby near Tallahassee.
The first thing uttered by the baby when it came into the world and opened its
eyes was:

    "It's going to rain forty days and forty nights."

    A lot of people were frightened. They really believed we would have a flood.
It's hard to imagine now how gullible and superstitious people were in those days.

    I remember that when we had a lot of rain during World War I people blamed
the Krupp guns, then firing shells into Paris from 75 miles away. People thought
the shells, which had to go so high in order to drop on Paris, were shattering
the atmosphere and creating the rainy conditions.

    I used to hear Mother and Dad tell about the way people carried on when
Halley's Comet appeared in the sky in 1910. Some sold all their worldly
possessions and prepared to meet their Maker. They went to church and prayed to
have, their sins forgiven.

    I have only the faintest recollection of Halley's Comet, but I do remember
how excited people were. People talked about the comet for several years afterward.

    A few, though, took the comet in stride.

    Mrs. Jackson told Mother that on the night the comet appeared she went into
the house and woke up her husband, Dr. James M. Jackson - for whom Jackson
Memorial Hospital was later named.

    "Doc," she said, "get up and come out and see the comet."

    "I've been delivering babies for the past two days and nights and I've got
to get some rest," he replied. "I'll have to wait until it comes around again."

    Dr. Jackson, who then had his home on East Flagler Street where the Florida
Theater is now located, died in 1924.

    Halley's Comet is scheduled to come this way again in 1986. By that time
there probably won't be a single land mark left that Dr. Jackson knew in 1910.
But some of those wooden blocks may still be here.

    After having so much trouble with the blocks, the city commission ordered
them covered with asphalt.

    Made of cypress and boiled in creosote, those blocks should last just about
forever. And many of them still lie beneath the asphalt in Miami's downtown
streets.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

"Memories of Old Miami"
by Hoyt Frazure as told to Nixon Smiley
Reprinted from a series of articles first appearing in Sunday Magazine of The
Miami Herald

Undated, but circa 1965


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