Melon, Mortadella, Pushcarts on Blackstone Street

IN THE NORTH END there are no supermarkets with piles of sealed cans and waxy frozen packages. Instead, the wealth of food is spread out through blocks of small shops. Bakeries are a jumble of fresh pizza, sesame seed rolls, zeppelin shaped loaves. Fruit and vegetables come live and kicking from baskets and boxes. You want meat? Then go next door to the butcher. There's sure to be one. Outside his store freshly slaughtered lambs and rabbits (still with head and fur) hang from red hooks, and well preserved pig heads leer through the front window. Inside Al or Louie or Joe is cutting government choice to your order.

In sight of the Expressway there are more lambs, more stacks of oranges, more imported Italian groceries. Then, just when the banquet seems ended, pass through the shadow of the aerial highway and the world is bananas, watermelons and parsnips. Friday and Saturday the outdoor pushcart market comes to Dock Square, and the North End goes shopping. The vendors set up their pushcarts on Blackstone Street and enclose themselves in a square of crates. Pyramids of tomatoes and oranges. Baskets of brocholi. "A-spare-a-grass. Four pounds for 95 cents. A-spare-a-grass here," yells a short, bouncy vendor with a meaty face and big squashy hands. Rafts of watermelons. Buckets of native cukes--three for just 25 cents. "Hava pruna," shouts a jolly grandmother, holy in her dominion. A tough kid says his McIntosh apples are good, very good. Heads of lettuce topple over onto the peppers. Parsnips look like washed out carrots, and the bananas are disturbingly yellow.

At the edge of Blackstone Street, running parallel to the line of pushcart fortifications, is a rickety row of retail meat shops, most of which are open six days a week. So, as you start down the Blackstone sidewalk, there are turnips to the left, genoa salami to the right. The meat shops go in for variety. Capicollo. Mortadella. Proscuttino. Pepperoni. Eight different kinds of salami, including carando milanese and d'annuzio. May we suggest some Bunker Hill Baloney? The butcher men whisper loudly like dark corner procurers. "Hey, buddy, you want some nice chops? How 'bout it? I got some nice steak in here. You want some nice steak?"

Six plainclothes city officials check the quality of the food. The watch is careful, the punishment effective. Once, a market kibitzer recalls, a careless, stoop-shouldered vendor left a pushcart of tomatoes exposed to a fall frost. Although he knew that the centers of the vegetables had frozen, he was unwilling to lose a week-end take that might have amounted to $200. But, the next morning, when he tried to bluff his way past the officials, one kick by a robust inspector sent the frozen tomatoes pounding down the street like red rubber balls.

Because it is so ripe, Blackstone fruit and produce is comparatively cheap. For slightly better and more expensive fruit which lasts longer in the refrigerator, some North End shoppers go to Cross Street. But housewives with large families shop for tomorrow, not for a week from tomorrow, and, armed with big paper bags, they rummage through the pushcart confusion in search of the good buy.

The city licenses all the pushcart men. Many years ago, almost anyone could get a license. Friday morning before the market opened, the vendors would line up at the base of Faneuil Hall (just across Dock Square). At a signal they would race across the Square with their pushcarts, trying to get to the best sites on Blackstone Street. Words and sometimes assorted vegetables, were exchanged in the competition. After a few carts, tomatoes and apples went spinning across the pavement, the City decided to license only a fixed number of "regulars." They occupy assigned sites on Blackstone Street until they retire or die. Then the site goes to the first person on the waiting list.

Although Blackstone Street remains as prosperous as ever, the old market district is changing. Slowly at first, more rapidly now, the wholesale companies are leaving the area--fruit and produce to Chelsea and Everett, meat to the "new market" in South Boston. For tradition's sake, however, some wholesalers will remain in the block-long granite warehouse known as the Quincy Market. The pushcart market is not moving. It will still be native cukes, Italian sausage, and provolone cheese. Hey, buddy, you want some nice bananas? Just ten cents a pound.