Ever heard the call of a huckster? Do you know what a huckster is?
Hucksters are food vendors who sell vegetables and food in carts in streets and alleys. It’s a name given in the south and northern cities. What made hucksters stand out was their distinctive cries to sell their wares.
I learned about this and took these pictures at the newly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall on Sunday. My husband and I were very fortunate to be able to visit the museum when they opened their doors for the first time to staff and friends of the Smithsonian. They open officially to the public Sept 24.
For years we had watched this mammoth building rise from the ground and be built and we know we’d be enjoying it for many years to come but it was still exciting to be one of the first few to see it before the rest of the world.
Being there for a limited time, we rushed through the museum trying to get a glimpse of as much as we could. Had we planned better we would have started from the basement where we could trace the history of African Americans from the late 18th century and work our way up to contemporary times. There was just so much to absorb about the history and contributions African Americans made to this country. We kept saying that we have to come back and spend more time. We didn’t even scratch the surface of what the museum offered.
Instead, after we were wowed by the spacious ground floor we were mesmerized looking through the vast cast aluminum panels and followed the escalators up and up. By the time we got to the fourth floor and reached the culture galleries, and I saw the section on food, I was riveted. Nearby there was also poetry, music and sports–so you can imagine how much there was to enjoy. I spent most of my time on this floor. (We live in DC, we can come back!)
I learned about African American famous cooks and writers, and White House and well known chefs. Some hucksters in the 1700s , we were told, became restaurant owners and caterers.
I know hucksters. We had hucksters in Singapore when I was growing up. Except in Singapore we called them hawkers. The museum had some fabulous pictures dated from the early 1900s depicting the variety of foodstuff these hucksters sold. This transported me back in time to Singapore when we had hawkers selling their wares on the street.
When I was growing up, hawkers plied the streets near our home, calling out for business. That wasn’t so long ago. 1960s to early 70s? Itinerant street vending common since my grandparents’ days are gone. Instead hawkers now operate in food courts and covered markets.
“Gai chok!! Gai chok!!” the chicken porridge man used to call out in the evening while he cycled his bike in the neighborhood to get us to buy a bowl of yummy chicken congee. We’d wave to him from our flat on the second floor, shout an order to him and he’d cycle back to his push cart parked further away, returning not long after balancing bowls of hot porridge in a tray on his bicycle. And we’d eat this even though we’ve had dinner!
The bread man would ring his bicycle bell and everyone recognized him easily. We would call him, rush down and watch him cut big slices of white bread and spread it with kaya, a lovely coconut and egg custard, on freshly baked bread.
Then there was the man who instead of yelling and singing saved his voice and knock on bamboo to sell his ware. Tock-tock, tock-tock-tock! Tock-tock, tock-tock-tock! Everyone called their noodles “tock-tock meen”, meaning tock tock noodles. It was Hokkien Prawn Soup Noodles.
There was also a guy who shouted “mor ba dou…mor ba dou”, sharpen your knives, sharper your knives. So our hucksters weren’t limited to selling food.
In Taipei even as recently as the 1990s when we were there there were hucksters who called out selling popped rice. The stinky tofu man didn’t need any special entertaining marketing—you could smell him a mile away. These food carts photos which I took from the Museum could have been Singapore in the 60 or 70s and Taipei when we lived there.
The call of the huckster tells of a colorful history in American history but they are in many places around the world. In Hong Kong in the evening street markets they are still there with their audio presence.
I’ve always been entertained by these street vendors. Not so much with those now who are really noisy with their boom boxes; I really enjoy the ones who can almost make music, making calls that are catchy and rhythmic just to sell their wares. I suppose in suburban American the closest to this are those guys selling fruit juice machines at Costco.
