Chattanooga Times Free Press

Mennonites, urban horsemen forge job-saving connection

- BY DAVID MCFADDEN

BALTIMORE — At an inner-city stable in one of the grittiest areas of Baltimore, a vanishing breed of urban horsemen prepares for its weekly visit to Pennsylvan­ia Dutch country, where Mennonite farmers are helping carry on a merchant tradition handed down through generation­s of African-American families.

On this recent morning, a few of the remaining practition­ers of an obscure trade and folk culture known as arabbing are taking ponies to get shod in New Holland, Pennsylvan­ia, where horsedrawn buggies clip-clop along rural blacktops and craftsmen still make wooden wagon wheels, carriages and leather harnesses.

It’s an unlikely crosscultu­ral bond: a tight community of African-American horsemen in impoverish­ed West Baltimore and rural Old Order Mennonites who shun most modern convenienc­es. Their worlds come together via a dependence on horses and a determinat­ion to live proudly on the margins of modern society.

“We rely on Mennonite know-how because we don’t have the knowledge and the tools to do some of this stuff anymore. It’s the way we found to keep this life going,” said James “Fruit” Chase, the leader of a roughly 20-horse stable that’s the strongest remnant of Baltimore’s old arabbing tradition.

Selling fruit and vegetables from horse-drawn carts — which took root with black families in Baltimore after the Civil War — persists in this city not through nostalgia but through need. Baltimore’s remaining arabbers — a name derived from an old term for peddlers of 19th century London and pronounced AY-rabbers — work out of three licensed stables tucked away in areas where healthful food is scarce among corner markets and greasy takeout joints.

In recent decades, the street peddlers managed to forge a sustaining link with Pennsylvan­ia’s traditionb­ound Mennonites — generally less austere cousins to the Amish.

Daniel Van Allen, the head of Baltimore’s Arabber Preservati­on Society, describes the little-known connection between the arabbers and Old Order Mennonites as “the meeting of two subculture­s.”

“They’re not involved with the same big-budget, big-money economy that the modern people are,” said Van Allen, adding that Baltimore is the last U.S. city to have functional horse-cart vending.

Chase, a charismati­c man with an easy smile, has developed warm friendship­s with conservati­ve Mennonites, young and old. What was once a culture clash for him has become a weekly visit full of common ground. Two Associated Press journalist­s accompanie­d Chase and two arabbing colleagues on a recent visit to an Old Order Mennonite family’s 35-acre farm, where water is pumped by hand and scripture verses are read by candleligh­t.

The West Baltimore horseman — in a camouflage cap, jeans and sneakers — presented a striking contrast with patriarch Leon Hoover’s family. The bearded farmer and his four boys dressed alike in straw hats and pants hitched up by suspenders. His wife and eldest daughter wore long dresses and bonnets.

“You can’t really go a lot of places and not see people arguing, fighting and fussing. But up here, it’s like a piece of heaven,” said Chase, relaxing on the porch of the Hoovers’ rambling farmhouse after picking strawberri­es with the Mennonite youngsters he’s introduced to his own.

Hoover, whose family has farmed an electricit­y-free patch of New Holland for generation­s, said he valued Chase’s friendship. His children break out into wide grins every time they see West Baltimore’s arabbers coming.

“We trust James. We don’t travel much and the children like to hear his stories from the city,” Hoover said as he inspected tomato vines.

Pretty much every Monday, Chase also stops at a Mennonite auction that provides affordable horses, some for as little as $700. Mennonite men outside the auction did the hard work of shoeing the arabbers’ ponies and filing their back teeth on a blazingly hot afternoon.

 ?? AP FILE PHOTO BY PATRICK SEMANSKY ?? Boys watch as arabber Bilal Yusuf Abdullah prepares his horse-drawn cart full of produce outside a stable in Baltimore.
AP FILE PHOTO BY PATRICK SEMANSKY Boys watch as arabber Bilal Yusuf Abdullah prepares his horse-drawn cart full of produce outside a stable in Baltimore.

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