Oh the memories of the Sheeny Man

Oh the memories! The mention of the produce/vegetable man reminded me of a 
wonderful memory.
My Great Aunt's family lived first on 24th and then on Tillman. When she was 
five, in 1912, the produce man gave her a little slip of a rose bush because 
as he said "you are always such a nice quiet girl when I come". Her Mother 
planted it for her. When they moved out to Oakland county they took the rose 
bush with them.
To this day I have a piece of that rose bush growing in my yard! It is 
referred to as the "grandma rose" in remembrance of this Great Aunt's Mother 
our Great Grandmother.



I remember the sheeny man that drove his horse drawn cart down the alley 
behind my grandparents home on Sheridan near the Boulevard and Gratiot also 
sharpened knives and scissors. We also were threaten with the "sheeny man 
will get you".
 Let's not forget the horse drawn milk wagon and the horse drawn ice wagon. 
 We kids would wait till the ice man was well on his way into my 
 grandparents house before we would start to chip some pieces off the 
 blocks of ice in his wagon. When he would catch us, he would have a fit. 
 The horses were always friendly and would let you do just about anything 
 with them. Occasionally the milk man and ice man would let us feed the 
 horses.
 Also remember, there were no mosquitoes in Detroit in the mid 40s. After 
 the war the old bombers would fly over and spray DDT to kill the 
 mosquitoes. Remember seeing them several times while visiting my 
 grandparents. We lived in East Detroit at the time and we had mosquitoes.

 Ron Pruss

That picture is quite wonderful. My father lived on Piquette, he was a 
native
Detroiter. He said the neighbor ladies would wait for the Sheeney man to 
come
down the alley, waiting with shovels. After he passed on by, they would 
scoop
the horse poop and use it in their Rose Gardens! :-)
Of course, we had the Sheeney Man in Hamtramck. We also had a guy that 
would
come once a year and sell wooden garden furniture off the back of his 
truck &
another fellow would come once a week selling vegetables.
It certainly was a colorful time!
Carol



A friend gave me an 8x10 glass negative of a sheeney man. My parents 
during the
1950s threaten us with the Sheeney man,too. Our alleys were eliminated in 
the
early 1960s.

I have to do some restoration with the plate. I scanned it in the 
condition I
received it. You can see someone tired to wipe it. I will use a solution 
such as
photo flo (it Kodak still makes it!) to clean the plate and preserve the
emulsion.


Ceil