Arthur J. Robinson — or Mr. Okra, as pretty much everyone called him — who rolled each day through the streets of New Orleans in a loudly painted pickup-truck-cum-fruit-stand singing his sales pitch like the roving food vendors once common in the city, died on Thursday at his home there. He was 74.
The cause was a heart attack, said his daughter Sergio Robinson, who had in recent years taken to driving the route when her father’s health waned.
In neighborhoods rich and poor alike, you could hear the rising melody some minutes before Mr. Okra’s truck appeared: “I have ooooranges and bananas! I have eeeeeating pears and apples!”
Over tinny loudspeakers you would hear that he had cantaloupe, greens, squash and “the mango,” and soon the truck would come into view, a polychrome, mobile oasis in even the driest of food deserts.
Children, regular customers and selfie-snapping tourists would flock to him — the customers to buy watermelon, or maybe a few ears of corn. Mr. Robinson, built like Santa Claus and with an impish sense of humor, would hand over the produce in a plastic bag, snap the cash proceeds into a binder clip and be on his way.
He was a direct heir to a street-peddling tradition in New Orleans. Well before delivery apps purportedly disrupted the grocery business, people sat at their front stoops and bought from the Waffle Man, the Peanut Man, the Banana Man, the Hot Stuffed Crab Lady or the Ha Ha Man, an ice cream vendor so called for his singsong jingle.
“Used to be a lot more peddlers like Okra,” said Brian Reaney, the warehouse supervisor at A. J.’s Produce, a wholesaler where Mr. Robinson would stop every morning at 6 to shoot the breeze and gather the day’s goods. “I think he was the last of the neighborhood truck drivers.”
He was certainly the most celebrated. In the mid-2000s, a well-known local artist named Dr. Bob offered to paint Mr. Robinson’s pickup — this kind of advertising being another local tradition — and turned it into arguably the most recognizable vehicle in the city. Names of fruits and vegetables covered the hood and the sides, along with a slogan — “Juiciest fruits in the hood!”— and Mr. Robinson’s own observations, like “Ain’t no joy like a Ninth Ward boy.”
Ms. Robinson recalled that when her father returned to the city several months after Hurricane Katrina, he saw, spray-painted on a refrigerator left out along the road, “Please find Mr. Okra, we need him.”
He was a direct heir to a street-peddling tradition in New Orleans. Well before delivery apps purportedly disrupted the grocery business, people sat at their front stoops and bought from the Waffle Man, the Peanut Man, the Banana Man, the Hot Stuffed Crab Lady or the Ha Ha Man, an ice cream vendor so called for his singsong jingle.
“Used to be a lot more peddlers like Okra,” said Brian Reaney, the warehouse supervisor at A. J.’s Produce, a wholesaler where Mr. Robinson would stop every morning at 6 to shoot the breeze and gather the day’s goods. “I think he was the last of the neighborhood truck drivers.”
He was certainly the most celebrated. In the mid-2000s, a well-known local artist named Dr. Bob offered to paint Mr. Robinson’s pickup — this kind of advertising being another local tradition — and turned it into arguably the most recognizable vehicle in the city. Names of fruits and vegetables covered the hood and the sides, along with a slogan — “Juiciest fruits in the hood!”— and Mr. Robinson’s own observations, like “Ain’t no joy like a Ninth Ward boy.”
Ms. Robinson recalled that when her father returned to the city several months after Hurricane Katrina, he saw, spray-painted on a refrigerator left out along the road, “Please find Mr. Okra, we need him.”
Berlusconi71
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