There’s this guy in the Marigny/Bywater who roams the streets selling vegetables from the back of his truck. Not like the folks who set up on Nashville or Carrollton or Marconi with the nice, rustic, hand-painted signs advertising their produce. No, this guy’s in a beat up jalopy of an F150 that makes the Sanford-and-Son-mobile look sweet by comparison. Plus he’s got this loudspeaker on top of the truck that he uses to tell the world what he’s got. You know the kind–like in Polyester, when Elmer drives around their neighborhood shouting “Francine Fishpaw is the fattest woman known to man! She eats a tub of Parkay at every sitting!”

It’s kinda surreal, hearing him approach, with his weird, tinny, monotonous, sing-song broadcast. At a distance, it’s almost incomprehensible. I’ve described it before as sounding a lot like the Muslim call to prayer–unless, of course, you speak Arabic, and then it sounds like some guy singing “I got caaaaarots, I got leeeeemons, I got rutabeeeeega.”

He’s a throwback, a solitary reminder of the days when rag men and flower women roamed up and down New Orleans’ streets, shilling their wares with their own distinct calls. Someone ought to do a documentary on the guy, and fast.

Anyway, he’s back. I was sitting at my desk yesterday, and I heard him from blocks away, and the happiness I felt was sudden and surprising and complete: the Vegetable Man has returned, so it must be spring!

Now if I could only muster the same feelings for that goddamn annoying motherfucker with the ice cream truck who plays a ringtone-esque “Turkey in the Straw” at 180 decibels while looking for sweet-toothed children in an increasingly childless neighborhood.

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