Broad Street

"Yessir, Broad Street used to jump. Between here and, uh, up, uh, yessir, was about seven bars up and down here, people all out at this time a night."

The speaker was an old man, or maybe older-looking than he really was. He had one eye cloudy and one leg incapacitated, aided by a cane.

"You must be new here," he'd said, when I seemed uncertain whether to fill his 72 oz. thermos with coffee or soda. "Usually it's the tall guy with the hat who's here when I come in. They know me, he knows me."

He muttered as he spoke, often repeating himself, either within a phrase, or repeating phrases and stories.

"I used to be a shoeshine boy here, right out under here, when this was the Boston Store."

The Boston Store logo is still tiled in front of the bookstore.

"So here's my question," I said, interrupting the third iteration of that story, "Where was Broad Street? This is Third," I gestured out the picture windows, where the christmas lights strung along the top of the Broad Street Market shone, "And the cross street is Verbeke."

"Yessir, that side a'the market was Broad, and t'other was Verbeke, until, well, until, well this used to be a thee-Ater. The Broad Street The-Ater. And they was twelve of 'em, the-Aters, up and down this street, between the Capital and um, the, well, yessir, it used to hop, this street, fifty years ago."

The XM Satellite Radio was, it should be noted, set to "40s on 4: All Forties All The Time."

"Yessir, there was seven or maybe eight bars up and down this street, and the uh, the railroad men -- the piggyback cars, y'see, up at Seventh and Reily, and the railroad men'd come down here, and the market stay open till three in the mornin'. Three in the mornin', yessir, not like now."

I kept nodding, kept washing out milk steaming pitchers till they shone like mirrors. He was describing the 1960s, if his estimate of "fifty years ago" was correct.

"There were those bars, and the restaruant -- Arnick's. The Arnick family closed it down, but it ran right next to the market, and that and this here the-Ater, well you could barely walk on this street on a weekend night." He glanced into the empty bookstore. My co-barista walked the floor with a white towel, wiping down the tables, gathering the books. He looked back into the street. "Not like now."

I nodded, perplexed. The bookstore became the Boston Store in the 1950s, so this place could not have been a theater during the time that this man was describing, but nonetheless I could see it: The same Christmas lights bedecking the market, the railroad men like inland sailors, swinging into town with the same manic destructive energy of a shore leave.

"Yessir, it was quite the times then. I ran a shoeshine stand right here, and let me tell you, the folks all out, all done up, and yessir, Broad Street did jump. I live upstairs y'see. That's my truck. I been on this square block for forty years now."

He said forty, but by that time, I would've believed him if he had said ninety.

"Maybe it'll all come back, now that he's brought this place in. Y'all are open late, y'see, maybe the market'll open up into..."

And he walked out into the night, still muttering to himself.