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Letter to the editor

A stylish tradition

Mr. I Got 'Em's spirit lives at the Saturday Morning Market.

By STEPHANIE GARRY, Times Staff Writer
Published February 9, 2008

People often think Brady Johnson, shown at his booth at the Saturday Morning Market, is Elijah Moore's grandson, and Johnson doesn't suggest otherwise. He says they're distant relatives, but isn't sure of the connection. Audio Slideshow: Mr. I Got 'Em
	[Edmund D. Fountain | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times file] Elijah Moore, the original Mr. "I Got 'Em," hawked vegetables and fresh fish in St. Petersburg until the 1960s. [Edmund D. Fountain | Times] Brady Johnson of St. Petersburg helps Karen Swanson with her purchase of whole beans at a recent Saturday Morning Market in St. Petersburg. His distinctive top hat and tails honor Elijah Moore, whose traditions Johnson carries on.

Sometimes the little old ladies come asking for him before he's donned the costume, not realizing they're already talking to Mr. "I Got 'Em."

Brady Johnson tells them to come back in half an hour.

Then he goes to the restroom, emerging in the tuxedo and top hat that residents have recognized for nearly a century.

Johnson, 57, carries on a tradition started by Elijah Moore, who walked the streets of St. Petersburg in formal wear, hawking homegrown vegetables and fresh fish for five decades.

"You want 'em? I got 'em!" he'd cry.

A self-starting entrepreneur, Moore endeared himself to the Old Northeast when Jim Crow still ruled the South.

Today, Johnson sells food in downtown St. Petersburg, reminding residents of how at least one bit of Old Florida has stayed the same.

Decades after the original died, Johnson's still got 'em.

* * *

Johnson sells his wares at a booth on the bay side of the Saturday Morning Market, a weekly outdoor event downtown with music, food and art.

Across from the monstrous grill of a neighboring barbecue, in a corner of the market where the sounds of the band fade, Johnson's resonant voice and hearty laugh take over.

Johnson, at 6 feet 5 plus a top hat, ducks under the tent of his booth and towers over a half dozen helpers, who work behind a rainbow array of produce - red and green peppers, bananas, potatoes, and forest green collards. Homemade barbecue sauce is another top seller.

Johnson, who has worked for the city's sanitation department for almost 40 years, often recognizes people from his garbage route at the market. A woman in line to buy produce wonders why he missed the previous week's market. He was working, picking up Christmas trees, and remembers her house didn't have one. He is right. She said that she had an artificial tree this year.

Johnson moved to St. Petersburg from Selma, Ala., in 1969. George Wallace's infamous 1963 proclamation, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" was still ringing in his ears.

He remembers marching with Dr. Martin Luther King as a gangly adolescent in Selma.

He started working for the city sanitation department at 18. For the last 20 years, he's driven a garbage truck through the same Pinellas Point neighborhood, collecting from 2,500 homes.

Just like at the market, Johnson seems to know everyone on his route. He receives hundreds of Christmas cards at the office each year, said his boss, John Washington.

In the mid 1980s, Johnson started selling produce to earn some extra cash. The role fit like a hand-me-down - not his, but well worn.

People began asking if he knew whom he resembled. People often think Johnson is Moore's grandson, and he doesn't suggest otherwise. He says they're distant relatives, but isn't sure of the connection.

Bill Hough, 81, stopped by the booth one recent Saturday while sipping on a smoothie topped with pineapple and a blueberry. He remembers Moore, who used to circulate in his neighborhood.

Of Johnson, he says, "He's a more modern I Got 'Em."

* * *

The original I Got 'Em is surrounded by lore. Memorialized in histories, a painting and a play, Moore was an institution from his 1912 arrival to the city until the 1960s, when he finally stowed away his peanut baskets.

At first, he traveled on foot, then wore out a Model T and two other cars. Before dying in 1972, he had returned to walking.

The tuxedo tradition was born out of poverty. Moore wore a long jacket his godmother gave him. She got it from the sheriff she worked for. Able to afford nothing else, he wore the suit in his native Columbia, S.C., where he coined his famous "I got 'em" cry.

Moore ran a storefront on his property in St. Petersburg, where he grew vegetables and guarded the field at night to keep kids away. He sold peanuts, produce and, most famous of all, fresh fish. Traveling as far as Pass-A-Grille, he'd sing out, "catch it alive, sell it dead, I got 'em."

St. Petersburg Times columnist Dick Bothwell called him a "one-man Bill of Rights" for his embodiment of independence and the American dream.

One time the showman ran into trouble, the Times reported in 1940. He went before a judge to argue against a charge of peddling without a license.

It was legal to sell homegrown products, but when the judge asked about his basket of peaches, which don't generally grow in this area, Moore simply replied, "I just had those with me."

The judge ruled he had to buy a license or pay a $25 fine.

When Moore's store-home burned down, the Times wrote how his "faith in people" never tired. Fans wrote to the paper with remembrances, too. One woman recalled her mother's exchange with Moore going like this: He would call out, "I got 'em, tomatoes fresh from de vine," and she would respond, "Elijah, I'll take a quarter's worth of those DIVINE tomatoes."

He'd chuckle his way down the block.

* * *

Johnson, like Moore, is a showman, but he's also an easygoing activist, who sees the positive in everything. Behind shaded glasses, his eyelids droop from Myasthenia Gravis, a muscle-weakening disease that struck him at age 14. Johnson says it's helped him be a better person.

"I can do everything I want to do," he says.

Johnson tries to show people that role models don't have to be sports stars like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. A hero could live next door, growing a garden.

He doesn't bring it up, but he'll opine about injustices in St. Petersburg. He can't stand the treatment of the homeless, whom he calls on to help man his booth. He wants to see them run their own produce market in Williams Park.

Johnson says the city and the country have come a long way in overcoming racism but still have a long way to go.

Bob Devin Jones, who wrote and performs a dramatic piece called I Got Em!: The Vegetable Man, about Moore, said Johnson's sharing of food, or breaking bread, is a fundamental way to build community.

The symbol of his role in St. Petersburg, Jones said, is his place at the market - on Central Avenue, smack between the city's north and south.

"Back in Elijah Moore's day, there was this notion that you don't cross Central," Jones said. "There you have Mr. Johnson."

Johnson is staying on a little longer than he'd like at the sanitation department to support his two children, both in college at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach.

His wife doesn't like him working as much as he does, especially when he's up late on Friday preparing for Saturday morning. But he has no intention of slowing down when he retires.

Instead, he plans to stockpile some more tuxedos. He'll need them to run the I Got 'Em stand seven days a week.

Times researcher Mary Mellstrom contributed to this report. Stephanie Garry can be reached at sgarry@sptimes.com or 727 892-2374.

[Last modified February 8, 2008, 22:58:09]