The egg man cometh

When a St. Petersburg widower delivers produce to patrons of local taverns, double-yolk wonders, peaches and greens belly up to the bar, along with long-necked bottles and a broken heart.

By LANE DeGREGORY

© St. Petersburg Times,
published July 13, 2001

No one is watching.

Nine regulars slump over the bar, drinking breakfast: Budweiser longnecks and Busch drafts. It's just after 9 a.m.

The bartender finishes washing mugs and squints through the tinted window. A blue Dodge Ram van is parking outside, on Central Avenue. She dries her hands on her shorts.

"Hey!" she shouts down the bar. "He's here!"

He saunters to the bar, sets down his cell phone, keys, a red lighter and a pack of Montclair 100 Menthols.

The bartender has his Miller Lite waiting.

"So how is the love of my life?" the egg man asks her, climbing onto a stool.

Several times each week the egg man loads up his van with fresh produce and eggs, then makes the rounds, not only to several bars, but also mobile home parks for seniors and VFW posts.

He's a widower, 66 years old, almost 6 feet tall, wearing a white T-shirt, tan shorts and soiled sneakers. His gray hair is cropped close. Silver wire-rimmed glasses frame his warm brown eyes. A thick yellow tooth sprouts from his bottom gum. It's lonely.

The bartender laughs. "I bet you say that to all the girls," she says.

"Yeah," the egg man admits. "I'm fat, old and Italian. I can get away with it. But I don't bring all the girls these . . ."

He plops a plastic bag filled with plump green grapes on the bar. She smiles, reaches in, pops a couple in her mouth. "Mmmmm. These are the best yet.

"He's got great grapes!" she announces, holding a bunch above her head.

"Yeah?" barks a disheveled man at the end of the bar. "What else he got? Any 'maters?"

"How 'bout these babies?" asks the egg man. He displays two softball-size tomatoes on cardboard coasters. "Picked 'em out myself this mornin'.

"Also got lettuce, corn, butternut squash, onions, jalapenos, red peppers and the sweetest peaches you'd ever want to eat."

And, of course, eggs.

Darla Kleinik, left, and her mother, Lois Dunnagan, eat peaches the egg man brought to Steve’s Tavern on the Avenue.

Roy Nichols doesn't make much money delivering produce. When certain things don't sell and he has to give them away before they rot, he loses a little.

Yet four days a week, all year long, he gets up at 4 a.m. He logs more than 100 miles a day on his aged van. He takes vegetables to neighborhood bars and VFW posts, places where the regulars think pretzels are a decent supper.

So what's in it for the egg man? And why is he always smiling?

He starts each 10-hour day with a pot of black coffee. While he drives, he finishes his second-favorite drink and listens to his tapes, turned up loud.

Nichols shows a snapshot of Janet, his second wife, and himself. They met when she was performing as a country singer in his New Jersey restaurant-lounge.

He goes to Tampa, to the open-air produce market on E Hillsborough Avenue, where he spends an hour squeezing cantaloupes and tasting strawberries. He fills a dozen crates and stacks them in the Dodge.

Then he picks up the eggs.

They come from a flock of Long Island reds in Alabama. The eggs are trucked to Tampa by a company called Happy Eggs. They're big and brown, with thicker shells and a stronger taste than those from the grocery.

Each egg has at least two yolks.

"I've had some folks tell me they got triple yolks," says Nichols, who sells 1,800 eggs a week. "Don't know know how those birds do it. But they sure are reliable."

Double-yolk eggs occur about one time in 100, farmers say. Internet chat rooms are filled with fowl owners asking how to get their hens to produce double-yolkers regularly. Some gourmet restaurants pay big bucks for the delicacies.

Nichols' customers are far from culinary connoisseurs. They just know it's convenient to shop where they drink.

"These guys probably never would eat fruits or vegetables if Roy didn't bring them by. I know most of 'em never go to the grocery," says bartender Michelle Mayer, who manages Buddy's in Gulfport.

"My regulars are always asking for his eggs, always wanting me to take orders for them. I buy 150 a week myself, just to use here." Mayer pickles the eggs, adds beet juice and onions, sells them from a glass jar behind the cash register.

"One guy who comes in here even likes to crack 'em raw, into his beer, for a protein breakfast," Mayer says. "I tell him, "Dude, that's great. But you better not throw up on my floor.' "

Nichols hasn't always been the egg man.

For 20 years, he ran a restaurant in Atlantic City, N.J. He fed 1,000 people a night, booked big-name bands and held huge dances. He met his second wife, Janet, while she was singing in his lounge with a country act.

"Oh, she had the most beautiful voice," he says proudly. "Folks would stop dancing just to hear her."

Delivering fresh produce provides Nichols a bit of extra income and gives folks frequenting some bars a chance at nutritious food they might not otherwise leave their drink to buy at the store.

In 1982, Janet had a cerebral hemorrhage and could no longer care for herself. So Nichols sold the Seashell Lounge and retired. He moved his wife to St. Petersburg to be near her daughter and two granddaughters. For more than a decade, Nichols fed, bathed and dressed Janet. He took her on long drives in their old van.

Sometimes, sick as she was, she would sing to him from the passenger seat. Country Feeling, Since I Started Loving You Again. His favorite was always Don't Touch Me.

On May 1, 1999, Nichols was helping his wife into the van. It was his 64th birthday. They were going out to dinner to celebrate. As she stepped up, and he tried to lift her, he felt her go limp. She died in his arms.

He had adored her for 24 years.

"I keep her ashes on a shelf in my living room, where I can talk to her," he says, smiling. "I put a fresh rose in a vase beside them every day. Sometimes red, sometimes white."

Nichols doesn't like living alone. The double-wide seems so empty. The days are much too long, much too quiet.

After Janet died, he started hitting the local bars, making the rounds. He'd have a Miller Lite at the Blinker in Gulfport, then head across the street and have another two at Buddy's. He'd drive downtown, down a few at Steve's. One at the VFW post. Another at the Moose Lodge.

He already had spent all his restaurant profits on his wife's medical bills. Now, he was pouring through his Social Security, 12 ounces at a time.

He got to know all the bartenders, made friends with the fellas. One guy he met ran a produce business from the back of a pick-up. He'd deliver cucumbers and cabbages wherever he was drinking. When he got a lot of orders, he'd ask Nichols to help.

The man moved to Massachusetts two years ago, and Nichols took over the business.

He needed the money. And something to do.

About 10 a.m., Nichols finishes his second Miller Lite. He has sold four stalks of celery, six bags of potatoes, five flats of eggs and eight bunches of grapes. He slides five of the dollars he just collected across the bar, pockets his cell phone and keys.

"Hey, wait! Wait!" a man calls from the shadows. "I got to get some eggs. I almost forgot about those eggs."

Donald Van Dine is 40, a bricklayer, a regular at Steve's and regular customer of the egg man. Every Friday, he rides his bike 14 blocks to the bank, cashes his paycheck, then rides back to Steve's and buys Bud longnecks. When Nichols comes, Van Dine puts in his order.

Since Van Dine doesn't have a driver's license, the egg man always delivers.

"I'll need at least two flats -- 30 eggs -- for tomorrow," Van Dine says. The egg man nods, scribbles on a scrap of blue paper, says that'll be $3.50. The bricklayer plans to host a picnic this weekend. He promised his neighbors double-yolk deviled eggs.

"This guy's stuff is the best there is, always fresh, always better and cheaper than what you get at the store," says Van Dine, unfolding four wrinkled bills.

"Thanks," says the egg man. He turns to the bartender. "See you soon, Love!"

Her hands are sticky from eating a peach. She blows him a juicy kiss.

Nichols says he's harmless. Just a fat, old Italian widower having fun with the pretty ladies. He dated once, two months ago, a woman he met at a bar.

"But when I got home, Janet's picture was on the floor, face down. The rose was wilted," he tells the bartender. "She's watching."

He reaches in his back pocket, pulls out a worn wallet. He shows the bartender a yellow newspaper clipping -- Janet's obituary. And a faded Polaroid, trimmed to fit in his billfold.

In the photo, Nichols has more hair. He's a little thinner. His right arm is around a large woman with dimpled elbows, small eyes and wispy black hair pulled into a barrette. "Isn't she beautiful?" he asks the bartender.

Janet grimaces in the snapshot, as if she were in great pain.

The egg man looks happy just to be holding her.

"I don't want anyone else, really," he says, when the bartender doesn't answer. "Janet was enough love for a lifetime.

"Now, I got to go. They're waiting for me over at Don's."

Back in his van, Nichols clips on his seat belt and reaches under the passenger seat. Pulls out a cardboard box with dozens of homemade tapes. Shuffles through them, holds one close to check the label, eases it into the dashboard cassette player.

The van smells of cigarettes and stale beer and fresh fruit. Crates are piled so high the egg man can barely see out the back windows. A rusty scale is sliding around on the floor.

"This keeps me busy. I meet a lot of nice people," he says, driving along 30th Avenue S. "I'm in no hurry. I get out and about and stop here and there.

"The produce sales give me just enough to keep me in gas and bottled beer."

He turns up his tape player and a woman starts to sing. Strong and full, her voice sweet and rich as chocolate pudding, Janet croons through the speakers from 20 years ago.

"Hello, Darlin' . . ."

He recorded these tapes at his restaurant, back when Janet's band was opening for Tammy Wynette and other Nashville greats. "She loved me so, then," he says. Her song goes on. "I'll never know how a fat old Italian like me got a wonderful woman like that."

He lifts his glasses and mashes his right thumb and forefinger into his eyes. Tears trickle out under his thick fingers. He's still smiling.

"Here in the van, driving around, she's still with me. I love it," he says. "She's still singing to me.

"Even in these bars, sometimes, I still feel her near me."

In the parking lot of Don's Irish Pub, the egg man unloads onions and peppers and a big bunch of bananas. Then he reaches in the glove box and pulls out a Ziploc. Inside is another Polaroid, an out-of-focus picture of the specials board here at Don's.

"They did this for us the day she died. Left it up for a week," Nichols says proudly.

The sign is in black letters, in all caps: THE PUB LOVE'S JANET & ROY. WE'LL MISS HER.

"This was her favorite bar," he says, hoisting the bananas onto his shoulder and grinning broadly. "It's Irish, like her. Man, she loved cabbage and red potatoes and collard greens and canned peppers.

"Wish I could share some of this good stuff with her now."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.