Christmas in Old Fells Point

Near the foot of Broadway in days of yore—down where the tugboats docked, street drunks could get a bowl of soup at the Port Mission for a song and, blessedly, no one called it “Fells” —you always knew when Christmas was around the corner.

Baby dolls, tricycles and glass ornaments made by the George Franke company appeared alongside of plus-size underwear and bolts of fabric in the windows of Shockets (713 South Broadway) and Goldenberg’s (Fleet and Broadway); gin mills like Zeppie’s at Ann and Thames served shots from holiday bottles of Four Roses and the horseradish stand went up at the Prevas Brothers lunch counter in the city market.

Had the ancient Greek botanist Pedanius Dioscorides stopped by for a 35-cent bottle of the good stuff (half-a-buck for large) he would have asked for Persicon sinapi. One of the first to mention horseradish in writing, Discorides’ name for the root means “Persian mustard.”

And he’d have to wait in line behind a gaggle of Polish housewives, some of whom picked a few roots from an earthy burlap bag to grind at home.

“We put the horseradish where we usually had the peanut stand; it was a huge seller,” said 73-year-old William “Doc” Prevas, grandson of John Peter Prevas (1881-1935), the Spartan who founded the business with a pushcart of fruits and vegetables. “If anyone was dubious about the quality we’d unscrew the lid and let them have a whiff. It knocked their head back.”

Just before the turn of the 19th century, patriarch John and his brothers established the hot dog-and-milkshake lunch counter that remains fresh in the memories of Patapsco River old-timers.

“We sold so much horseradish around Christmas that we had to put an employee there all day long,” said Prevas, a retired obstetrician.

Horseradish for Christmas? As the Greeks say neh—yes indeed. And for Easter too, because old Fells Point was heavily Polish and the immigrant families craved the wallop of genuine horseradish to garnish their kielbasa. With a little ketchup it also accompanied holiday feasts of oysters and shrimp.

Agnes Karcz Garayoa (1920-1978), born and raised in her parent’s saloon just south of the market at 805 South Broadway, bought her holiday horseradish from Prevas. But she didn’t get her kielbasa from Ostrowski’s near Patterson Park or Milanicz in the market.

“Nothing but hustle and bustle in the market at Christmas,” said Ken Lerch, 56, a great-grandson of the founding Milanicz family who started in 1876 when the market was a shed with canvas for walls. “I loved growing up there. It was a great place to learn about life.”

Aggie made her own Polish sausage with a combo of ground pork and beef from the Cermak butchershop in the market, enough to feed her family and many of their immigrant patrons without family in this country.

Her daughter, Kathy Garayoa Marks, who grew up at Karcz’s Cafe with brothers David and Mark and their Basque father Simone, often went alone to market to run errands.

“I loved the eel from Miss Mamie [Brill] the fish lady,” she said. “I can see her like it was yesterday. She had the sweetest little voice and her hands were cracked and rough from being in the ice and cold water dealing with the fish.”

 Now 70, Kathy also remembers the way Mr. James Cermak would set his cigar aside the butcher’s block before cutting the meat. He’d pick it up again to smoke while grinding the beef and pork butts.

“He knew just how to do it,” said Kathy, impressed enough as a kid at St. Stanislaus school to abandon a desire to become a nun for the unrealized dream of breaking down sides of beef.

“My mother had a huge metal pot and she put a blend of the ground meat into it to season” with garlic, salt, black pepper and marjoram. “She’d taste it raw and add more seasoning until she got it right. Then we’d push it through a cow’s horn into pig intestines.”

Christmas preparations began around Kathy’s birthday, December 7.

“We had a silver tree with tinsel that we put on a table in the bar,” she said. “Behind it was a cardboard fireplace. That was the beginning of Christmas for me, when the fireplace and tree went up. In front of this we had a ceramic baby Jesus with some coloring on its cheeks. It was the size of a real infant on a fancy silk pillow with ruffles with hay around it.”

And that was it. No Mary, no Joseph, no wise men or stable animals. Just Baby Jesus on a cream colored pillow in front of a fake fireplace in a waterfront gin mill, a cardboard mirage giving off as much warmth as the pot-bellied coal stove in the Garayoa kitchen.

The family sold the bar about 1973 when “the road” was set to come through, an unwanted highway that would have ripped Federal Hill and Fells Point apart until neighborhood groups prevailed. The Garayoas moved to Kenwood Avenue just below Eastern Avenue where a fire ignited by dryer lint consumed most of what they’d brought from the cafe.

“All I have left are two plastic ornaments from that tree, a snowman and a Santa, probably from Shocket’s,” said Kathy. “I misplaced them a little while ago and started crying. They’re probably worth a nickel each but a million dollars to me.”

Around the corner, directly across from the tugboats—Baker-Whiteley to the left of the Recreation Pier, Curtis Bay on the right—stood a saloon/boarding house called the Seamen’s Cafe.

It was run by a woman born above a Fells Point stable in 1900 named Veronica “Fronie” Lukowski, daughter of a longshoreman and wife of another named Edward “Harrigan” Lukowski who quit unloading ships after being injured on the docks. The bar served salted fish and pickled eggs to make sure customers continued to wet their whistle.

One of their sons—Frank, fond of  the Sunday morning Polish radio hour and a soup made of duck blood called czarnina—raised his family around the corner on Ann Street. The Lukowskis also got their horseradish from Prevas, sometimes tinged with beet juice for Christmas morning.

“Kielbasa and eggs for breakfast,” said Frank’s son Robert Lukowski, 72, who, like many of his kin, went to work on the Thames Street tugs. He retired not long ago as a bay pilot in Long Beach, California.

“I remember my Bushie [grandmother] put up wreaths in the bar windows and the tiniest artificial tree in her kitchen with a big bowl of nuts still in the shell,” said Lukowski. “It was fully decorated when she brought it out.”

Robert’s first cousin Gregory Lukowski remembers going to the market with his tug captain father Jerome (younger brother of Frank) for fresh fruit.

“The fruit stand guy had one arm and wore a blazer with one sleeve pinned up,” remembers Gregory, a retired Chesapeake Bay pilot. “I was just a kid, amazed at how he could open a bag, tuck it under his chin, put the fruit on the scale, take the money and make change.”

All memories of things that perish: an orange in a stocking hung on the wall; a Poinsettia and a paper bag of rock candy from Gertrude Parr the market flower lady. Most cherished are the moments that float through the generations like prayer.

“Every year on Christmas Eve when I was in bed about to go to sleep my father sang a song to me. It was sung to him when he was a child in Spain,” said Kathy. “I can’t remember what it was but if I heard it I’d know it right away.”

The son of a Baker-Whiteley tugboat man, Rafael Alvarez grew up visiting the Garayoa family at Karcz’s Cafe. The families remain close to this day. Alvarez can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail.com