by Jean Merrill
The pushcart peddlers were grateful for the support of the people of the city. And they told the ladies that a few melons and peaches were the least they could contribute to the celebration.
After the Battle of Bleecker Street, the truck drivers urged Big Moe to press for a peace conference at the earliest date possible. The Mayor was glad to oblige.
It might be mentioned here that one of New York’s most colorful holidays, Cantaloupe Day—or The Feast of the Cantaloupes, as it is called in Bleecker Street—is a holiday in celebration of the armistice that marked the end of the Pushcart War.
On this day, July 5th, anyone shopping in Bleecker Street is given a free cantaloupe by the fruit peddlers there. At night the street is lit up and gaily-decorated booths line the street. One can buy Big Moe dolls and paper pushcarts and souvenir maps of the battlegrounds of the Pushcart War (replicas of Maxie Hammerman’s famous battle map). There is dancing in the streets and a pea shooter contest for children. The Feast of the Cantaloupes attracts many tourists, and, indeed, no visitor to New York should miss it.
CHAPTER XXXV
The Pushcart Peace Conference & The Formulation of the Flower Formula for Peace
The Pushcart Peace Conference opened on July 13th. After the long summer of bitter fighting, representatives of both sides met in the City Council chambers.
Big Moe and Mack represented the truckers. Maxie Hammerman and General Anna spoke for the pushcart peddlers. Buddy Wisser and Wenda Gambling represented the general public. Mayor Emmett P. Cudd presided over the Conference.
General Anna’s terms for peace were simple: “The City Council should revoke all truck licenses.”
Big Moe protested. He had come to bargain, he said. “That is not a bargain. That is total surrender.”
“Why should we settle for less?” said General Anna.
Maxie Hammerman explained to Big Moe that General Anna had lost two carts in the war and naturally felt a little bitter on that account.
This led to the first two conditions of the peace: the first, that Mammoth Moving must pay for all damages to pushcarts, goods, and peddlers caused by Mack’s driving into the Peace Army; second, that Mack was to have his driving license revoked for a period of one year.
The third condition agreed upon had to do with the size of the trucks that should be allowed in the city. There was some difference of opinion as to how big was too big.
The majority of those present at the Peace Conference felt that trucks the size of the Mighty Mammoths (or Leaping Lemas or Ten-Ton Tigers) were “much too big.” They also agreed that trucks the size of the Mama Mammoths were “perhaps bigger than they needed to be.”
Wenda Gambling insisted to the end that even the Baby Mammoths were too big. Big Moe pleaded that for moving a big item like a power plant, a truck had to be “a little bit big.” And it was finally agreed that a few trucks could be as big as the Baby Mammoths, but that no truck should be any bigger.
The fourth condition provoked the most argument. This had to do with the number of trucks that should be licensed for use in the city. Even Maxie Hammerman conceded that the city needed a few trucks.
“I, myself, will call a truck sometimes,” Maxie admitted. “The fact is that if I order a whole truckload of lumber for building pushcarts, I get a better price on the lumber than when I order a few boards at a time.”
Big Moe was prepared to agree to a few less trucks. General Anna wanted to hold out for a lot less. It looked as if the Peace Conference was going to bog down on this point. It might have, if it had not been for Buddy Wisser proposing, after the argument had run on for four days, that the Conference consider a compromise based on the Flower Formula.
The Flower Formula was something Frank the Flower had worked out while shooting darts in jail. He had told Buddy Wisser about it when Buddy went to see him in connection with his study of Marvin Seeley’s picture.
The formula was really very simple. So simple, in fact, that many people afterwards said, “I could have told them that.” But as no one had, Frank the Flower is given official credit.
Every high school student in New York is now familiar with the Flower Formula. Here is the formula as it appears on page 16 of the new edition of the math book now used in all New York City schools:
If: T = trucks
And: t = time
Then: ½ T = ½ t
The example given with the formula on page 16 is the same one that was originally presented to the Pushcart Peace Conference:
If: there are 100,000 trucks (100,000 T) in the city, traffic will be so bad that it will take 10 hours (10 t) to deliver a load of potatoes from 1st Street to 100th Street.
But if: there are only ½ as many trucks (50,000 T), traffic will only be ½ as bad, and it will take only ½ as long (5 t) to deliver a load of potatoes from 1st Street to 100th Street.
Therefore: one truck can make two trips in one day.
Which means: 50,000 trucks, making two trips a day, can deliver as many potatoes as 100,000 trucks making one trip.
Moreover: if the potato dealer is paying the truckers by the hour, he will be getting two loads delivered for the price of one.
Thus: he can sell the potatoes for less (which his customers will appreciate).
Result: everybody (including pushcart peddlers) will be happier.
Professor Lyman Cumberly has pointed out that the fascinating thing about the Flower Formula is that its principle can be carried even further than was proposed at the Pushcart Peace Conference. For example, says Professor Cumberly:
If: there are only ¼ as many trucks, traffic will be only ¼ as bad (that is to say, 4 times faster), and you will get 4 loads of potatoes for the price of one.
Or: if there are only 1/10 as many trucks, traffic will be 10 times as fast, etc;
Or: if there are only 1/100 as many trucks, traffic will be 100 times as fast, etc.
One could, in fact, Professor Cumberly says jokingly, keep on reducing the number of trucks almost indefinitely without hurting business at all.
It is unlikely, however, that Big Moe would have agreed at the Peace Conference to so drastic a reduction of trucks as Professor Cumberly has visualized. He did agree to the one-half formula, and as Maxie Hammerman pointed out, the fact that the one-half remaining trucks would be approximately one-half as big as most of the trucks had been before the war meant that the pushcarts had won the equivalent of an agreement to four times fewer trucks.
There was an additional condition in the peace treaty. This fifth condition was an amnesty clause; it provided that Frank the Flower, in view of his contribution to the fourth condition of the treaty, should be excused from serving the balance of the sentence he would normally be expected to serve for the willful destruction of 18,991 truck tires.
The final act of the Peace Conference was to draw up the Courtesy Act (which the City Council passed by a unanimous vote the following week). The Courtesy Act made it a criminal offense for a larger vehicle to take advantage of a smaller vehicle in any way.
CHAPTER XXXVI
The Post-War Years: A Few Last Words About Albert P. Mack, Wenda Gambling, Joey Kafflis, General Anna, Harry the Hot Dog, Mayor Emmett P. Cudd, Frank the Flower, Louie Livergreen, and Alice Myles, the Pushcart Queen
In the ten years since the Pushcart War, the Courtesy Act has been strictly observed by most of the truck drivers in New York. There have been exceptions, of course. Albert P. Mack has been arrested nineteen times for violation of the Act and is now serving a life sentence. But, as Professor Cumberly says, that might have been predicted.
What no one would have predicted, however, was that Wenda Gambling would marry a former truck driver. She is now Mrs. Joey Kafflis. A few years ago Joey Kafflis sold his diary to a movie company that was making a movie about the Pushcart War, and by coincidence Wenda Gambling was chosen to play the part of Wenda Gambling, and in this way she met Joey Kafflis.
In the movie version of the Pushcart War, Wenda Gambling
does fire the opening shot in the historic Pea Shooter Campaign, and she also appears in the front lines of the Peace March, right between General Anna and Morris the Florist. In the Peace March she is shown pushing a cart of secondhand shoes. A few of Wenda’s admirers did not recognize her in this scene as she is wearing a shawl over her head.
In the movie it is Wenda Gambling, of course, rather than General Anna, who saves Morris the Florist’s life. Although Wenda herself is seriously wounded, she manages to pull Morris to safety.
It is perhaps just as well that General Anna did not live to see the movie version of the Peace March. She died a few years after the Pushcart War at the age of eighty-one, and there is now a statue of her in Tompkins Square Park, the first statue of a pushcart peddler ever to be placed in a city park. The inscription beneath the statue reads simply: “By Hand.”
Among the officials who spoke at the dedication of General Anna’s statue was the Honorable Harold L. Kugelman, better known to veterans of the Pushcart War as Harry the Hot Dog. At that time, Harry had just been appointed Target Chief for the New York City Moon Exploration Bureau. (This is the department that sent the successful “Pea-Pin” Rocket to the north side of the moon last year.)
Harry was named as Target Chief for the MEB by none other than Mayor Emmett P. Cudd. For Mayor Cudd, despite his questionable role in the Pushcart War, was re-elected after the war for a third term.
In his post-war campaign, Mayor Cudd ran for re-election on a Potato Platform (“Two Potatoes for the Price of One”—a slogan that won him many more votes than his Peanut Butter Platform of the previous election). It was this campaign that earned the Mayor the nickname “Potato Head.”
One of the yet unresolved mysteries of the war is the where-abouts of Louie Livergreen. Louie disappeared from his offices on Second Avenue a few days after Big Moe’s surrender to the pushcarts.
Louie’s secretary told the police that certain documents (among them, the LEMA Master Plan for the Streets of New York) had disappeared from her employer’s files at the same time her employer dropped from view. It is widely believed that the AST (Association of Small Truckers) had something to do with Louie’s disappearance, but this has never been proved.
There was also a rumor at one point that Louie was alive and hiding out in Dallas, Texas, where he was said to be operating an earth-moving machinery business under another name. New York and Dallas police traced this rumor to the fact that there was a firm in Dallas known as LEMA (Lucky Earth-Moving Associates). However, on investigation, it appeared that the firm was run by a Mr. Jim Lucky, one of the best-liked young businessmen in Dallas. Jim Lucky sued a Houston newspaper for printing the rumor, which he claimed was damaging his business reputation, and since then other papers have been cautious about printing Livergreen stories.
And, finally, we cannot conclude this account of the Pushcart War without mentioning Alice Myles. Alice, who at the age of ten had written to the editor of a newspaper to say that her ambition was to be the Pushcart Queen, is well on her way to getting her wish.
Alice attended a very good vocational school and now has her own pushcart shop. Last year she built almost as many carts as Maxie Hammerman. Maxie says he does not mind the competition. He is about to retire and is glad that Alice will be carrying on the good work.
“That is what we fought the war for,” Maxie says, “so that there should always be a few pushcarts in the city of New York.”
JEAN MERRILL (1923–2012) was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up on a dairy and apple farm near Lake Ontario. She received a master’s degree in English literature from Wellesley in 1945 and later studied folklore in India on a Fulbright fellowship. She worked for many years as an editor at Scholastic Magazine, Literary Cavalcade, and the publications department of Bank Street College before turning to writing full time. Her first book, Henry, the Hand-Painted Mouse, was published in 1951 and her last, The Girl Who Loved Caterpillars: A Twelfth-Century Tale from Japan, in 1992. In between she wrote some thirty books for young readers, including The Pushcart War (1964), The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars (1967; forthcoming from The New York Review Children’s Collection), and The Toothpaste Millionaire (1977).
RONNI SOLBERT (b. 1925) was born in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Vassar and the Cranbrook Academy of Art. As a Fulbright recipient she studied folk and tribal art in India. She has illustrated more than forty children’s books and written and illustrated three of her own. As a painter, sculptor, and photographer she has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad.
ALSO BY JEAN MERRILL
WITH RONNI SOLBERT
The Black Sheep
Blue’s Broken Heart
Boxes
The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars
Emily Emerson’s Moon
A Few Flies and I: Haiku
Henry, the Hand-Painted Mouse
High, Wide and Handsome and Their Three Tall Tales
Mary, Come Running
Red Riding
Shan’s Lucky Knife: A Burmese Folk Tale
A Song for Gar
The Superlative Horse: A Tale of Ancient China
The Travels of Marco
The Tree House of Jimmy Domino
The Very Nice Things
The Woover
ILLUSTRATED BY FRANCES GRUSE SCOTT
The Bumper Sticker Book
Here I Come—Ready or Not!
How Many Kids Are Hiding on My Block?
Maria’s House
Please, Don’t Eat My Cabin
ILLUSTRATED BY OTHERS
The Girl Who Loved Caterpillars, illustrated by Floyd Cooper
Tell About the Cowbarn, Daddy, illustrated by Lili Wronker
The Toothpaste Millionaire, illustrated by Jan Palmer
