“Watermelooon! Banana, cantaloupe!”
Baker Bay, better known as Pop, belts out his signature Arabber call to the small crowd of families gathered in Poppleton’s Greater Model Park during a late November afternoon.
Arabbing is an old Baltimore tradition, steeped in the city’s Black American history. One man — or woman — with a horse and cart full of produce walk the city selling their wares until the cart is empty. Non-profit Stable Baltimore is using the tradition to teach young people life skills and to keep the practice alive.
“I gotta little bit this, a little bit a that…. Hey watermelon!” he sings as two girls, Kennedy and Cartier, run down to Pop’s red and yellow wagon.
Pop is running the Jr Arabber Experience, just one of the horse-related activities on the docket for the day. When the girls beg for a wagon ride, Pop sets them straight.
“We walk and sell produce. Okay, y'all want to walk, sell some fruit with me?” he asks. The two girls nod.
“Alright, let's go, where the fruit at? Yeah, we're going down the fruit market and then get the fruit.”
This is part of a pilot project from Stable Baltimore, an offshoot of the Arabber Preservation Society that gives kids a chance to interact with horses and of course, experience Arabbing culture up close. Pop looks both ways for traffic and then carefully leads the kids and his black mare, named Michelle, around the nearby block. Soon, Pop is telling them how to think like an Arabber.
“See now that lady over there in that door? You say, ‘How bout them cantaloupes, how bout them bananas?’ I tell you yeah, ‘Go over there and show what you got!’”
And soon the girls are Arabbing on their own.
“You want bananas?” Kennedy shouts to a woman sitting on her stoop.
“There you go!” Pop encourages.
Back at the park, the kids get up close and personal with the horses. Laura Dykes watches her son Taylor Wambugu learn to gently brush dirt from a horse's tail. The family lives in Hollins Market, near the Carlton Street Stables, so horses are something he sees a lot but Dykes takes advantage of opportunities like this one.
“I want him to learn about the history of his neighborhood,” she said.
The event is the first public event of its sort for Stable Baltimore. It’s not supposed to be solely about Arabbing, although that’s a main component.
“[Arabbing] will be more sustainable if it's a, if it's like a multitude of different things,” explained Matthew Holden Warren, co-founder of Stable Baltimore, speaking to WYPR in late July from a pilot event in Baltimore County. The group wants to encourage the use of horses for both healing and Arabbing at the same time.
“It's basically trying to find ways for the horses to stay in the city and stay relevant,” he said. “And Arabbing is changing, the thing too, is it's a living thing.”
“People love horses. That part isn't, hasn't shifted. Is there a viability around this specific Arabbing?” he wondered.
Through their events, Stable Baltimore wants children (and adults) to learn certain life skills, particularly emotional regulation, through interacting with the animals. Holden noted that horses have an “intrinsically” healing quality and that working with them requires the ability to compose oneself and direct one’s emotional energy around the notoriously skittish animals.
All of that is on display at the Greater Model Park.
Todd “Gready” Cornish is a former Arabber, keeper of Baltimore’s famous Hank the Goat, and all-around animal aficionado. He teaches the kids how to lead the horse through an obstacle course of pool noodles and hula hoops. It’s about building focus, he said: essential skills for an Arabber.
“Stay aware of your surroundings and the horse,” he says, noting that distractions come from everywhere. “ It might not be you. You could be doing everything you need to do and a black bag can fly from under the car, spook the horse, and everything can go wrong. So you gotta be aware of your surroundings and kind of just stay focused.”
He pats the horse gently. “And you know, horses can feel the nerves, so can't be nervous.”
Sixteen-year-old Paris from West Baltimore has been working with horses for a few years. She leads a dark brown horse through the obstacle.
“It just teaches you not to be scared. These are big animals. But it also teaches you safety, you get what I'm saying? I believe that they can feel that if you're scared of them.”
The group plans to host regular horse therapy and junior Arabbing events throughout Baltimore.
