The Fish That Ate the Whale; The Life and Times of America's Banana King
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Transcript of The Fish That Ate the Whale; The Life and Times of America's Banana King
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 113
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 213
Farrar Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street New York 10011
Copyright copy 2012 by Rich Cohen Map copyright copy 2012 by Jeffrey L Ward
All rights reserved Distributed in Canada by DampM Publishers Inc
Printed in the United States of AmericaFirst edition 2012
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following materialExcerpt from One Hundred Years of Solitude ( Cien antildeos de soledad ) by Gabriel Garciacutea
Maacuterquez translated by Gregory Rabassa copyright copy 1967 by Gabriel Garciacutea Maacuterqueztranslation copyright copy 1970 by Harper amp Row Publishers Inc Reprinted by permission of Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells and HarperCollins Publishers
Excerpt from Living to ell the ale ( Vivir para contarla ) by Gabriel Garciacutea Maacuterqueztranslated by Edith Grossman translation copyright copy 2003 by Gabriel Garciacutea Maacuterquez
Used by permission of Alfred A Knopf a division of Random House IncExcerpt from Every Man a King Te Autobiography of Huey P Long copyright copy 1933 by
Huey P Long renewal copyright copy 1961 by Russell B Long Unabridged reprint edition published 1996 by Da Capo Press by arrangement with Russell B Long Palmer Long and
Christopher R Brauchli Reprinted by permission of Palmer R Long Jr trusteeand R Katherine Long granddaughter of Huey P Long
Te poem ldquoUnited Fruit Companyrdquo from Canto General by Pablo Neruda translated by
Jack Schmitt copyright copy 1991 by the Fundacioacuten Pablo Neruda Published by theUniversity of California Press Reprinted by permission
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataCohen Rich Te 1047297sh that ate the whale the life and times of Americarsquos banana king
Rich Cohen mdash 1st ed p cm Includes bibliographical references ISBN 978-0-374-29927-9 (alk paper) 1 Zemurray Samuel 1877ndash1961 2 Jewish businesspeoplemdashLouisianamdash
New OrleansmdashBiography 3 Banana trademdashLouisianamdashNew OrleansmdashHistory 4 United Fruit CompanymdashBiography I itle
HD9259B2 Z463 2012 3387634772092mdashdc23 [B]
2011041207
Designed by Abby Kagan
wwwfsgbookscom
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Frontispiece Photograph of Samuel Zemurray reprinted by permission ofEliot Elisofon ime amp Life Pictures Getty Images
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 313
Sam Zemurray saw his 1047297rst banana in 1893 In the lore this is pre-
sented as a moment o clarity wherein the uture was revealed In some
versions the original banana is presented as a platonic ideal an arche-
type circling the young manrsquos head It is seen rom a great distance then
very close each reckle magni1047297ed As it was his 1047297rst banana I imagine
it situated on a velvet pillow in a display alongside Adamrsquos rib and
Robert Johnsonrsquos guitar Tere is much variation in the telling o this
story meaning each expert has written his or her own history meaning
the story has gone rom reportage to mythology meaning Sam the
Banana Man is Paul Bunyan and the 1047297rst banana is Babe the Blue Ox
In some versions Sam sees the banana in the gutter in Selma Alabama
where itrsquos allen rom a pushcart in some he sees it in the window o
a grocery and is smitten He rushes inside grabs the owner by the lapel
and makes him tell everything he knows In some he sees it amid a
pile o bananas on the deck o a ship plying the Alabama River on a lazysummer afernoon
Te most likely version has Sam seeing that 1047297rst banana in the
wares o a peddler in the alley behind his unclersquos store in Selma Te
American banana trade had begun twenty years beore but it was still
embryonic Few people had ever seen a banana I they were spoken o
at all it was as an oddity the way a person might speak o an Arican
cucumber today In this version Sam peppers the salesman with ques-
tions What is it Where did you get it How much does it cost Howast do they sell What do you do with the peel What kind o money
can you make But none o the stories mentions a crucial detail did
1
Selma
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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12 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
Zemurray taste that 1047297rst banana I like to imagine him peeling it eat-
ing the ruit in three bites then tossing the skin into the street the way
people did back then ossing it and saying ldquoWonderulrdquo In uture
years Zemurray always spoke o his product the way people speak othings they truly love as something antastical in part because itrsquos not
entirely necessary When he mentioned the nutritional value o ba-
nanas in interviews he added ldquoAnd o course itrsquos deliciousrdquo Putting us
at a urther remove rom Zemurray is the act that the kind o banana
he saw in Selma in 1893 the banana that made his ortune the variety
known as the Big Mike went extinct in the 1960s
Sam Zemurray was born in 1877 in the region o western Russia
once known as Bessarabia Itrsquos Moldavia today He grew up on a wheatarm in a 1047298at country ringed by hills His ather died young leaving
the amily beref without prospects Sam traveled to America with his
aunt in 1892 He was to establish himsel and send or the othersmdash
mother siblings He landed in New York then continued to Selma
Alabama where his uncle owned a store
He was ourteen or 1047297feen but you would guess him much older
Te immigrants o that era could not afford to be children Tey had to
struggle every minute o every day By sixteen he was as hardened as
the men in Walker Evansrsquos photos a tough operator a dead-end kid
coolly 1047297guring angles Wherersquos the play Whatrsquos in it or me His humor
was black his explanations ew He was driven by the same raw energy
that has always attracted the most ambitious to America then pushed
them to the head o the crowd Grasper climbermdashnasty ways o describ-
ing this kid who wants what you take or granted From his 1047297rst months
in America he was scheming looking or a way to get ahead You did notneed to be a Rockeeller to know the basics o the dream Start at the
bottom 1047297ght your way to the top
Over time Sam would develop a philosophy best expressed in a
handul o phrases Yoursquore there wersquore here Go see for yourself Donrsquot
trust the report
Tough immensely complicated he was in a undamental way
simple earthy He believed in staying close to the actionmdashin the 1047297elds
with the workers in the dives with the banana cowboys You drinkwith a man you learn what he knows (ldquoTere is no problem you canrsquot
solve i you understand your business rom A to Zrdquo he said later) In a
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Selma bull 13
amous exchange when challenged by a rival who claimed he could
not understand Zemurrayrsquos accent Zemurray said ldquoYoursquore 1047297red Can
you understand thatrdquo
Selma Alabama was the perect spot or a kid like Sam an incuba-tor a starter town picturesque yet aded grand but still small enough
to memorize A manuacturing center in the time o the Conederacy
it had since been allowed to dilapidate Tere was a main street a ruit
market a butcher shop a candy store a theater with plush seats a city
hall churches Tere were brick houses with curtains in the windows
and swings on the porchesmdashthe white side o town Tere were shot-
gun shacks blue and yellow and red ronted by weedy yardsmdashthe
Negro side o town Tere were taverns and houses o worship whereChristian gospel was mixed with Arican voodoo Tere were banks
savings and loans raternal orders Tere was a commercial district
where every store was 1047297lled with unduly optimistic businessmen
Tough the biography o Zemurrayrsquos uncle has been orgotten we
can take him as a stand-in or the generation o poor grandathers who
came 1047297rst who worked and worked and got nothing but a place o
honor in the amily photo in return Sometimes described as a grocery
sometimes as a general store his shop was precisely the sort that Jew-
ish immigrants had been establishing across the South or 1047297fy years
Such concerns were usually operated by men who came to America
because they were the youngest o many brothers without property or
plans Tese people went south because in the early days o the Amer-
ican republic it was not inhospitable to Hebrews Many began as ped-
dlers crossing the country with a mountain o merchandise strapped
to their backs You see them in ancient silver prints and daguerreo-types weathered men humping hal the world on their shoulders
pushing the other hal in a cartmdashbags o grain dinnerware tinware
lamps clothes canvas or tents chocolate anything an isolated armer
might want but could not 1047297nd in the sticks
When they had saved some money many o these men opened
stores which meant moving all that merchandise under a roo in a
town along their route Even now as you drive across the South you
will see their remnants baked into the soil like ossils an ancient ve-randa a ghost sign blistered rom years o rainmdash983148983137983162983137983154983157983155 983078 983155983151983150983155
983144983151983149983141 983151983142 983156983144983141 983152983141983150983150983161 983138983141983148983156 Tese men were careul to open no more
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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14 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
than one store per town partly because who needs the competition
partly because they worried about attracting the wrong kind o atten-
tion Tey stocked everything What they did not stock they could
order Te most successul grew into great department stores S A Shorein Winchester Alabama ounded by Russian-born Solomon Shore
ather o Dinah E Lewis amp Son Dry Goods in Hendersonville North
Carolina ounded by Polish-born Edward Lewis Capitol Department
Store in Fayetteville North Carolina ounded by the Russian Stein
brothers Others having started by extending credit to customers
evolved into Americarsquos 1047297rst investment banks Lehman Brothers
ounded by Henry Lehman a Jewish immigrant rom Bavaria began
as a dry goods store in Montgomery Alabama in 1844 Lazard Fregraveresounded by three Jewish brothers rom France began as a wholesale
business in New Orleans in 1848 Te store owned by Zemurrayrsquos uncle
was probably o this variety having begun as a young man carrying
merchandise it grew into a neat grocery on Broad Street
Selma closed early By ten pm the bustling o the marketplace had
given way to the swamp stink and cicadas but there was always action
or those who knew where to look in the private clubs where mer-
chants played aro and stud in the juke joints that stayed open rom
can till canrsquot According to those who knew him Sam did not care or
crowds and parties He had a restless mind and a persistent need to get
outdoors He liked to be alone You might see him wandering beneath
the lamps o town a tough lean young man in an overcoat hands bur-
ied deep in his pockets
He stacked shelves and checked inventory in his unclersquos store Now
and then he dealt with the salesmen who turned up with sample casesHe stood in the alley amid the garbage cans and cats asking about
suppliers and costs Tere was money to be made but not here He in-
terrogated customers He was looking or different work and would try
anything i only or experience His early lie was a series o adven-
tures with odd job leading to odd job Much o the color that would
later entertain magazine writersmdashSamrsquos lie had the dimensions o a
airy talemdashwere accumulated in his 1047297rst ew years in Selma
He worked as a tin merchant Well thatrsquos how it would be describedin the press ldquoYoung Sam Z bartered iron or livestock chickens and
pigsrdquo According to newspaper and magazine accounts he was in act
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Selma bull 15
employed by a struggling old-timer who was less tin merchant than
peddler the last o a vanishing breed the country cheapjack in a tat-
tered coat sharing a piece o chocolate with the boy Now and then he
might offer some wisdom Banks fail women leave but land lasts forever He combed trash piles on the edge o Selma searching or dis-
carded scraps o sheet metal the cast-off junk o the industrial age
which he piled on his cart and pushed rom arm to arm looking or
tradesmdashwire or a chicken coop in return or one o the razorbacks in
the pen Afer the particulars were agreed on Sam was told to get mov-
ing Catch and tie that animal boy It was Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst real job
racing through the slop with a rope in his hand ldquoIn those daysrdquo he
told a reporter rom Life ldquoI could outrun any pig in Dixierdquo Paid a dol-lar a week he kept the job just long enough to know he would rather be
the man who owned the hog than the man who collected the junk and
would rather be the man who discarded the sheet metal than the man
who owned the hog
A series o jobs ollowed tried on and thrown off like thrif-store
suits He was a housecleaner and a delivery boy He turned a lathe or a
carpenter By eighteen he had saved enough to send or his brothers
and sisters hal a dozen pale young Jews who turned up in Alabama in
the last years o the nineteenth century
But his real lie began only when he saw that 1047297rst banana He de-
vised a plan soon afer he would travel to Mobile where the ruit boats
arrived rom Central America purchase a supply o his own carry
them back to Selma and go into business
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Zemurray took his money and went south Wisteria bloomed along the
railroad tracks owns drifed by He could smell the ocean beore he
could see it He was like a kid on the rontier who a day afer the har-
vest olds his savings into a roll and goes to try his luck in town
Mobile was a seedy industrial port 1047297lled with all the amiliar types
the sharpie the 1047297nancier the scoundrel the chucklehead the sport
Sam was a bit o everything He could be shrewd but he could also be
naiumlve He was greedy or inormation He took a room in a seamenrsquos
hotel near the port Te waterront was crossed by train tracksmdashdozens
o lines converged here Boxcars crammed with coal ruit cotton and
cane stood on the sidings Te railroad conductors were the aristocrats
o the scene Tey drank coffee in the station house smug in their check-
ered caps Te docks were crowded with stevedores most o them
immigrants rom Sicily Te train sheds were crowded with peddlers
most o them Jewish immigrants rom Poland and Russia Tey boughtmerchandise off the decks o ships and sold it rom carts in the streets
o Mobile
One evening Sam stood on the whar watching a Boston Fruit
banana boat sail into the harbor Te Boston Fruit Company which
would become United Fruit dominated the trade with a 1047298eet that car-
ried bananas rom Jamaica to Boston Charleston New Orleans and
Mobile Zemurray would have seen one o the smaller ships that made
the trip to the Gul ports a cutter with sails and engine Te unnelsent up black smoke Te pier strained under the weight o unloaders
who appeared as i out o nowhere whenever a ship landed As soon as
2
Ripes
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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18 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
the boat was anchored these men swarmed across the deck ants on a
sugar pile working in organized teams
In the South in the days beore mechanical equipment bananas
were unloaded by hand the workers carrying the cargo a stem at atimemdashrom the hold where the shipment was packed in ice onto the
deck o the ship A banana stem is the ruit o an entire treemdasha hun-
dred pounds or more Each stem holds perhaps a hundred bunches
each bunch holds perhaps nine hands each hand holds perhaps 1047297feen
1047297ngersmdasha 1047297nger being a single banana It was backbreaking work and
dangerous not just or the shoulders and arms but also or the central
ner vous system As any banana cowboy would tell you banana plants
are prized nesting places or scorpions When the stems are cut downthe killers go along or the ride rom the banana plantation to the
jungle railroad to the whar to the ship across the Gul to Mobile or
New Orleans or Boston where they spring out stinging the 1047297rst steve-
dore they happen upon
Most workers on the banana docks were West Indians who arrived
in the southern ports on the ships that carried the cargo Early last
century newspaper reporters looking or local color ofen wrote about
these hired hands painting them in barbarous shades o minstrel
blue Tey described dark skin big lips grinning aces heavy haunches
their shirts as white as their eyes lifing and hauling working as one
man Tey pictured them in sunlight and gaslight moving like shad-
ows along the docks docile content occasionally breaking into hymns
and psalms and strange tribal music that chilled their white overseers
ldquoMost o them are Jamaican negroesrdquo Frederick Upham Adams wrote
in Conquest of the ropics ldquoblack as the ace o spades and care-ree asthe birds who sing in the adjacent park Fat negro lsquomammiesrsquo trudge in
with handcarts loaded with ood and sweetmeat delicacies dear to the
negro taste Powerul clusters o electric lights 1047298ash out in the vast
covered shed which protects the docks and the myriad lights o the
ship add their glow to the general effectrdquo
Sam would have watched closely as the workers ormed lines that
snaked rom the deck o the ship down a ramp and across the pier to
the waiting boxcars (He wanted to learn every detail o the trade)Each stem was passed rom man to man until it reached the open door
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Ripes bull 19
o the train where an agent rom the company examined it or bruises
reckles color I the stem passed muster it was loaded into the car
which was air cooled and straw 1047297lled When the car was ull the door
was swung shut and locked An empty car was rolled into its placeTis continued or hoursmdasha shif might run rom three pm until
midnight When a train was packed the switchman signaled and the
cargo was carried across the South
Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o
the yard where they were urther divided Some were designated as
turnings meaning they were on their way to being worthless At the
end o the day they were sold at a discount to store owners and ped-
dlers You could see them with their carts piled high trundling throughthe streets calling ldquoBananas bananas or sale A nickel a bunch Yes
we have bananas we have bananas or salerdquo
Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were
designated ldquoripesrdquo and heaped in a sad pile A ripe is a banana you have
lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy Tese ba-
nanas though still good to eat delicious even would never make it to
the market in time In less than a week they would begin to sofen and
stink As ar as the merchants were concerned they were trash When
de1047297ning a ripe Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard one reckle
turning two reckles ripe
Sam noticed everythingmdashthe care with which the bananas were
handled the way each boxcar was 1047297lled and rolled to a siding how
men rom the banana company college men moved through the
crowd barking ordersmdashbut paid special attention to the growing pile
o ripes Anything can cause a banana to ripen early I you squeeze agreen banana it will turn in days instead o weeks ditto i itrsquos nicked
dented or banged A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen
and those will cause still others to ripen until an entire boxcar is ru-
ined Beore rerigeration was perected as much as 15 percent o an
average cargo ended up in the ripe pile
Sam grew 1047297xated on ripes recognizing a product where others had
seen only trash It was the worldview o the immigrant understanding
how so-called garbage might be valued under a different name seeingnutrition where others saw only waste He was the son o a Russian
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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amp (() (+
-01
2134 5 0673
8193019
lt= gt(= ( amp (()
--7710-
amp C8=B KE
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 213
Farrar Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street New York 10011
Copyright copy 2012 by Rich Cohen Map copyright copy 2012 by Jeffrey L Ward
All rights reserved Distributed in Canada by DampM Publishers Inc
Printed in the United States of AmericaFirst edition 2012
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following materialExcerpt from One Hundred Years of Solitude ( Cien antildeos de soledad ) by Gabriel Garciacutea
Maacuterquez translated by Gregory Rabassa copyright copy 1967 by Gabriel Garciacutea Maacuterqueztranslation copyright copy 1970 by Harper amp Row Publishers Inc Reprinted by permission of Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells and HarperCollins Publishers
Excerpt from Living to ell the ale ( Vivir para contarla ) by Gabriel Garciacutea Maacuterqueztranslated by Edith Grossman translation copyright copy 2003 by Gabriel Garciacutea Maacuterquez
Used by permission of Alfred A Knopf a division of Random House IncExcerpt from Every Man a King Te Autobiography of Huey P Long copyright copy 1933 by
Huey P Long renewal copyright copy 1961 by Russell B Long Unabridged reprint edition published 1996 by Da Capo Press by arrangement with Russell B Long Palmer Long and
Christopher R Brauchli Reprinted by permission of Palmer R Long Jr trusteeand R Katherine Long granddaughter of Huey P Long
Te poem ldquoUnited Fruit Companyrdquo from Canto General by Pablo Neruda translated by
Jack Schmitt copyright copy 1991 by the Fundacioacuten Pablo Neruda Published by theUniversity of California Press Reprinted by permission
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataCohen Rich Te 1047297sh that ate the whale the life and times of Americarsquos banana king
Rich Cohen mdash 1st ed p cm Includes bibliographical references ISBN 978-0-374-29927-9 (alk paper) 1 Zemurray Samuel 1877ndash1961 2 Jewish businesspeoplemdashLouisianamdash
New OrleansmdashBiography 3 Banana trademdashLouisianamdashNew OrleansmdashHistory 4 United Fruit CompanymdashBiography I itle
HD9259B2 Z463 2012 3387634772092mdashdc23 [B]
2011041207
Designed by Abby Kagan
wwwfsgbookscom
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Frontispiece Photograph of Samuel Zemurray reprinted by permission ofEliot Elisofon ime amp Life Pictures Getty Images
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 313
Sam Zemurray saw his 1047297rst banana in 1893 In the lore this is pre-
sented as a moment o clarity wherein the uture was revealed In some
versions the original banana is presented as a platonic ideal an arche-
type circling the young manrsquos head It is seen rom a great distance then
very close each reckle magni1047297ed As it was his 1047297rst banana I imagine
it situated on a velvet pillow in a display alongside Adamrsquos rib and
Robert Johnsonrsquos guitar Tere is much variation in the telling o this
story meaning each expert has written his or her own history meaning
the story has gone rom reportage to mythology meaning Sam the
Banana Man is Paul Bunyan and the 1047297rst banana is Babe the Blue Ox
In some versions Sam sees the banana in the gutter in Selma Alabama
where itrsquos allen rom a pushcart in some he sees it in the window o
a grocery and is smitten He rushes inside grabs the owner by the lapel
and makes him tell everything he knows In some he sees it amid a
pile o bananas on the deck o a ship plying the Alabama River on a lazysummer afernoon
Te most likely version has Sam seeing that 1047297rst banana in the
wares o a peddler in the alley behind his unclersquos store in Selma Te
American banana trade had begun twenty years beore but it was still
embryonic Few people had ever seen a banana I they were spoken o
at all it was as an oddity the way a person might speak o an Arican
cucumber today In this version Sam peppers the salesman with ques-
tions What is it Where did you get it How much does it cost Howast do they sell What do you do with the peel What kind o money
can you make But none o the stories mentions a crucial detail did
1
Selma
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 413
12 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
Zemurray taste that 1047297rst banana I like to imagine him peeling it eat-
ing the ruit in three bites then tossing the skin into the street the way
people did back then ossing it and saying ldquoWonderulrdquo In uture
years Zemurray always spoke o his product the way people speak othings they truly love as something antastical in part because itrsquos not
entirely necessary When he mentioned the nutritional value o ba-
nanas in interviews he added ldquoAnd o course itrsquos deliciousrdquo Putting us
at a urther remove rom Zemurray is the act that the kind o banana
he saw in Selma in 1893 the banana that made his ortune the variety
known as the Big Mike went extinct in the 1960s
Sam Zemurray was born in 1877 in the region o western Russia
once known as Bessarabia Itrsquos Moldavia today He grew up on a wheatarm in a 1047298at country ringed by hills His ather died young leaving
the amily beref without prospects Sam traveled to America with his
aunt in 1892 He was to establish himsel and send or the othersmdash
mother siblings He landed in New York then continued to Selma
Alabama where his uncle owned a store
He was ourteen or 1047297feen but you would guess him much older
Te immigrants o that era could not afford to be children Tey had to
struggle every minute o every day By sixteen he was as hardened as
the men in Walker Evansrsquos photos a tough operator a dead-end kid
coolly 1047297guring angles Wherersquos the play Whatrsquos in it or me His humor
was black his explanations ew He was driven by the same raw energy
that has always attracted the most ambitious to America then pushed
them to the head o the crowd Grasper climbermdashnasty ways o describ-
ing this kid who wants what you take or granted From his 1047297rst months
in America he was scheming looking or a way to get ahead You did notneed to be a Rockeeller to know the basics o the dream Start at the
bottom 1047297ght your way to the top
Over time Sam would develop a philosophy best expressed in a
handul o phrases Yoursquore there wersquore here Go see for yourself Donrsquot
trust the report
Tough immensely complicated he was in a undamental way
simple earthy He believed in staying close to the actionmdashin the 1047297elds
with the workers in the dives with the banana cowboys You drinkwith a man you learn what he knows (ldquoTere is no problem you canrsquot
solve i you understand your business rom A to Zrdquo he said later) In a
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Selma bull 13
amous exchange when challenged by a rival who claimed he could
not understand Zemurrayrsquos accent Zemurray said ldquoYoursquore 1047297red Can
you understand thatrdquo
Selma Alabama was the perect spot or a kid like Sam an incuba-tor a starter town picturesque yet aded grand but still small enough
to memorize A manuacturing center in the time o the Conederacy
it had since been allowed to dilapidate Tere was a main street a ruit
market a butcher shop a candy store a theater with plush seats a city
hall churches Tere were brick houses with curtains in the windows
and swings on the porchesmdashthe white side o town Tere were shot-
gun shacks blue and yellow and red ronted by weedy yardsmdashthe
Negro side o town Tere were taverns and houses o worship whereChristian gospel was mixed with Arican voodoo Tere were banks
savings and loans raternal orders Tere was a commercial district
where every store was 1047297lled with unduly optimistic businessmen
Tough the biography o Zemurrayrsquos uncle has been orgotten we
can take him as a stand-in or the generation o poor grandathers who
came 1047297rst who worked and worked and got nothing but a place o
honor in the amily photo in return Sometimes described as a grocery
sometimes as a general store his shop was precisely the sort that Jew-
ish immigrants had been establishing across the South or 1047297fy years
Such concerns were usually operated by men who came to America
because they were the youngest o many brothers without property or
plans Tese people went south because in the early days o the Amer-
ican republic it was not inhospitable to Hebrews Many began as ped-
dlers crossing the country with a mountain o merchandise strapped
to their backs You see them in ancient silver prints and daguerreo-types weathered men humping hal the world on their shoulders
pushing the other hal in a cartmdashbags o grain dinnerware tinware
lamps clothes canvas or tents chocolate anything an isolated armer
might want but could not 1047297nd in the sticks
When they had saved some money many o these men opened
stores which meant moving all that merchandise under a roo in a
town along their route Even now as you drive across the South you
will see their remnants baked into the soil like ossils an ancient ve-randa a ghost sign blistered rom years o rainmdash983148983137983162983137983154983157983155 983078 983155983151983150983155
983144983151983149983141 983151983142 983156983144983141 983152983141983150983150983161 983138983141983148983156 Tese men were careul to open no more
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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14 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
than one store per town partly because who needs the competition
partly because they worried about attracting the wrong kind o atten-
tion Tey stocked everything What they did not stock they could
order Te most successul grew into great department stores S A Shorein Winchester Alabama ounded by Russian-born Solomon Shore
ather o Dinah E Lewis amp Son Dry Goods in Hendersonville North
Carolina ounded by Polish-born Edward Lewis Capitol Department
Store in Fayetteville North Carolina ounded by the Russian Stein
brothers Others having started by extending credit to customers
evolved into Americarsquos 1047297rst investment banks Lehman Brothers
ounded by Henry Lehman a Jewish immigrant rom Bavaria began
as a dry goods store in Montgomery Alabama in 1844 Lazard Fregraveresounded by three Jewish brothers rom France began as a wholesale
business in New Orleans in 1848 Te store owned by Zemurrayrsquos uncle
was probably o this variety having begun as a young man carrying
merchandise it grew into a neat grocery on Broad Street
Selma closed early By ten pm the bustling o the marketplace had
given way to the swamp stink and cicadas but there was always action
or those who knew where to look in the private clubs where mer-
chants played aro and stud in the juke joints that stayed open rom
can till canrsquot According to those who knew him Sam did not care or
crowds and parties He had a restless mind and a persistent need to get
outdoors He liked to be alone You might see him wandering beneath
the lamps o town a tough lean young man in an overcoat hands bur-
ied deep in his pockets
He stacked shelves and checked inventory in his unclersquos store Now
and then he dealt with the salesmen who turned up with sample casesHe stood in the alley amid the garbage cans and cats asking about
suppliers and costs Tere was money to be made but not here He in-
terrogated customers He was looking or different work and would try
anything i only or experience His early lie was a series o adven-
tures with odd job leading to odd job Much o the color that would
later entertain magazine writersmdashSamrsquos lie had the dimensions o a
airy talemdashwere accumulated in his 1047297rst ew years in Selma
He worked as a tin merchant Well thatrsquos how it would be describedin the press ldquoYoung Sam Z bartered iron or livestock chickens and
pigsrdquo According to newspaper and magazine accounts he was in act
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Selma bull 15
employed by a struggling old-timer who was less tin merchant than
peddler the last o a vanishing breed the country cheapjack in a tat-
tered coat sharing a piece o chocolate with the boy Now and then he
might offer some wisdom Banks fail women leave but land lasts forever He combed trash piles on the edge o Selma searching or dis-
carded scraps o sheet metal the cast-off junk o the industrial age
which he piled on his cart and pushed rom arm to arm looking or
tradesmdashwire or a chicken coop in return or one o the razorbacks in
the pen Afer the particulars were agreed on Sam was told to get mov-
ing Catch and tie that animal boy It was Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst real job
racing through the slop with a rope in his hand ldquoIn those daysrdquo he
told a reporter rom Life ldquoI could outrun any pig in Dixierdquo Paid a dol-lar a week he kept the job just long enough to know he would rather be
the man who owned the hog than the man who collected the junk and
would rather be the man who discarded the sheet metal than the man
who owned the hog
A series o jobs ollowed tried on and thrown off like thrif-store
suits He was a housecleaner and a delivery boy He turned a lathe or a
carpenter By eighteen he had saved enough to send or his brothers
and sisters hal a dozen pale young Jews who turned up in Alabama in
the last years o the nineteenth century
But his real lie began only when he saw that 1047297rst banana He de-
vised a plan soon afer he would travel to Mobile where the ruit boats
arrived rom Central America purchase a supply o his own carry
them back to Selma and go into business
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Zemurray took his money and went south Wisteria bloomed along the
railroad tracks owns drifed by He could smell the ocean beore he
could see it He was like a kid on the rontier who a day afer the har-
vest olds his savings into a roll and goes to try his luck in town
Mobile was a seedy industrial port 1047297lled with all the amiliar types
the sharpie the 1047297nancier the scoundrel the chucklehead the sport
Sam was a bit o everything He could be shrewd but he could also be
naiumlve He was greedy or inormation He took a room in a seamenrsquos
hotel near the port Te waterront was crossed by train tracksmdashdozens
o lines converged here Boxcars crammed with coal ruit cotton and
cane stood on the sidings Te railroad conductors were the aristocrats
o the scene Tey drank coffee in the station house smug in their check-
ered caps Te docks were crowded with stevedores most o them
immigrants rom Sicily Te train sheds were crowded with peddlers
most o them Jewish immigrants rom Poland and Russia Tey boughtmerchandise off the decks o ships and sold it rom carts in the streets
o Mobile
One evening Sam stood on the whar watching a Boston Fruit
banana boat sail into the harbor Te Boston Fruit Company which
would become United Fruit dominated the trade with a 1047298eet that car-
ried bananas rom Jamaica to Boston Charleston New Orleans and
Mobile Zemurray would have seen one o the smaller ships that made
the trip to the Gul ports a cutter with sails and engine Te unnelsent up black smoke Te pier strained under the weight o unloaders
who appeared as i out o nowhere whenever a ship landed As soon as
2
Ripes
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18 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
the boat was anchored these men swarmed across the deck ants on a
sugar pile working in organized teams
In the South in the days beore mechanical equipment bananas
were unloaded by hand the workers carrying the cargo a stem at atimemdashrom the hold where the shipment was packed in ice onto the
deck o the ship A banana stem is the ruit o an entire treemdasha hun-
dred pounds or more Each stem holds perhaps a hundred bunches
each bunch holds perhaps nine hands each hand holds perhaps 1047297feen
1047297ngersmdasha 1047297nger being a single banana It was backbreaking work and
dangerous not just or the shoulders and arms but also or the central
ner vous system As any banana cowboy would tell you banana plants
are prized nesting places or scorpions When the stems are cut downthe killers go along or the ride rom the banana plantation to the
jungle railroad to the whar to the ship across the Gul to Mobile or
New Orleans or Boston where they spring out stinging the 1047297rst steve-
dore they happen upon
Most workers on the banana docks were West Indians who arrived
in the southern ports on the ships that carried the cargo Early last
century newspaper reporters looking or local color ofen wrote about
these hired hands painting them in barbarous shades o minstrel
blue Tey described dark skin big lips grinning aces heavy haunches
their shirts as white as their eyes lifing and hauling working as one
man Tey pictured them in sunlight and gaslight moving like shad-
ows along the docks docile content occasionally breaking into hymns
and psalms and strange tribal music that chilled their white overseers
ldquoMost o them are Jamaican negroesrdquo Frederick Upham Adams wrote
in Conquest of the ropics ldquoblack as the ace o spades and care-ree asthe birds who sing in the adjacent park Fat negro lsquomammiesrsquo trudge in
with handcarts loaded with ood and sweetmeat delicacies dear to the
negro taste Powerul clusters o electric lights 1047298ash out in the vast
covered shed which protects the docks and the myriad lights o the
ship add their glow to the general effectrdquo
Sam would have watched closely as the workers ormed lines that
snaked rom the deck o the ship down a ramp and across the pier to
the waiting boxcars (He wanted to learn every detail o the trade)Each stem was passed rom man to man until it reached the open door
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Ripes bull 19
o the train where an agent rom the company examined it or bruises
reckles color I the stem passed muster it was loaded into the car
which was air cooled and straw 1047297lled When the car was ull the door
was swung shut and locked An empty car was rolled into its placeTis continued or hoursmdasha shif might run rom three pm until
midnight When a train was packed the switchman signaled and the
cargo was carried across the South
Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o
the yard where they were urther divided Some were designated as
turnings meaning they were on their way to being worthless At the
end o the day they were sold at a discount to store owners and ped-
dlers You could see them with their carts piled high trundling throughthe streets calling ldquoBananas bananas or sale A nickel a bunch Yes
we have bananas we have bananas or salerdquo
Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were
designated ldquoripesrdquo and heaped in a sad pile A ripe is a banana you have
lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy Tese ba-
nanas though still good to eat delicious even would never make it to
the market in time In less than a week they would begin to sofen and
stink As ar as the merchants were concerned they were trash When
de1047297ning a ripe Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard one reckle
turning two reckles ripe
Sam noticed everythingmdashthe care with which the bananas were
handled the way each boxcar was 1047297lled and rolled to a siding how
men rom the banana company college men moved through the
crowd barking ordersmdashbut paid special attention to the growing pile
o ripes Anything can cause a banana to ripen early I you squeeze agreen banana it will turn in days instead o weeks ditto i itrsquos nicked
dented or banged A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen
and those will cause still others to ripen until an entire boxcar is ru-
ined Beore rerigeration was perected as much as 15 percent o an
average cargo ended up in the ripe pile
Sam grew 1047297xated on ripes recognizing a product where others had
seen only trash It was the worldview o the immigrant understanding
how so-called garbage might be valued under a different name seeingnutrition where others saw only waste He was the son o a Russian
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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amp (() (+
-01
2134 5 0673
8193019
lt= gt(= ( amp (()
--7710-
amp C8=B KE
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 313
Sam Zemurray saw his 1047297rst banana in 1893 In the lore this is pre-
sented as a moment o clarity wherein the uture was revealed In some
versions the original banana is presented as a platonic ideal an arche-
type circling the young manrsquos head It is seen rom a great distance then
very close each reckle magni1047297ed As it was his 1047297rst banana I imagine
it situated on a velvet pillow in a display alongside Adamrsquos rib and
Robert Johnsonrsquos guitar Tere is much variation in the telling o this
story meaning each expert has written his or her own history meaning
the story has gone rom reportage to mythology meaning Sam the
Banana Man is Paul Bunyan and the 1047297rst banana is Babe the Blue Ox
In some versions Sam sees the banana in the gutter in Selma Alabama
where itrsquos allen rom a pushcart in some he sees it in the window o
a grocery and is smitten He rushes inside grabs the owner by the lapel
and makes him tell everything he knows In some he sees it amid a
pile o bananas on the deck o a ship plying the Alabama River on a lazysummer afernoon
Te most likely version has Sam seeing that 1047297rst banana in the
wares o a peddler in the alley behind his unclersquos store in Selma Te
American banana trade had begun twenty years beore but it was still
embryonic Few people had ever seen a banana I they were spoken o
at all it was as an oddity the way a person might speak o an Arican
cucumber today In this version Sam peppers the salesman with ques-
tions What is it Where did you get it How much does it cost Howast do they sell What do you do with the peel What kind o money
can you make But none o the stories mentions a crucial detail did
1
Selma
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 413
12 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
Zemurray taste that 1047297rst banana I like to imagine him peeling it eat-
ing the ruit in three bites then tossing the skin into the street the way
people did back then ossing it and saying ldquoWonderulrdquo In uture
years Zemurray always spoke o his product the way people speak othings they truly love as something antastical in part because itrsquos not
entirely necessary When he mentioned the nutritional value o ba-
nanas in interviews he added ldquoAnd o course itrsquos deliciousrdquo Putting us
at a urther remove rom Zemurray is the act that the kind o banana
he saw in Selma in 1893 the banana that made his ortune the variety
known as the Big Mike went extinct in the 1960s
Sam Zemurray was born in 1877 in the region o western Russia
once known as Bessarabia Itrsquos Moldavia today He grew up on a wheatarm in a 1047298at country ringed by hills His ather died young leaving
the amily beref without prospects Sam traveled to America with his
aunt in 1892 He was to establish himsel and send or the othersmdash
mother siblings He landed in New York then continued to Selma
Alabama where his uncle owned a store
He was ourteen or 1047297feen but you would guess him much older
Te immigrants o that era could not afford to be children Tey had to
struggle every minute o every day By sixteen he was as hardened as
the men in Walker Evansrsquos photos a tough operator a dead-end kid
coolly 1047297guring angles Wherersquos the play Whatrsquos in it or me His humor
was black his explanations ew He was driven by the same raw energy
that has always attracted the most ambitious to America then pushed
them to the head o the crowd Grasper climbermdashnasty ways o describ-
ing this kid who wants what you take or granted From his 1047297rst months
in America he was scheming looking or a way to get ahead You did notneed to be a Rockeeller to know the basics o the dream Start at the
bottom 1047297ght your way to the top
Over time Sam would develop a philosophy best expressed in a
handul o phrases Yoursquore there wersquore here Go see for yourself Donrsquot
trust the report
Tough immensely complicated he was in a undamental way
simple earthy He believed in staying close to the actionmdashin the 1047297elds
with the workers in the dives with the banana cowboys You drinkwith a man you learn what he knows (ldquoTere is no problem you canrsquot
solve i you understand your business rom A to Zrdquo he said later) In a
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 513
Selma bull 13
amous exchange when challenged by a rival who claimed he could
not understand Zemurrayrsquos accent Zemurray said ldquoYoursquore 1047297red Can
you understand thatrdquo
Selma Alabama was the perect spot or a kid like Sam an incuba-tor a starter town picturesque yet aded grand but still small enough
to memorize A manuacturing center in the time o the Conederacy
it had since been allowed to dilapidate Tere was a main street a ruit
market a butcher shop a candy store a theater with plush seats a city
hall churches Tere were brick houses with curtains in the windows
and swings on the porchesmdashthe white side o town Tere were shot-
gun shacks blue and yellow and red ronted by weedy yardsmdashthe
Negro side o town Tere were taverns and houses o worship whereChristian gospel was mixed with Arican voodoo Tere were banks
savings and loans raternal orders Tere was a commercial district
where every store was 1047297lled with unduly optimistic businessmen
Tough the biography o Zemurrayrsquos uncle has been orgotten we
can take him as a stand-in or the generation o poor grandathers who
came 1047297rst who worked and worked and got nothing but a place o
honor in the amily photo in return Sometimes described as a grocery
sometimes as a general store his shop was precisely the sort that Jew-
ish immigrants had been establishing across the South or 1047297fy years
Such concerns were usually operated by men who came to America
because they were the youngest o many brothers without property or
plans Tese people went south because in the early days o the Amer-
ican republic it was not inhospitable to Hebrews Many began as ped-
dlers crossing the country with a mountain o merchandise strapped
to their backs You see them in ancient silver prints and daguerreo-types weathered men humping hal the world on their shoulders
pushing the other hal in a cartmdashbags o grain dinnerware tinware
lamps clothes canvas or tents chocolate anything an isolated armer
might want but could not 1047297nd in the sticks
When they had saved some money many o these men opened
stores which meant moving all that merchandise under a roo in a
town along their route Even now as you drive across the South you
will see their remnants baked into the soil like ossils an ancient ve-randa a ghost sign blistered rom years o rainmdash983148983137983162983137983154983157983155 983078 983155983151983150983155
983144983151983149983141 983151983142 983156983144983141 983152983141983150983150983161 983138983141983148983156 Tese men were careul to open no more
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 613
14 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
than one store per town partly because who needs the competition
partly because they worried about attracting the wrong kind o atten-
tion Tey stocked everything What they did not stock they could
order Te most successul grew into great department stores S A Shorein Winchester Alabama ounded by Russian-born Solomon Shore
ather o Dinah E Lewis amp Son Dry Goods in Hendersonville North
Carolina ounded by Polish-born Edward Lewis Capitol Department
Store in Fayetteville North Carolina ounded by the Russian Stein
brothers Others having started by extending credit to customers
evolved into Americarsquos 1047297rst investment banks Lehman Brothers
ounded by Henry Lehman a Jewish immigrant rom Bavaria began
as a dry goods store in Montgomery Alabama in 1844 Lazard Fregraveresounded by three Jewish brothers rom France began as a wholesale
business in New Orleans in 1848 Te store owned by Zemurrayrsquos uncle
was probably o this variety having begun as a young man carrying
merchandise it grew into a neat grocery on Broad Street
Selma closed early By ten pm the bustling o the marketplace had
given way to the swamp stink and cicadas but there was always action
or those who knew where to look in the private clubs where mer-
chants played aro and stud in the juke joints that stayed open rom
can till canrsquot According to those who knew him Sam did not care or
crowds and parties He had a restless mind and a persistent need to get
outdoors He liked to be alone You might see him wandering beneath
the lamps o town a tough lean young man in an overcoat hands bur-
ied deep in his pockets
He stacked shelves and checked inventory in his unclersquos store Now
and then he dealt with the salesmen who turned up with sample casesHe stood in the alley amid the garbage cans and cats asking about
suppliers and costs Tere was money to be made but not here He in-
terrogated customers He was looking or different work and would try
anything i only or experience His early lie was a series o adven-
tures with odd job leading to odd job Much o the color that would
later entertain magazine writersmdashSamrsquos lie had the dimensions o a
airy talemdashwere accumulated in his 1047297rst ew years in Selma
He worked as a tin merchant Well thatrsquos how it would be describedin the press ldquoYoung Sam Z bartered iron or livestock chickens and
pigsrdquo According to newspaper and magazine accounts he was in act
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 713
Selma bull 15
employed by a struggling old-timer who was less tin merchant than
peddler the last o a vanishing breed the country cheapjack in a tat-
tered coat sharing a piece o chocolate with the boy Now and then he
might offer some wisdom Banks fail women leave but land lasts forever He combed trash piles on the edge o Selma searching or dis-
carded scraps o sheet metal the cast-off junk o the industrial age
which he piled on his cart and pushed rom arm to arm looking or
tradesmdashwire or a chicken coop in return or one o the razorbacks in
the pen Afer the particulars were agreed on Sam was told to get mov-
ing Catch and tie that animal boy It was Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst real job
racing through the slop with a rope in his hand ldquoIn those daysrdquo he
told a reporter rom Life ldquoI could outrun any pig in Dixierdquo Paid a dol-lar a week he kept the job just long enough to know he would rather be
the man who owned the hog than the man who collected the junk and
would rather be the man who discarded the sheet metal than the man
who owned the hog
A series o jobs ollowed tried on and thrown off like thrif-store
suits He was a housecleaner and a delivery boy He turned a lathe or a
carpenter By eighteen he had saved enough to send or his brothers
and sisters hal a dozen pale young Jews who turned up in Alabama in
the last years o the nineteenth century
But his real lie began only when he saw that 1047297rst banana He de-
vised a plan soon afer he would travel to Mobile where the ruit boats
arrived rom Central America purchase a supply o his own carry
them back to Selma and go into business
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Zemurray took his money and went south Wisteria bloomed along the
railroad tracks owns drifed by He could smell the ocean beore he
could see it He was like a kid on the rontier who a day afer the har-
vest olds his savings into a roll and goes to try his luck in town
Mobile was a seedy industrial port 1047297lled with all the amiliar types
the sharpie the 1047297nancier the scoundrel the chucklehead the sport
Sam was a bit o everything He could be shrewd but he could also be
naiumlve He was greedy or inormation He took a room in a seamenrsquos
hotel near the port Te waterront was crossed by train tracksmdashdozens
o lines converged here Boxcars crammed with coal ruit cotton and
cane stood on the sidings Te railroad conductors were the aristocrats
o the scene Tey drank coffee in the station house smug in their check-
ered caps Te docks were crowded with stevedores most o them
immigrants rom Sicily Te train sheds were crowded with peddlers
most o them Jewish immigrants rom Poland and Russia Tey boughtmerchandise off the decks o ships and sold it rom carts in the streets
o Mobile
One evening Sam stood on the whar watching a Boston Fruit
banana boat sail into the harbor Te Boston Fruit Company which
would become United Fruit dominated the trade with a 1047298eet that car-
ried bananas rom Jamaica to Boston Charleston New Orleans and
Mobile Zemurray would have seen one o the smaller ships that made
the trip to the Gul ports a cutter with sails and engine Te unnelsent up black smoke Te pier strained under the weight o unloaders
who appeared as i out o nowhere whenever a ship landed As soon as
2
Ripes
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 913
18 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
the boat was anchored these men swarmed across the deck ants on a
sugar pile working in organized teams
In the South in the days beore mechanical equipment bananas
were unloaded by hand the workers carrying the cargo a stem at atimemdashrom the hold where the shipment was packed in ice onto the
deck o the ship A banana stem is the ruit o an entire treemdasha hun-
dred pounds or more Each stem holds perhaps a hundred bunches
each bunch holds perhaps nine hands each hand holds perhaps 1047297feen
1047297ngersmdasha 1047297nger being a single banana It was backbreaking work and
dangerous not just or the shoulders and arms but also or the central
ner vous system As any banana cowboy would tell you banana plants
are prized nesting places or scorpions When the stems are cut downthe killers go along or the ride rom the banana plantation to the
jungle railroad to the whar to the ship across the Gul to Mobile or
New Orleans or Boston where they spring out stinging the 1047297rst steve-
dore they happen upon
Most workers on the banana docks were West Indians who arrived
in the southern ports on the ships that carried the cargo Early last
century newspaper reporters looking or local color ofen wrote about
these hired hands painting them in barbarous shades o minstrel
blue Tey described dark skin big lips grinning aces heavy haunches
their shirts as white as their eyes lifing and hauling working as one
man Tey pictured them in sunlight and gaslight moving like shad-
ows along the docks docile content occasionally breaking into hymns
and psalms and strange tribal music that chilled their white overseers
ldquoMost o them are Jamaican negroesrdquo Frederick Upham Adams wrote
in Conquest of the ropics ldquoblack as the ace o spades and care-ree asthe birds who sing in the adjacent park Fat negro lsquomammiesrsquo trudge in
with handcarts loaded with ood and sweetmeat delicacies dear to the
negro taste Powerul clusters o electric lights 1047298ash out in the vast
covered shed which protects the docks and the myriad lights o the
ship add their glow to the general effectrdquo
Sam would have watched closely as the workers ormed lines that
snaked rom the deck o the ship down a ramp and across the pier to
the waiting boxcars (He wanted to learn every detail o the trade)Each stem was passed rom man to man until it reached the open door
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Ripes bull 19
o the train where an agent rom the company examined it or bruises
reckles color I the stem passed muster it was loaded into the car
which was air cooled and straw 1047297lled When the car was ull the door
was swung shut and locked An empty car was rolled into its placeTis continued or hoursmdasha shif might run rom three pm until
midnight When a train was packed the switchman signaled and the
cargo was carried across the South
Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o
the yard where they were urther divided Some were designated as
turnings meaning they were on their way to being worthless At the
end o the day they were sold at a discount to store owners and ped-
dlers You could see them with their carts piled high trundling throughthe streets calling ldquoBananas bananas or sale A nickel a bunch Yes
we have bananas we have bananas or salerdquo
Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were
designated ldquoripesrdquo and heaped in a sad pile A ripe is a banana you have
lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy Tese ba-
nanas though still good to eat delicious even would never make it to
the market in time In less than a week they would begin to sofen and
stink As ar as the merchants were concerned they were trash When
de1047297ning a ripe Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard one reckle
turning two reckles ripe
Sam noticed everythingmdashthe care with which the bananas were
handled the way each boxcar was 1047297lled and rolled to a siding how
men rom the banana company college men moved through the
crowd barking ordersmdashbut paid special attention to the growing pile
o ripes Anything can cause a banana to ripen early I you squeeze agreen banana it will turn in days instead o weeks ditto i itrsquos nicked
dented or banged A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen
and those will cause still others to ripen until an entire boxcar is ru-
ined Beore rerigeration was perected as much as 15 percent o an
average cargo ended up in the ripe pile
Sam grew 1047297xated on ripes recognizing a product where others had
seen only trash It was the worldview o the immigrant understanding
how so-called garbage might be valued under a different name seeingnutrition where others saw only waste He was the son o a Russian
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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amp (() (+
-01
2134 5 0673
8193019
lt= gt(= ( amp (()
--7710-
amp C8=B KE
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 413
12 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
Zemurray taste that 1047297rst banana I like to imagine him peeling it eat-
ing the ruit in three bites then tossing the skin into the street the way
people did back then ossing it and saying ldquoWonderulrdquo In uture
years Zemurray always spoke o his product the way people speak othings they truly love as something antastical in part because itrsquos not
entirely necessary When he mentioned the nutritional value o ba-
nanas in interviews he added ldquoAnd o course itrsquos deliciousrdquo Putting us
at a urther remove rom Zemurray is the act that the kind o banana
he saw in Selma in 1893 the banana that made his ortune the variety
known as the Big Mike went extinct in the 1960s
Sam Zemurray was born in 1877 in the region o western Russia
once known as Bessarabia Itrsquos Moldavia today He grew up on a wheatarm in a 1047298at country ringed by hills His ather died young leaving
the amily beref without prospects Sam traveled to America with his
aunt in 1892 He was to establish himsel and send or the othersmdash
mother siblings He landed in New York then continued to Selma
Alabama where his uncle owned a store
He was ourteen or 1047297feen but you would guess him much older
Te immigrants o that era could not afford to be children Tey had to
struggle every minute o every day By sixteen he was as hardened as
the men in Walker Evansrsquos photos a tough operator a dead-end kid
coolly 1047297guring angles Wherersquos the play Whatrsquos in it or me His humor
was black his explanations ew He was driven by the same raw energy
that has always attracted the most ambitious to America then pushed
them to the head o the crowd Grasper climbermdashnasty ways o describ-
ing this kid who wants what you take or granted From his 1047297rst months
in America he was scheming looking or a way to get ahead You did notneed to be a Rockeeller to know the basics o the dream Start at the
bottom 1047297ght your way to the top
Over time Sam would develop a philosophy best expressed in a
handul o phrases Yoursquore there wersquore here Go see for yourself Donrsquot
trust the report
Tough immensely complicated he was in a undamental way
simple earthy He believed in staying close to the actionmdashin the 1047297elds
with the workers in the dives with the banana cowboys You drinkwith a man you learn what he knows (ldquoTere is no problem you canrsquot
solve i you understand your business rom A to Zrdquo he said later) In a
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Selma bull 13
amous exchange when challenged by a rival who claimed he could
not understand Zemurrayrsquos accent Zemurray said ldquoYoursquore 1047297red Can
you understand thatrdquo
Selma Alabama was the perect spot or a kid like Sam an incuba-tor a starter town picturesque yet aded grand but still small enough
to memorize A manuacturing center in the time o the Conederacy
it had since been allowed to dilapidate Tere was a main street a ruit
market a butcher shop a candy store a theater with plush seats a city
hall churches Tere were brick houses with curtains in the windows
and swings on the porchesmdashthe white side o town Tere were shot-
gun shacks blue and yellow and red ronted by weedy yardsmdashthe
Negro side o town Tere were taverns and houses o worship whereChristian gospel was mixed with Arican voodoo Tere were banks
savings and loans raternal orders Tere was a commercial district
where every store was 1047297lled with unduly optimistic businessmen
Tough the biography o Zemurrayrsquos uncle has been orgotten we
can take him as a stand-in or the generation o poor grandathers who
came 1047297rst who worked and worked and got nothing but a place o
honor in the amily photo in return Sometimes described as a grocery
sometimes as a general store his shop was precisely the sort that Jew-
ish immigrants had been establishing across the South or 1047297fy years
Such concerns were usually operated by men who came to America
because they were the youngest o many brothers without property or
plans Tese people went south because in the early days o the Amer-
ican republic it was not inhospitable to Hebrews Many began as ped-
dlers crossing the country with a mountain o merchandise strapped
to their backs You see them in ancient silver prints and daguerreo-types weathered men humping hal the world on their shoulders
pushing the other hal in a cartmdashbags o grain dinnerware tinware
lamps clothes canvas or tents chocolate anything an isolated armer
might want but could not 1047297nd in the sticks
When they had saved some money many o these men opened
stores which meant moving all that merchandise under a roo in a
town along their route Even now as you drive across the South you
will see their remnants baked into the soil like ossils an ancient ve-randa a ghost sign blistered rom years o rainmdash983148983137983162983137983154983157983155 983078 983155983151983150983155
983144983151983149983141 983151983142 983156983144983141 983152983141983150983150983161 983138983141983148983156 Tese men were careul to open no more
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 613
14 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
than one store per town partly because who needs the competition
partly because they worried about attracting the wrong kind o atten-
tion Tey stocked everything What they did not stock they could
order Te most successul grew into great department stores S A Shorein Winchester Alabama ounded by Russian-born Solomon Shore
ather o Dinah E Lewis amp Son Dry Goods in Hendersonville North
Carolina ounded by Polish-born Edward Lewis Capitol Department
Store in Fayetteville North Carolina ounded by the Russian Stein
brothers Others having started by extending credit to customers
evolved into Americarsquos 1047297rst investment banks Lehman Brothers
ounded by Henry Lehman a Jewish immigrant rom Bavaria began
as a dry goods store in Montgomery Alabama in 1844 Lazard Fregraveresounded by three Jewish brothers rom France began as a wholesale
business in New Orleans in 1848 Te store owned by Zemurrayrsquos uncle
was probably o this variety having begun as a young man carrying
merchandise it grew into a neat grocery on Broad Street
Selma closed early By ten pm the bustling o the marketplace had
given way to the swamp stink and cicadas but there was always action
or those who knew where to look in the private clubs where mer-
chants played aro and stud in the juke joints that stayed open rom
can till canrsquot According to those who knew him Sam did not care or
crowds and parties He had a restless mind and a persistent need to get
outdoors He liked to be alone You might see him wandering beneath
the lamps o town a tough lean young man in an overcoat hands bur-
ied deep in his pockets
He stacked shelves and checked inventory in his unclersquos store Now
and then he dealt with the salesmen who turned up with sample casesHe stood in the alley amid the garbage cans and cats asking about
suppliers and costs Tere was money to be made but not here He in-
terrogated customers He was looking or different work and would try
anything i only or experience His early lie was a series o adven-
tures with odd job leading to odd job Much o the color that would
later entertain magazine writersmdashSamrsquos lie had the dimensions o a
airy talemdashwere accumulated in his 1047297rst ew years in Selma
He worked as a tin merchant Well thatrsquos how it would be describedin the press ldquoYoung Sam Z bartered iron or livestock chickens and
pigsrdquo According to newspaper and magazine accounts he was in act
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 713
Selma bull 15
employed by a struggling old-timer who was less tin merchant than
peddler the last o a vanishing breed the country cheapjack in a tat-
tered coat sharing a piece o chocolate with the boy Now and then he
might offer some wisdom Banks fail women leave but land lasts forever He combed trash piles on the edge o Selma searching or dis-
carded scraps o sheet metal the cast-off junk o the industrial age
which he piled on his cart and pushed rom arm to arm looking or
tradesmdashwire or a chicken coop in return or one o the razorbacks in
the pen Afer the particulars were agreed on Sam was told to get mov-
ing Catch and tie that animal boy It was Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst real job
racing through the slop with a rope in his hand ldquoIn those daysrdquo he
told a reporter rom Life ldquoI could outrun any pig in Dixierdquo Paid a dol-lar a week he kept the job just long enough to know he would rather be
the man who owned the hog than the man who collected the junk and
would rather be the man who discarded the sheet metal than the man
who owned the hog
A series o jobs ollowed tried on and thrown off like thrif-store
suits He was a housecleaner and a delivery boy He turned a lathe or a
carpenter By eighteen he had saved enough to send or his brothers
and sisters hal a dozen pale young Jews who turned up in Alabama in
the last years o the nineteenth century
But his real lie began only when he saw that 1047297rst banana He de-
vised a plan soon afer he would travel to Mobile where the ruit boats
arrived rom Central America purchase a supply o his own carry
them back to Selma and go into business
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 813
Zemurray took his money and went south Wisteria bloomed along the
railroad tracks owns drifed by He could smell the ocean beore he
could see it He was like a kid on the rontier who a day afer the har-
vest olds his savings into a roll and goes to try his luck in town
Mobile was a seedy industrial port 1047297lled with all the amiliar types
the sharpie the 1047297nancier the scoundrel the chucklehead the sport
Sam was a bit o everything He could be shrewd but he could also be
naiumlve He was greedy or inormation He took a room in a seamenrsquos
hotel near the port Te waterront was crossed by train tracksmdashdozens
o lines converged here Boxcars crammed with coal ruit cotton and
cane stood on the sidings Te railroad conductors were the aristocrats
o the scene Tey drank coffee in the station house smug in their check-
ered caps Te docks were crowded with stevedores most o them
immigrants rom Sicily Te train sheds were crowded with peddlers
most o them Jewish immigrants rom Poland and Russia Tey boughtmerchandise off the decks o ships and sold it rom carts in the streets
o Mobile
One evening Sam stood on the whar watching a Boston Fruit
banana boat sail into the harbor Te Boston Fruit Company which
would become United Fruit dominated the trade with a 1047298eet that car-
ried bananas rom Jamaica to Boston Charleston New Orleans and
Mobile Zemurray would have seen one o the smaller ships that made
the trip to the Gul ports a cutter with sails and engine Te unnelsent up black smoke Te pier strained under the weight o unloaders
who appeared as i out o nowhere whenever a ship landed As soon as
2
Ripes
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 913
18 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
the boat was anchored these men swarmed across the deck ants on a
sugar pile working in organized teams
In the South in the days beore mechanical equipment bananas
were unloaded by hand the workers carrying the cargo a stem at atimemdashrom the hold where the shipment was packed in ice onto the
deck o the ship A banana stem is the ruit o an entire treemdasha hun-
dred pounds or more Each stem holds perhaps a hundred bunches
each bunch holds perhaps nine hands each hand holds perhaps 1047297feen
1047297ngersmdasha 1047297nger being a single banana It was backbreaking work and
dangerous not just or the shoulders and arms but also or the central
ner vous system As any banana cowboy would tell you banana plants
are prized nesting places or scorpions When the stems are cut downthe killers go along or the ride rom the banana plantation to the
jungle railroad to the whar to the ship across the Gul to Mobile or
New Orleans or Boston where they spring out stinging the 1047297rst steve-
dore they happen upon
Most workers on the banana docks were West Indians who arrived
in the southern ports on the ships that carried the cargo Early last
century newspaper reporters looking or local color ofen wrote about
these hired hands painting them in barbarous shades o minstrel
blue Tey described dark skin big lips grinning aces heavy haunches
their shirts as white as their eyes lifing and hauling working as one
man Tey pictured them in sunlight and gaslight moving like shad-
ows along the docks docile content occasionally breaking into hymns
and psalms and strange tribal music that chilled their white overseers
ldquoMost o them are Jamaican negroesrdquo Frederick Upham Adams wrote
in Conquest of the ropics ldquoblack as the ace o spades and care-ree asthe birds who sing in the adjacent park Fat negro lsquomammiesrsquo trudge in
with handcarts loaded with ood and sweetmeat delicacies dear to the
negro taste Powerul clusters o electric lights 1047298ash out in the vast
covered shed which protects the docks and the myriad lights o the
ship add their glow to the general effectrdquo
Sam would have watched closely as the workers ormed lines that
snaked rom the deck o the ship down a ramp and across the pier to
the waiting boxcars (He wanted to learn every detail o the trade)Each stem was passed rom man to man until it reached the open door
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1013
Ripes bull 19
o the train where an agent rom the company examined it or bruises
reckles color I the stem passed muster it was loaded into the car
which was air cooled and straw 1047297lled When the car was ull the door
was swung shut and locked An empty car was rolled into its placeTis continued or hoursmdasha shif might run rom three pm until
midnight When a train was packed the switchman signaled and the
cargo was carried across the South
Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o
the yard where they were urther divided Some were designated as
turnings meaning they were on their way to being worthless At the
end o the day they were sold at a discount to store owners and ped-
dlers You could see them with their carts piled high trundling throughthe streets calling ldquoBananas bananas or sale A nickel a bunch Yes
we have bananas we have bananas or salerdquo
Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were
designated ldquoripesrdquo and heaped in a sad pile A ripe is a banana you have
lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy Tese ba-
nanas though still good to eat delicious even would never make it to
the market in time In less than a week they would begin to sofen and
stink As ar as the merchants were concerned they were trash When
de1047297ning a ripe Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard one reckle
turning two reckles ripe
Sam noticed everythingmdashthe care with which the bananas were
handled the way each boxcar was 1047297lled and rolled to a siding how
men rom the banana company college men moved through the
crowd barking ordersmdashbut paid special attention to the growing pile
o ripes Anything can cause a banana to ripen early I you squeeze agreen banana it will turn in days instead o weeks ditto i itrsquos nicked
dented or banged A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen
and those will cause still others to ripen until an entire boxcar is ru-
ined Beore rerigeration was perected as much as 15 percent o an
average cargo ended up in the ripe pile
Sam grew 1047297xated on ripes recognizing a product where others had
seen only trash It was the worldview o the immigrant understanding
how so-called garbage might be valued under a different name seeingnutrition where others saw only waste He was the son o a Russian
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1113
20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1213
Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1313
amp (() (+
-01
2134 5 0673
8193019
lt= gt(= ( amp (()
--7710-
amp C8=B KE
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 513
Selma bull 13
amous exchange when challenged by a rival who claimed he could
not understand Zemurrayrsquos accent Zemurray said ldquoYoursquore 1047297red Can
you understand thatrdquo
Selma Alabama was the perect spot or a kid like Sam an incuba-tor a starter town picturesque yet aded grand but still small enough
to memorize A manuacturing center in the time o the Conederacy
it had since been allowed to dilapidate Tere was a main street a ruit
market a butcher shop a candy store a theater with plush seats a city
hall churches Tere were brick houses with curtains in the windows
and swings on the porchesmdashthe white side o town Tere were shot-
gun shacks blue and yellow and red ronted by weedy yardsmdashthe
Negro side o town Tere were taverns and houses o worship whereChristian gospel was mixed with Arican voodoo Tere were banks
savings and loans raternal orders Tere was a commercial district
where every store was 1047297lled with unduly optimistic businessmen
Tough the biography o Zemurrayrsquos uncle has been orgotten we
can take him as a stand-in or the generation o poor grandathers who
came 1047297rst who worked and worked and got nothing but a place o
honor in the amily photo in return Sometimes described as a grocery
sometimes as a general store his shop was precisely the sort that Jew-
ish immigrants had been establishing across the South or 1047297fy years
Such concerns were usually operated by men who came to America
because they were the youngest o many brothers without property or
plans Tese people went south because in the early days o the Amer-
ican republic it was not inhospitable to Hebrews Many began as ped-
dlers crossing the country with a mountain o merchandise strapped
to their backs You see them in ancient silver prints and daguerreo-types weathered men humping hal the world on their shoulders
pushing the other hal in a cartmdashbags o grain dinnerware tinware
lamps clothes canvas or tents chocolate anything an isolated armer
might want but could not 1047297nd in the sticks
When they had saved some money many o these men opened
stores which meant moving all that merchandise under a roo in a
town along their route Even now as you drive across the South you
will see their remnants baked into the soil like ossils an ancient ve-randa a ghost sign blistered rom years o rainmdash983148983137983162983137983154983157983155 983078 983155983151983150983155
983144983151983149983141 983151983142 983156983144983141 983152983141983150983150983161 983138983141983148983156 Tese men were careul to open no more
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 613
14 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
than one store per town partly because who needs the competition
partly because they worried about attracting the wrong kind o atten-
tion Tey stocked everything What they did not stock they could
order Te most successul grew into great department stores S A Shorein Winchester Alabama ounded by Russian-born Solomon Shore
ather o Dinah E Lewis amp Son Dry Goods in Hendersonville North
Carolina ounded by Polish-born Edward Lewis Capitol Department
Store in Fayetteville North Carolina ounded by the Russian Stein
brothers Others having started by extending credit to customers
evolved into Americarsquos 1047297rst investment banks Lehman Brothers
ounded by Henry Lehman a Jewish immigrant rom Bavaria began
as a dry goods store in Montgomery Alabama in 1844 Lazard Fregraveresounded by three Jewish brothers rom France began as a wholesale
business in New Orleans in 1848 Te store owned by Zemurrayrsquos uncle
was probably o this variety having begun as a young man carrying
merchandise it grew into a neat grocery on Broad Street
Selma closed early By ten pm the bustling o the marketplace had
given way to the swamp stink and cicadas but there was always action
or those who knew where to look in the private clubs where mer-
chants played aro and stud in the juke joints that stayed open rom
can till canrsquot According to those who knew him Sam did not care or
crowds and parties He had a restless mind and a persistent need to get
outdoors He liked to be alone You might see him wandering beneath
the lamps o town a tough lean young man in an overcoat hands bur-
ied deep in his pockets
He stacked shelves and checked inventory in his unclersquos store Now
and then he dealt with the salesmen who turned up with sample casesHe stood in the alley amid the garbage cans and cats asking about
suppliers and costs Tere was money to be made but not here He in-
terrogated customers He was looking or different work and would try
anything i only or experience His early lie was a series o adven-
tures with odd job leading to odd job Much o the color that would
later entertain magazine writersmdashSamrsquos lie had the dimensions o a
airy talemdashwere accumulated in his 1047297rst ew years in Selma
He worked as a tin merchant Well thatrsquos how it would be describedin the press ldquoYoung Sam Z bartered iron or livestock chickens and
pigsrdquo According to newspaper and magazine accounts he was in act
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 713
Selma bull 15
employed by a struggling old-timer who was less tin merchant than
peddler the last o a vanishing breed the country cheapjack in a tat-
tered coat sharing a piece o chocolate with the boy Now and then he
might offer some wisdom Banks fail women leave but land lasts forever He combed trash piles on the edge o Selma searching or dis-
carded scraps o sheet metal the cast-off junk o the industrial age
which he piled on his cart and pushed rom arm to arm looking or
tradesmdashwire or a chicken coop in return or one o the razorbacks in
the pen Afer the particulars were agreed on Sam was told to get mov-
ing Catch and tie that animal boy It was Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst real job
racing through the slop with a rope in his hand ldquoIn those daysrdquo he
told a reporter rom Life ldquoI could outrun any pig in Dixierdquo Paid a dol-lar a week he kept the job just long enough to know he would rather be
the man who owned the hog than the man who collected the junk and
would rather be the man who discarded the sheet metal than the man
who owned the hog
A series o jobs ollowed tried on and thrown off like thrif-store
suits He was a housecleaner and a delivery boy He turned a lathe or a
carpenter By eighteen he had saved enough to send or his brothers
and sisters hal a dozen pale young Jews who turned up in Alabama in
the last years o the nineteenth century
But his real lie began only when he saw that 1047297rst banana He de-
vised a plan soon afer he would travel to Mobile where the ruit boats
arrived rom Central America purchase a supply o his own carry
them back to Selma and go into business
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 813
Zemurray took his money and went south Wisteria bloomed along the
railroad tracks owns drifed by He could smell the ocean beore he
could see it He was like a kid on the rontier who a day afer the har-
vest olds his savings into a roll and goes to try his luck in town
Mobile was a seedy industrial port 1047297lled with all the amiliar types
the sharpie the 1047297nancier the scoundrel the chucklehead the sport
Sam was a bit o everything He could be shrewd but he could also be
naiumlve He was greedy or inormation He took a room in a seamenrsquos
hotel near the port Te waterront was crossed by train tracksmdashdozens
o lines converged here Boxcars crammed with coal ruit cotton and
cane stood on the sidings Te railroad conductors were the aristocrats
o the scene Tey drank coffee in the station house smug in their check-
ered caps Te docks were crowded with stevedores most o them
immigrants rom Sicily Te train sheds were crowded with peddlers
most o them Jewish immigrants rom Poland and Russia Tey boughtmerchandise off the decks o ships and sold it rom carts in the streets
o Mobile
One evening Sam stood on the whar watching a Boston Fruit
banana boat sail into the harbor Te Boston Fruit Company which
would become United Fruit dominated the trade with a 1047298eet that car-
ried bananas rom Jamaica to Boston Charleston New Orleans and
Mobile Zemurray would have seen one o the smaller ships that made
the trip to the Gul ports a cutter with sails and engine Te unnelsent up black smoke Te pier strained under the weight o unloaders
who appeared as i out o nowhere whenever a ship landed As soon as
2
Ripes
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 913
18 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
the boat was anchored these men swarmed across the deck ants on a
sugar pile working in organized teams
In the South in the days beore mechanical equipment bananas
were unloaded by hand the workers carrying the cargo a stem at atimemdashrom the hold where the shipment was packed in ice onto the
deck o the ship A banana stem is the ruit o an entire treemdasha hun-
dred pounds or more Each stem holds perhaps a hundred bunches
each bunch holds perhaps nine hands each hand holds perhaps 1047297feen
1047297ngersmdasha 1047297nger being a single banana It was backbreaking work and
dangerous not just or the shoulders and arms but also or the central
ner vous system As any banana cowboy would tell you banana plants
are prized nesting places or scorpions When the stems are cut downthe killers go along or the ride rom the banana plantation to the
jungle railroad to the whar to the ship across the Gul to Mobile or
New Orleans or Boston where they spring out stinging the 1047297rst steve-
dore they happen upon
Most workers on the banana docks were West Indians who arrived
in the southern ports on the ships that carried the cargo Early last
century newspaper reporters looking or local color ofen wrote about
these hired hands painting them in barbarous shades o minstrel
blue Tey described dark skin big lips grinning aces heavy haunches
their shirts as white as their eyes lifing and hauling working as one
man Tey pictured them in sunlight and gaslight moving like shad-
ows along the docks docile content occasionally breaking into hymns
and psalms and strange tribal music that chilled their white overseers
ldquoMost o them are Jamaican negroesrdquo Frederick Upham Adams wrote
in Conquest of the ropics ldquoblack as the ace o spades and care-ree asthe birds who sing in the adjacent park Fat negro lsquomammiesrsquo trudge in
with handcarts loaded with ood and sweetmeat delicacies dear to the
negro taste Powerul clusters o electric lights 1047298ash out in the vast
covered shed which protects the docks and the myriad lights o the
ship add their glow to the general effectrdquo
Sam would have watched closely as the workers ormed lines that
snaked rom the deck o the ship down a ramp and across the pier to
the waiting boxcars (He wanted to learn every detail o the trade)Each stem was passed rom man to man until it reached the open door
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1013
Ripes bull 19
o the train where an agent rom the company examined it or bruises
reckles color I the stem passed muster it was loaded into the car
which was air cooled and straw 1047297lled When the car was ull the door
was swung shut and locked An empty car was rolled into its placeTis continued or hoursmdasha shif might run rom three pm until
midnight When a train was packed the switchman signaled and the
cargo was carried across the South
Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o
the yard where they were urther divided Some were designated as
turnings meaning they were on their way to being worthless At the
end o the day they were sold at a discount to store owners and ped-
dlers You could see them with their carts piled high trundling throughthe streets calling ldquoBananas bananas or sale A nickel a bunch Yes
we have bananas we have bananas or salerdquo
Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were
designated ldquoripesrdquo and heaped in a sad pile A ripe is a banana you have
lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy Tese ba-
nanas though still good to eat delicious even would never make it to
the market in time In less than a week they would begin to sofen and
stink As ar as the merchants were concerned they were trash When
de1047297ning a ripe Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard one reckle
turning two reckles ripe
Sam noticed everythingmdashthe care with which the bananas were
handled the way each boxcar was 1047297lled and rolled to a siding how
men rom the banana company college men moved through the
crowd barking ordersmdashbut paid special attention to the growing pile
o ripes Anything can cause a banana to ripen early I you squeeze agreen banana it will turn in days instead o weeks ditto i itrsquos nicked
dented or banged A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen
and those will cause still others to ripen until an entire boxcar is ru-
ined Beore rerigeration was perected as much as 15 percent o an
average cargo ended up in the ripe pile
Sam grew 1047297xated on ripes recognizing a product where others had
seen only trash It was the worldview o the immigrant understanding
how so-called garbage might be valued under a different name seeingnutrition where others saw only waste He was the son o a Russian
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1113
20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1213
Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1313
amp (() (+
-01
2134 5 0673
8193019
lt= gt(= ( amp (()
--7710-
amp C8=B KE
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 613
14 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
than one store per town partly because who needs the competition
partly because they worried about attracting the wrong kind o atten-
tion Tey stocked everything What they did not stock they could
order Te most successul grew into great department stores S A Shorein Winchester Alabama ounded by Russian-born Solomon Shore
ather o Dinah E Lewis amp Son Dry Goods in Hendersonville North
Carolina ounded by Polish-born Edward Lewis Capitol Department
Store in Fayetteville North Carolina ounded by the Russian Stein
brothers Others having started by extending credit to customers
evolved into Americarsquos 1047297rst investment banks Lehman Brothers
ounded by Henry Lehman a Jewish immigrant rom Bavaria began
as a dry goods store in Montgomery Alabama in 1844 Lazard Fregraveresounded by three Jewish brothers rom France began as a wholesale
business in New Orleans in 1848 Te store owned by Zemurrayrsquos uncle
was probably o this variety having begun as a young man carrying
merchandise it grew into a neat grocery on Broad Street
Selma closed early By ten pm the bustling o the marketplace had
given way to the swamp stink and cicadas but there was always action
or those who knew where to look in the private clubs where mer-
chants played aro and stud in the juke joints that stayed open rom
can till canrsquot According to those who knew him Sam did not care or
crowds and parties He had a restless mind and a persistent need to get
outdoors He liked to be alone You might see him wandering beneath
the lamps o town a tough lean young man in an overcoat hands bur-
ied deep in his pockets
He stacked shelves and checked inventory in his unclersquos store Now
and then he dealt with the salesmen who turned up with sample casesHe stood in the alley amid the garbage cans and cats asking about
suppliers and costs Tere was money to be made but not here He in-
terrogated customers He was looking or different work and would try
anything i only or experience His early lie was a series o adven-
tures with odd job leading to odd job Much o the color that would
later entertain magazine writersmdashSamrsquos lie had the dimensions o a
airy talemdashwere accumulated in his 1047297rst ew years in Selma
He worked as a tin merchant Well thatrsquos how it would be describedin the press ldquoYoung Sam Z bartered iron or livestock chickens and
pigsrdquo According to newspaper and magazine accounts he was in act
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 713
Selma bull 15
employed by a struggling old-timer who was less tin merchant than
peddler the last o a vanishing breed the country cheapjack in a tat-
tered coat sharing a piece o chocolate with the boy Now and then he
might offer some wisdom Banks fail women leave but land lasts forever He combed trash piles on the edge o Selma searching or dis-
carded scraps o sheet metal the cast-off junk o the industrial age
which he piled on his cart and pushed rom arm to arm looking or
tradesmdashwire or a chicken coop in return or one o the razorbacks in
the pen Afer the particulars were agreed on Sam was told to get mov-
ing Catch and tie that animal boy It was Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst real job
racing through the slop with a rope in his hand ldquoIn those daysrdquo he
told a reporter rom Life ldquoI could outrun any pig in Dixierdquo Paid a dol-lar a week he kept the job just long enough to know he would rather be
the man who owned the hog than the man who collected the junk and
would rather be the man who discarded the sheet metal than the man
who owned the hog
A series o jobs ollowed tried on and thrown off like thrif-store
suits He was a housecleaner and a delivery boy He turned a lathe or a
carpenter By eighteen he had saved enough to send or his brothers
and sisters hal a dozen pale young Jews who turned up in Alabama in
the last years o the nineteenth century
But his real lie began only when he saw that 1047297rst banana He de-
vised a plan soon afer he would travel to Mobile where the ruit boats
arrived rom Central America purchase a supply o his own carry
them back to Selma and go into business
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 813
Zemurray took his money and went south Wisteria bloomed along the
railroad tracks owns drifed by He could smell the ocean beore he
could see it He was like a kid on the rontier who a day afer the har-
vest olds his savings into a roll and goes to try his luck in town
Mobile was a seedy industrial port 1047297lled with all the amiliar types
the sharpie the 1047297nancier the scoundrel the chucklehead the sport
Sam was a bit o everything He could be shrewd but he could also be
naiumlve He was greedy or inormation He took a room in a seamenrsquos
hotel near the port Te waterront was crossed by train tracksmdashdozens
o lines converged here Boxcars crammed with coal ruit cotton and
cane stood on the sidings Te railroad conductors were the aristocrats
o the scene Tey drank coffee in the station house smug in their check-
ered caps Te docks were crowded with stevedores most o them
immigrants rom Sicily Te train sheds were crowded with peddlers
most o them Jewish immigrants rom Poland and Russia Tey boughtmerchandise off the decks o ships and sold it rom carts in the streets
o Mobile
One evening Sam stood on the whar watching a Boston Fruit
banana boat sail into the harbor Te Boston Fruit Company which
would become United Fruit dominated the trade with a 1047298eet that car-
ried bananas rom Jamaica to Boston Charleston New Orleans and
Mobile Zemurray would have seen one o the smaller ships that made
the trip to the Gul ports a cutter with sails and engine Te unnelsent up black smoke Te pier strained under the weight o unloaders
who appeared as i out o nowhere whenever a ship landed As soon as
2
Ripes
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 913
18 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
the boat was anchored these men swarmed across the deck ants on a
sugar pile working in organized teams
In the South in the days beore mechanical equipment bananas
were unloaded by hand the workers carrying the cargo a stem at atimemdashrom the hold where the shipment was packed in ice onto the
deck o the ship A banana stem is the ruit o an entire treemdasha hun-
dred pounds or more Each stem holds perhaps a hundred bunches
each bunch holds perhaps nine hands each hand holds perhaps 1047297feen
1047297ngersmdasha 1047297nger being a single banana It was backbreaking work and
dangerous not just or the shoulders and arms but also or the central
ner vous system As any banana cowboy would tell you banana plants
are prized nesting places or scorpions When the stems are cut downthe killers go along or the ride rom the banana plantation to the
jungle railroad to the whar to the ship across the Gul to Mobile or
New Orleans or Boston where they spring out stinging the 1047297rst steve-
dore they happen upon
Most workers on the banana docks were West Indians who arrived
in the southern ports on the ships that carried the cargo Early last
century newspaper reporters looking or local color ofen wrote about
these hired hands painting them in barbarous shades o minstrel
blue Tey described dark skin big lips grinning aces heavy haunches
their shirts as white as their eyes lifing and hauling working as one
man Tey pictured them in sunlight and gaslight moving like shad-
ows along the docks docile content occasionally breaking into hymns
and psalms and strange tribal music that chilled their white overseers
ldquoMost o them are Jamaican negroesrdquo Frederick Upham Adams wrote
in Conquest of the ropics ldquoblack as the ace o spades and care-ree asthe birds who sing in the adjacent park Fat negro lsquomammiesrsquo trudge in
with handcarts loaded with ood and sweetmeat delicacies dear to the
negro taste Powerul clusters o electric lights 1047298ash out in the vast
covered shed which protects the docks and the myriad lights o the
ship add their glow to the general effectrdquo
Sam would have watched closely as the workers ormed lines that
snaked rom the deck o the ship down a ramp and across the pier to
the waiting boxcars (He wanted to learn every detail o the trade)Each stem was passed rom man to man until it reached the open door
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1013
Ripes bull 19
o the train where an agent rom the company examined it or bruises
reckles color I the stem passed muster it was loaded into the car
which was air cooled and straw 1047297lled When the car was ull the door
was swung shut and locked An empty car was rolled into its placeTis continued or hoursmdasha shif might run rom three pm until
midnight When a train was packed the switchman signaled and the
cargo was carried across the South
Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o
the yard where they were urther divided Some were designated as
turnings meaning they were on their way to being worthless At the
end o the day they were sold at a discount to store owners and ped-
dlers You could see them with their carts piled high trundling throughthe streets calling ldquoBananas bananas or sale A nickel a bunch Yes
we have bananas we have bananas or salerdquo
Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were
designated ldquoripesrdquo and heaped in a sad pile A ripe is a banana you have
lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy Tese ba-
nanas though still good to eat delicious even would never make it to
the market in time In less than a week they would begin to sofen and
stink As ar as the merchants were concerned they were trash When
de1047297ning a ripe Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard one reckle
turning two reckles ripe
Sam noticed everythingmdashthe care with which the bananas were
handled the way each boxcar was 1047297lled and rolled to a siding how
men rom the banana company college men moved through the
crowd barking ordersmdashbut paid special attention to the growing pile
o ripes Anything can cause a banana to ripen early I you squeeze agreen banana it will turn in days instead o weeks ditto i itrsquos nicked
dented or banged A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen
and those will cause still others to ripen until an entire boxcar is ru-
ined Beore rerigeration was perected as much as 15 percent o an
average cargo ended up in the ripe pile
Sam grew 1047297xated on ripes recognizing a product where others had
seen only trash It was the worldview o the immigrant understanding
how so-called garbage might be valued under a different name seeingnutrition where others saw only waste He was the son o a Russian
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1113
20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1213
Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1313
amp (() (+
-01
2134 5 0673
8193019
lt= gt(= ( amp (()
--7710-
amp C8=B KE
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 713
Selma bull 15
employed by a struggling old-timer who was less tin merchant than
peddler the last o a vanishing breed the country cheapjack in a tat-
tered coat sharing a piece o chocolate with the boy Now and then he
might offer some wisdom Banks fail women leave but land lasts forever He combed trash piles on the edge o Selma searching or dis-
carded scraps o sheet metal the cast-off junk o the industrial age
which he piled on his cart and pushed rom arm to arm looking or
tradesmdashwire or a chicken coop in return or one o the razorbacks in
the pen Afer the particulars were agreed on Sam was told to get mov-
ing Catch and tie that animal boy It was Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst real job
racing through the slop with a rope in his hand ldquoIn those daysrdquo he
told a reporter rom Life ldquoI could outrun any pig in Dixierdquo Paid a dol-lar a week he kept the job just long enough to know he would rather be
the man who owned the hog than the man who collected the junk and
would rather be the man who discarded the sheet metal than the man
who owned the hog
A series o jobs ollowed tried on and thrown off like thrif-store
suits He was a housecleaner and a delivery boy He turned a lathe or a
carpenter By eighteen he had saved enough to send or his brothers
and sisters hal a dozen pale young Jews who turned up in Alabama in
the last years o the nineteenth century
But his real lie began only when he saw that 1047297rst banana He de-
vised a plan soon afer he would travel to Mobile where the ruit boats
arrived rom Central America purchase a supply o his own carry
them back to Selma and go into business
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 813
Zemurray took his money and went south Wisteria bloomed along the
railroad tracks owns drifed by He could smell the ocean beore he
could see it He was like a kid on the rontier who a day afer the har-
vest olds his savings into a roll and goes to try his luck in town
Mobile was a seedy industrial port 1047297lled with all the amiliar types
the sharpie the 1047297nancier the scoundrel the chucklehead the sport
Sam was a bit o everything He could be shrewd but he could also be
naiumlve He was greedy or inormation He took a room in a seamenrsquos
hotel near the port Te waterront was crossed by train tracksmdashdozens
o lines converged here Boxcars crammed with coal ruit cotton and
cane stood on the sidings Te railroad conductors were the aristocrats
o the scene Tey drank coffee in the station house smug in their check-
ered caps Te docks were crowded with stevedores most o them
immigrants rom Sicily Te train sheds were crowded with peddlers
most o them Jewish immigrants rom Poland and Russia Tey boughtmerchandise off the decks o ships and sold it rom carts in the streets
o Mobile
One evening Sam stood on the whar watching a Boston Fruit
banana boat sail into the harbor Te Boston Fruit Company which
would become United Fruit dominated the trade with a 1047298eet that car-
ried bananas rom Jamaica to Boston Charleston New Orleans and
Mobile Zemurray would have seen one o the smaller ships that made
the trip to the Gul ports a cutter with sails and engine Te unnelsent up black smoke Te pier strained under the weight o unloaders
who appeared as i out o nowhere whenever a ship landed As soon as
2
Ripes
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 913
18 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
the boat was anchored these men swarmed across the deck ants on a
sugar pile working in organized teams
In the South in the days beore mechanical equipment bananas
were unloaded by hand the workers carrying the cargo a stem at atimemdashrom the hold where the shipment was packed in ice onto the
deck o the ship A banana stem is the ruit o an entire treemdasha hun-
dred pounds or more Each stem holds perhaps a hundred bunches
each bunch holds perhaps nine hands each hand holds perhaps 1047297feen
1047297ngersmdasha 1047297nger being a single banana It was backbreaking work and
dangerous not just or the shoulders and arms but also or the central
ner vous system As any banana cowboy would tell you banana plants
are prized nesting places or scorpions When the stems are cut downthe killers go along or the ride rom the banana plantation to the
jungle railroad to the whar to the ship across the Gul to Mobile or
New Orleans or Boston where they spring out stinging the 1047297rst steve-
dore they happen upon
Most workers on the banana docks were West Indians who arrived
in the southern ports on the ships that carried the cargo Early last
century newspaper reporters looking or local color ofen wrote about
these hired hands painting them in barbarous shades o minstrel
blue Tey described dark skin big lips grinning aces heavy haunches
their shirts as white as their eyes lifing and hauling working as one
man Tey pictured them in sunlight and gaslight moving like shad-
ows along the docks docile content occasionally breaking into hymns
and psalms and strange tribal music that chilled their white overseers
ldquoMost o them are Jamaican negroesrdquo Frederick Upham Adams wrote
in Conquest of the ropics ldquoblack as the ace o spades and care-ree asthe birds who sing in the adjacent park Fat negro lsquomammiesrsquo trudge in
with handcarts loaded with ood and sweetmeat delicacies dear to the
negro taste Powerul clusters o electric lights 1047298ash out in the vast
covered shed which protects the docks and the myriad lights o the
ship add their glow to the general effectrdquo
Sam would have watched closely as the workers ormed lines that
snaked rom the deck o the ship down a ramp and across the pier to
the waiting boxcars (He wanted to learn every detail o the trade)Each stem was passed rom man to man until it reached the open door
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1013
Ripes bull 19
o the train where an agent rom the company examined it or bruises
reckles color I the stem passed muster it was loaded into the car
which was air cooled and straw 1047297lled When the car was ull the door
was swung shut and locked An empty car was rolled into its placeTis continued or hoursmdasha shif might run rom three pm until
midnight When a train was packed the switchman signaled and the
cargo was carried across the South
Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o
the yard where they were urther divided Some were designated as
turnings meaning they were on their way to being worthless At the
end o the day they were sold at a discount to store owners and ped-
dlers You could see them with their carts piled high trundling throughthe streets calling ldquoBananas bananas or sale A nickel a bunch Yes
we have bananas we have bananas or salerdquo
Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were
designated ldquoripesrdquo and heaped in a sad pile A ripe is a banana you have
lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy Tese ba-
nanas though still good to eat delicious even would never make it to
the market in time In less than a week they would begin to sofen and
stink As ar as the merchants were concerned they were trash When
de1047297ning a ripe Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard one reckle
turning two reckles ripe
Sam noticed everythingmdashthe care with which the bananas were
handled the way each boxcar was 1047297lled and rolled to a siding how
men rom the banana company college men moved through the
crowd barking ordersmdashbut paid special attention to the growing pile
o ripes Anything can cause a banana to ripen early I you squeeze agreen banana it will turn in days instead o weeks ditto i itrsquos nicked
dented or banged A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen
and those will cause still others to ripen until an entire boxcar is ru-
ined Beore rerigeration was perected as much as 15 percent o an
average cargo ended up in the ripe pile
Sam grew 1047297xated on ripes recognizing a product where others had
seen only trash It was the worldview o the immigrant understanding
how so-called garbage might be valued under a different name seeingnutrition where others saw only waste He was the son o a Russian
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1113
20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1213
Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1313
amp (() (+
-01
2134 5 0673
8193019
lt= gt(= ( amp (()
--7710-
amp C8=B KE
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 813
Zemurray took his money and went south Wisteria bloomed along the
railroad tracks owns drifed by He could smell the ocean beore he
could see it He was like a kid on the rontier who a day afer the har-
vest olds his savings into a roll and goes to try his luck in town
Mobile was a seedy industrial port 1047297lled with all the amiliar types
the sharpie the 1047297nancier the scoundrel the chucklehead the sport
Sam was a bit o everything He could be shrewd but he could also be
naiumlve He was greedy or inormation He took a room in a seamenrsquos
hotel near the port Te waterront was crossed by train tracksmdashdozens
o lines converged here Boxcars crammed with coal ruit cotton and
cane stood on the sidings Te railroad conductors were the aristocrats
o the scene Tey drank coffee in the station house smug in their check-
ered caps Te docks were crowded with stevedores most o them
immigrants rom Sicily Te train sheds were crowded with peddlers
most o them Jewish immigrants rom Poland and Russia Tey boughtmerchandise off the decks o ships and sold it rom carts in the streets
o Mobile
One evening Sam stood on the whar watching a Boston Fruit
banana boat sail into the harbor Te Boston Fruit Company which
would become United Fruit dominated the trade with a 1047298eet that car-
ried bananas rom Jamaica to Boston Charleston New Orleans and
Mobile Zemurray would have seen one o the smaller ships that made
the trip to the Gul ports a cutter with sails and engine Te unnelsent up black smoke Te pier strained under the weight o unloaders
who appeared as i out o nowhere whenever a ship landed As soon as
2
Ripes
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 913
18 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
the boat was anchored these men swarmed across the deck ants on a
sugar pile working in organized teams
In the South in the days beore mechanical equipment bananas
were unloaded by hand the workers carrying the cargo a stem at atimemdashrom the hold where the shipment was packed in ice onto the
deck o the ship A banana stem is the ruit o an entire treemdasha hun-
dred pounds or more Each stem holds perhaps a hundred bunches
each bunch holds perhaps nine hands each hand holds perhaps 1047297feen
1047297ngersmdasha 1047297nger being a single banana It was backbreaking work and
dangerous not just or the shoulders and arms but also or the central
ner vous system As any banana cowboy would tell you banana plants
are prized nesting places or scorpions When the stems are cut downthe killers go along or the ride rom the banana plantation to the
jungle railroad to the whar to the ship across the Gul to Mobile or
New Orleans or Boston where they spring out stinging the 1047297rst steve-
dore they happen upon
Most workers on the banana docks were West Indians who arrived
in the southern ports on the ships that carried the cargo Early last
century newspaper reporters looking or local color ofen wrote about
these hired hands painting them in barbarous shades o minstrel
blue Tey described dark skin big lips grinning aces heavy haunches
their shirts as white as their eyes lifing and hauling working as one
man Tey pictured them in sunlight and gaslight moving like shad-
ows along the docks docile content occasionally breaking into hymns
and psalms and strange tribal music that chilled their white overseers
ldquoMost o them are Jamaican negroesrdquo Frederick Upham Adams wrote
in Conquest of the ropics ldquoblack as the ace o spades and care-ree asthe birds who sing in the adjacent park Fat negro lsquomammiesrsquo trudge in
with handcarts loaded with ood and sweetmeat delicacies dear to the
negro taste Powerul clusters o electric lights 1047298ash out in the vast
covered shed which protects the docks and the myriad lights o the
ship add their glow to the general effectrdquo
Sam would have watched closely as the workers ormed lines that
snaked rom the deck o the ship down a ramp and across the pier to
the waiting boxcars (He wanted to learn every detail o the trade)Each stem was passed rom man to man until it reached the open door
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1013
Ripes bull 19
o the train where an agent rom the company examined it or bruises
reckles color I the stem passed muster it was loaded into the car
which was air cooled and straw 1047297lled When the car was ull the door
was swung shut and locked An empty car was rolled into its placeTis continued or hoursmdasha shif might run rom three pm until
midnight When a train was packed the switchman signaled and the
cargo was carried across the South
Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o
the yard where they were urther divided Some were designated as
turnings meaning they were on their way to being worthless At the
end o the day they were sold at a discount to store owners and ped-
dlers You could see them with their carts piled high trundling throughthe streets calling ldquoBananas bananas or sale A nickel a bunch Yes
we have bananas we have bananas or salerdquo
Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were
designated ldquoripesrdquo and heaped in a sad pile A ripe is a banana you have
lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy Tese ba-
nanas though still good to eat delicious even would never make it to
the market in time In less than a week they would begin to sofen and
stink As ar as the merchants were concerned they were trash When
de1047297ning a ripe Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard one reckle
turning two reckles ripe
Sam noticed everythingmdashthe care with which the bananas were
handled the way each boxcar was 1047297lled and rolled to a siding how
men rom the banana company college men moved through the
crowd barking ordersmdashbut paid special attention to the growing pile
o ripes Anything can cause a banana to ripen early I you squeeze agreen banana it will turn in days instead o weeks ditto i itrsquos nicked
dented or banged A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen
and those will cause still others to ripen until an entire boxcar is ru-
ined Beore rerigeration was perected as much as 15 percent o an
average cargo ended up in the ripe pile
Sam grew 1047297xated on ripes recognizing a product where others had
seen only trash It was the worldview o the immigrant understanding
how so-called garbage might be valued under a different name seeingnutrition where others saw only waste He was the son o a Russian
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1113
20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1213
Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1313
amp (() (+
-01
2134 5 0673
8193019
lt= gt(= ( amp (()
--7710-
amp C8=B KE
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 913
18 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
the boat was anchored these men swarmed across the deck ants on a
sugar pile working in organized teams
In the South in the days beore mechanical equipment bananas
were unloaded by hand the workers carrying the cargo a stem at atimemdashrom the hold where the shipment was packed in ice onto the
deck o the ship A banana stem is the ruit o an entire treemdasha hun-
dred pounds or more Each stem holds perhaps a hundred bunches
each bunch holds perhaps nine hands each hand holds perhaps 1047297feen
1047297ngersmdasha 1047297nger being a single banana It was backbreaking work and
dangerous not just or the shoulders and arms but also or the central
ner vous system As any banana cowboy would tell you banana plants
are prized nesting places or scorpions When the stems are cut downthe killers go along or the ride rom the banana plantation to the
jungle railroad to the whar to the ship across the Gul to Mobile or
New Orleans or Boston where they spring out stinging the 1047297rst steve-
dore they happen upon
Most workers on the banana docks were West Indians who arrived
in the southern ports on the ships that carried the cargo Early last
century newspaper reporters looking or local color ofen wrote about
these hired hands painting them in barbarous shades o minstrel
blue Tey described dark skin big lips grinning aces heavy haunches
their shirts as white as their eyes lifing and hauling working as one
man Tey pictured them in sunlight and gaslight moving like shad-
ows along the docks docile content occasionally breaking into hymns
and psalms and strange tribal music that chilled their white overseers
ldquoMost o them are Jamaican negroesrdquo Frederick Upham Adams wrote
in Conquest of the ropics ldquoblack as the ace o spades and care-ree asthe birds who sing in the adjacent park Fat negro lsquomammiesrsquo trudge in
with handcarts loaded with ood and sweetmeat delicacies dear to the
negro taste Powerul clusters o electric lights 1047298ash out in the vast
covered shed which protects the docks and the myriad lights o the
ship add their glow to the general effectrdquo
Sam would have watched closely as the workers ormed lines that
snaked rom the deck o the ship down a ramp and across the pier to
the waiting boxcars (He wanted to learn every detail o the trade)Each stem was passed rom man to man until it reached the open door
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1013
Ripes bull 19
o the train where an agent rom the company examined it or bruises
reckles color I the stem passed muster it was loaded into the car
which was air cooled and straw 1047297lled When the car was ull the door
was swung shut and locked An empty car was rolled into its placeTis continued or hoursmdasha shif might run rom three pm until
midnight When a train was packed the switchman signaled and the
cargo was carried across the South
Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o
the yard where they were urther divided Some were designated as
turnings meaning they were on their way to being worthless At the
end o the day they were sold at a discount to store owners and ped-
dlers You could see them with their carts piled high trundling throughthe streets calling ldquoBananas bananas or sale A nickel a bunch Yes
we have bananas we have bananas or salerdquo
Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were
designated ldquoripesrdquo and heaped in a sad pile A ripe is a banana you have
lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy Tese ba-
nanas though still good to eat delicious even would never make it to
the market in time In less than a week they would begin to sofen and
stink As ar as the merchants were concerned they were trash When
de1047297ning a ripe Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard one reckle
turning two reckles ripe
Sam noticed everythingmdashthe care with which the bananas were
handled the way each boxcar was 1047297lled and rolled to a siding how
men rom the banana company college men moved through the
crowd barking ordersmdashbut paid special attention to the growing pile
o ripes Anything can cause a banana to ripen early I you squeeze agreen banana it will turn in days instead o weeks ditto i itrsquos nicked
dented or banged A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen
and those will cause still others to ripen until an entire boxcar is ru-
ined Beore rerigeration was perected as much as 15 percent o an
average cargo ended up in the ripe pile
Sam grew 1047297xated on ripes recognizing a product where others had
seen only trash It was the worldview o the immigrant understanding
how so-called garbage might be valued under a different name seeingnutrition where others saw only waste He was the son o a Russian
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1113
20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1213
Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1313
amp (() (+
-01
2134 5 0673
8193019
lt= gt(= ( amp (()
--7710-
amp C8=B KE
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1013
Ripes bull 19
o the train where an agent rom the company examined it or bruises
reckles color I the stem passed muster it was loaded into the car
which was air cooled and straw 1047297lled When the car was ull the door
was swung shut and locked An empty car was rolled into its placeTis continued or hoursmdasha shif might run rom three pm until
midnight When a train was packed the switchman signaled and the
cargo was carried across the South
Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o
the yard where they were urther divided Some were designated as
turnings meaning they were on their way to being worthless At the
end o the day they were sold at a discount to store owners and ped-
dlers You could see them with their carts piled high trundling throughthe streets calling ldquoBananas bananas or sale A nickel a bunch Yes
we have bananas we have bananas or salerdquo
Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were
designated ldquoripesrdquo and heaped in a sad pile A ripe is a banana you have
lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy Tese ba-
nanas though still good to eat delicious even would never make it to
the market in time In less than a week they would begin to sofen and
stink As ar as the merchants were concerned they were trash When
de1047297ning a ripe Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard one reckle
turning two reckles ripe
Sam noticed everythingmdashthe care with which the bananas were
handled the way each boxcar was 1047297lled and rolled to a siding how
men rom the banana company college men moved through the
crowd barking ordersmdashbut paid special attention to the growing pile
o ripes Anything can cause a banana to ripen early I you squeeze agreen banana it will turn in days instead o weeks ditto i itrsquos nicked
dented or banged A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen
and those will cause still others to ripen until an entire boxcar is ru-
ined Beore rerigeration was perected as much as 15 percent o an
average cargo ended up in the ripe pile
Sam grew 1047297xated on ripes recognizing a product where others had
seen only trash It was the worldview o the immigrant understanding
how so-called garbage might be valued under a different name seeingnutrition where others saw only waste He was the son o a Russian
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1113
20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1213
Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1313
amp (() (+
-01
2134 5 0673
8193019
lt= gt(= ( amp (()
--7710-
amp C8=B KE
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1113
20 bull The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a
reckled banana seem precious
Afer the ship had been unloaded afer the trains had carried off
the green bananas afer the merchants and peddlers had taken awaythe turnings Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company
agent Tey spoke as the sun went down the man with the Ivy League
elocution and the kid with the Russian accent who rolled his r rsquos and
spit his vowels Zemurray had $150 Tat was his stake He 1047297gured it
would go urther i it was spent on ripes He was no ool He knew what
this meantmdashthat he would have to move ast that he was entering a
race with the clock Tree days 1047297ve at the most Afer that he would be
lef with a pile o glue But he believed he could make it As ar as hewas concerned ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit
and similar 1047297rms were too slow-ooted to cover ground It was a calcu-
lation based on arrogance I can be ast where others have been slow
I can hustle where others have been satis1047297ed with the easy pickings o
the trade
Zemurrayrsquos 1047297rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas He did
not spend all his money but retained a small balance which he used
to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central Te trip to Selma was
scheduled to take three days meaning he would have just enough time
to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst In most cases a
ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose
but since the reight charge used the last o his money Zemurray trav-
eled in the boxcar with his bananas the door open the country drifing
by It seems appropriate Zemurray sleeping beside his 1047297rst haul attend-
ing to his product like a baby in a nurseryTe train lef on a uesday morning say the sun 1047297ery above the
smoky reight-yard dawn the clank o wheels over switches the ocean
drifing away Color and country blue in the morning green at mid-
day red in the evening Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway Te train
traveled maddeningly inuriatingly exceedingly slow In the country
it went the speed o a trotting mule In the towns it was no aster than
a man walking In the cities it stopped altogether sometimes or hours
waiting or cargo and crew Zemurray paced the railroad bed handson his hips muttering
Stoplights emporary holds What was supposed to be three days
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1213
Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
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Ripes bull 21
was turning into 1047297ve six With each hour the bananas became more
pungent He spoke to the conductor who commiserated saying ldquoWhat
a terrible shamerdquo
In a Mississippi train yard where the redbrick buildings eed storesand tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks a brakeman hearing Samrsquos
story said ldquoYoursquove got good product there I you could just get word
ahead to the towns along the line Irsquom sure the grocery owners would
meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas right off the boxcarsrdquo
During the next delay Zemurray went into a Western Union offi ce
and spoke to a telegraph operator Having no money Sam offered a
deal i the man radioed every operator ahead asking each o them
to spread the word to local merchantsmdashdirt-cheap bananas comingthrough for merchants and peddlersmdashSam would share a percentage o
his sales When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town the cus-
tomers were waiting Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door
a tower o ripes at his back en for eight Tirteen for ten He broke off
a bunch put the money in his pocket Te whistle blew the train rolled
on He sold the last banana in Selma then went home in the dark
When he tallied his money it came to $190 His 1047297rst real success afer
accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days
Zemurray had stumbled on a niche ripes overlooked at the bottom
o the trade It was logistics Could he move the product aster than the
product was ruined by time Tis work was nothing but stress the
margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills) but it was
a way in Whereas the big ruit companies monopolized the upper pre-
cincts o the industrymdashyou needed capital railroads and ships to op-
erate in greensmdashthe world o ripes was wide open Within a ew weekso his return to Selma Zemurray set out again then again then again
It was in these months on train platorms and in small towns that
Zemurray 1047297rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man
822019 The Fish That Ate the Whale The Life and Times of Americas Banana King
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-fish-that-ate-the-whale-the-life-and-times-of-americas-banana-king 1313
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8193019
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