“I’m The Potato Man,” said the 75-year-old sitting in the folding chair in the shadow of the white pickup. “Just The Potato Man.” So, no. The man tucked into his black hoodie would not give me his name. Nothing personal. “I just don’t want the publicity.” He laughed. “Don’t need it.”
This was Wednesday afternoon, a little before 1, in an Oak Cliff neighborhood just a couple of short turns off Interstate 35E and Camp Wisdom Road. About half a dozen people were pulling potatoes from the long, wide trailer parked in a gravel-filled swath of The Potato Man’s front yard. I stayed for a few hours. Business never slowed.
Christina Julian, 61, and her 75-year-old friend Donna McNally were the first people I met. They placed a big white bucket at The Potato Man’s feet and peeled off a $5 bill before their drive back to Grand Prairie.
“Times are getting tight,” Julian said as we stood by her car. She told me she’s a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipient terrified by the crisis lurking just around the corner.
She’s among the 42 million Americans — 3.5 million of whom are Texans — whose SNAP food assistance benefits are set to expire Saturday because the Republican-controlled Congress refuses to fund them during the government shutdown.
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“It’s terrible to be in this situation, but it’s the situation we’re in,” she said. “It’s always about the wealthy and to hell with the poor.”
Christina Julian, a SNAP recipient, drove from Grand Prairie to Oak Cliff to fill a five-gallon bucket with $5 worth of potatoes.
Robert Wilonsky
Like everyone else I met Wednesday, Julian and McNally were drawn here by a Facebook post. Attah Armand Essien, a music promoter who graduated from W.T. White High School, shared photos of the trailer on Tuesday and wrote that the man across the street from his grandmother’s house was selling potatoes, $5 for each five-gallon bucket you could fill.
That post was shared more than 2,500 times by Wednesday. People had come from as far away as Lancaster, Grand Prairie, Mesquite, even Anna to fill their buckets with red potatoes and Yukon Golds. There were onions, too, in a grocery cart all but emptied by Wednesday.
“You’re doing a good thing, you’re feeding a lot of people” Mary Tenison told the man, whom neighbors know as Mr. Brown. Tenison, a nurse, had driven by earlier to make sure Essien’s post was real. She was filling three buckets, which she intended to take to her church to share with congregants. Many there rely on the SNAP benefits set to vanish this weekend.
“That’s why I had to stop by,” Tenison told me as she picked through the potatoes.
“People may have something to eat today. But next week we’re in troubled waters. I can’t feed everyone every day. But I can feed some for one more day.”
Mary Tenison filled three buckets with potatoes Wednesday. She planned to share with church congregants, she said, as many of them rely on the SNAP food benefits set to expire on Saturday.
Robert Wilonsky
Whenever someone asked where the potatoes came from, Mr. Brown shrugged off the question. A friend with a farm, he’d say. He sells produce from the front yard regularly — potatoes and onions some weeks, purple hull beans when he can get them, greens and watermelons when in season. Usually he sells just to the neighborhood, then takes whatever’s leftover to the cows in the country.
Mr. Brown told me that a few weeks back he had a trailer full of potatoes and sold maybe a couple of buckets worth before he had to dump the rest. On Tuesday night, people were coming until well past dark, holding flashlights to find the best potatoes.
“I finally had to shoo ’em away,” Mr. Brown said, “because I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
We watched the pile shrink throughout the afternoon.
“I’m amazed,” he would say, over and over. “Shocked. I’ve never seen it so low. I’m in shock.” He figured all the good stuff would be sold by Thursday.
Over a few hours, Mr. Brown told me a little about himself — that he’s from Louisiana, that this house had once been his grandmother’s, that he once worked in a steel mill, that he’d recently been sick and just got out of the motorized wheelchair he used to move around the neighborhood. He liked the customers. He just didn’t want the attention.
A young woman holding a cardboard box approached. She told Mr. Brown the potatoes were “a blessing.” He chuckled and shook his head.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said. When she walked away, he told me, “I’m just glad they’re coming.” Because it’s just business to him.
At 1 p.m. Wednesday, the trailer was piled high with potatoes. A few hours later, it fell to a level that shocked even The Potato Man.
Robert Wilonsky
“Yeah, it’s a business,” Essien told me as we stood across the street, watching the people walk up with buckets, boxes and baskets like it was Halloween and he was handing out candy.
“It’s not free. But at $5, it might as well be a charity.”
Trisha Cunningham, president and CEO of the North Texas Food Bank, hadn’t seen the Facebook post when I called her Thursday morning, because she’s too busy trying to find food for the 460,000 people in the area about to lose their SNAP benefits — half of whom are children. So I told her about The Potato Man and his brisk business. And she was deeply appreciative.
“People need to step up and ask their neighbors if they know someone who’s struggling,” said Cunningham, who’s already dealing with a sharp uptick in folks needing food and fighting to fill shelves emptied by recent government cuts.
“SNAP is the most effective and efficient way for those who are food-insecure to get food, and we’re working hard to amplify those efforts. We need that extra support in the community. If more neighbors would help neighbors, it would help us a lot.”
A man named Anthony Warren pulled his Prius into the driveway and greeted Mr. Brown warmly. Warren, who lives in Houston, grew up a few streets over. With four others, Warren operates the Lucky 7 general store at the State Fair of Texas and stuck around to spend time with his father. As he lined his hatchback with plastic, he told me he was buying buckets of potatoes to drive down to friends and neighbors in the Third Ward.
Robert Castro, who’d driven from South Dallas, stood with Mr. Brown while his mom filled a bucket.
“You definitely did a good deed,” Castro told The Potato Man, who shrugged off the kind words.
“It’s always a rainy day,” he said.
When I finally left, four more cars pulled up. Because it’s pouring.