The story below is from our September/October 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Recollections from a Roanoke centerpiece landmark.
Richard Boyd
As late the early 1980s, the Roanoke City Market Building still carried the ghosts of butchers past, as the names of some still hung above the meat lockers in a largely abandoned and rundown space.
When, as a young boy, I first entered the Roanoke City Market Building, the impact was overwhelming. The entire arcade from Salem Avenue through to Campbell Avenue was lined on both sides with individually operated butchers’ stalls, each with the operator’s name in bold letters on the wall over huge stainless steel walk-in refrigerators: Debo, Minton (he became Mayor), Hannabass, Murray, Basham, Peters, 20 stalls, 10 on each side.
It was just before the Second World War when my father took me with him through the double doors of the Salem Avenue entrance. I had never seen such light. It seemed brighter than daylight. The odors were pungent and foreign, the sounds were loud with an echo effect, the pace was swift with purpose, but good natured. Laughter could often be heard above the emphatic thud of the large handles on the refrigerator doors as men came in and out carrying huge slabs of beef and pork for carving.
Richard Boyd
Russell Hannabass was one of the last butchers to leave the Market Building, having manned a stall for 45 years, beginning in 1936. Photo here is 1981, as the market was about to undergo massive changes.
It could have been the opening scene in a butchers’ operetta. All the characters scurrying about in the daily tasks of the village. It was enthralling.
I loved walking through the sawdust covering the wide area which ran the length of the arcade between the twin rows of butchers’ stalls. It was fun to make designs or write your name with the toe of your shoe. The sawdust seemed thicker behind the spotless white display stalls. Drops of blood from the meat were absorbed immediately and seemed to disappear. The men back there made designs too without noticing as they moved from the carving blocks to the scales to the sliding windows of the display stalls to the heavy rolls of white wrapping paper and finally to the cash registers.
If it wasn’t already cut or if it wasn’t already cut just like you wanted it, Mr. Debo would send someone to the huge stainless doors and in a moment a fresh slab of meat would be slammed on the cutting block and Debo himself, like a surgeon who had studied every sinew of every muscle of every animal carcass that ever was, would deftly carve the veal chops or the rib eyes or the pork loin within fractions of an ounce of what was ordered, talking and teasing and laughing the whole while until, with no wasted motion, he had it wrapped in a tight neat package and the deal completed.
Mr. Debo was our butcher. I was fascinated with his name. lt sounded like fun. And he was a very nice, very patient and good-humored man. Years after that first visit, when I could ride alone on the Rugby bus to within one block of “the meat market,” as my father called it, at Salem and Jefferson, he’d always say, “Go to Debo. He’ll get it for you.”
And he would. He always seemed glad to see me. He expected me to ask for veal but sometimes the order would be for calves’ liver or pork chops or brains. Veal was the most common request, I think because my father’s heritage was German. I had an aunt who told me once the Dalhouses had come down the Shenandoah Valley from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and had been among the first to raise Black Angus cattle in the Waynesboro area. Maybe. Maybe not, but he sure did like veal and my mother made the best veal gravy I ever had in my life including a try to get some that good in Germany. It just wasn’t the same.
One of the other butchers was Mr. Murray. He was a neighbor of ours in Rugby. He lived a short block away on Rugby Boulevard, literally three minutes from our house on Thomas Avenue.
I was never sure why we didn’t buy any meat from Mr. Murray. My father and he were friendly enough. He was a good butcher. His son Paul and I were in the same grade at school. It had bothered me a little bit, but nothing was ever mentioned on either side. I just knew we dealt with Debo.
And I always did. Even after I grew up and went there on my own, until finally in 1960 the meat market finally closed down and Mr. Debo was gone and all the meat then available was from supermarkets pre-cut and shrink-wrapped and sold in sets of six of whatever. The small festival, the operetta that was held daily in the City Market Building’s meat market, was gone.
The first startling impact of the first entrance into the market was repeated with only slightly less intensity the first time I entered what appeared to me then as a huge unobstructed space on the third floor. There was a full-sized basketball court painted on the floor and an attempt at tiered seating along both sides. There were large multi-pane windows down each side letting in lots of natural light. It struck me as marvelous that such a large space existed in the middle of the downtown bustle.
The “C” league (City league) operated on that basketball court and different neighborhoods put together their own teams and created a lively intra-city rivalry. The Boys Club from the Salvation Army on Salem Avenue was always a powerhouse. And Fallon Park was usually a team to watch. Even though I was short and small, in that league I had a chance to play briefly for Northwest. I missed my first easy shot by a mile and didn’t get called upon much after that.
Amateur boxing matches were also held up there on an unpredictable schedule. I was astounded at the spectacle and it wasn’t long before I was yelling and rooting like everyone else for some guy to knock the daylights out of another. The din was deafening. The ring was spotlighted from above so brightly it seemed to float in the center of the audience’s space. Knock-downs did not occur often and knock-outs were extremely rare, but the blows were real, the pain and occasional blood was stirring and the grunts and thuds were often wrenching. My mother did not like me to go there.
The Food Court that occupies the ground floor of the Market Building now is a perfect fit with what has occurred all around it. Employees of Carilion, Norfolk Southern, Anthem and all the lawyers and bank employees who work downtown now need that kind of option for lunch. It’s colorful, functional and fast.
But I never enter that space without memories of the ultimate in colorful, functional and fast: those butchers in all those stalls in that stark light and the choreography and sounds of a simpler time and place.
The story above is from our September/October 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!