Petey Greene’s Crustacean City

Washington activist Petey Greene’s grandmother An't Pig once told him, “Petey, you gotta stop smoking those reefers because they make you too hungry, and I can’t buy all that extra food.” I was thinking about Petey Greene this weekend, and food, when I had to help out my brother. A few weeks ago his car was stolen. When the police showed up they told him that it probably hadn’t been broken into, but rather towed away, which is the new mode of operation for car thieves. The police said it makes their job harder because you can’t pull over every tow truck you see toting a car around to make sure if it is a legitimate service or not.

Happy Harbor, indeed

Anyway, my family responsibility on Friday was to get to my brother’s and take him out to rent a car. We decided to make a day of it, which started with a haircut over in Deale, Maryland, opposite the Happy Harbor Marina on Rockhold Creek. My brother used to dock his boat at Hansel’s Marina a short distance from there, so it was an area he knew very well by land and water.With lunchtime approaching, we drove down the road to Skipper’s Pier, a restaurant which sits out on the water and is famous for it’s seafood, but especially it’s locally caught crabs. There was a strong breeze coming in over the water, and the waitress had to get masking tape to hold down the brown paper they put across the table, or it would have blown out into the water.

You've heard of pecking order, right?

I wrote about crabbing before with my brother last year, when he taught me about running crab lines and bait and the best way to eat crabs, which is using a small knife rather than the traditional pounding with wooden mallets. We were literally sitting out over Rockhold Creek, and one of our biodegradable table napkins flew off and landed in the water. I hadn’t noticed, and my brother said, “Look. A jellyfish,” only it wasn’t. It was the napkin. Later a jellyfish did mosey on up to our table, and I thought “If he thinks he’s getting some action off that napkin, boy is he going to be disappointed.” We saw seagulls sitting on the pilings out in the water, and my brother taught me that the bigger, heavier birds were the ones who got to sit on the higher posts, while the smaller birds fell in descending order of seagull hierarchy to the lower perches. While we waited, I sketched a crab on the paper, saying, “Oh! The ignoble end…”


Soon enough the crabs arrived, and we tackled the pile. While we ate, my brother was pointing out across the water where he used to go crabbing at Holland Point. He talked about the laws governing the length of crab line, and while most people think chicken is the most effective bait for crabs, it’s actually bull lips. Yes. The lips of bulls. He told me he used to buy these things in bulk from Mt. Calvary Meat Locker in Calvert County, and how if you coil the baited line when done for the day, then cover it in rock salt and put it in garbage bags you can use the bait again. He said it really stinks, but...it works. He also told me that eel, which used to be plentiful in that area, was also a good bait for crabs, but that the Asians had hipped to the availability and gone into heavy marketing to ship the eels overseas at a profit, making it too expensive to use eel anymore when you crab. While we were eating, there was this huge Monarch butterfly hanging around by the large planter next to our table. I whimsically named him “Ambrose.”

"Hello, my name is Ambrose, and I'll be your server."

Driving away from the restaurant, back down Drum Point Road, I screamed out, “Petey Greene!” Only it wasn’t D.C.’s Petey Greene, but rather a bar called Petie Green’s, and it’s roof was lined with gargoyles and Christmas lights. So who is this Petey Greene that I’m going on about? Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene grew up poor in Georgetown of the 1930's. He overcame that poverty; he overcame being a Lorton Reformatory convict, where he landed after a 1960 armed robbery. He overcame addictions. He referred to himself as a “wine-head bum.” By the time of his death in the 1980’s from cancer at age 53, he was remembered as a community activist, but he’s not merely that name you see on the United Planning Organization’s satellite center over on Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue. He was an award-winning television and radio broadcaster, a humorist, and a folk hero.

Petie Green's, But Not Petey Greene

He had a radio show on WOL called “Rapping with Petey Greene,” but he was better remembered for his television show on WDCA-Channel 20 called, “Petey Greene’s Washington.” Petey would talk with his guests about life in non-bureaucratic D.C. as well as offer street-wise advice and commentary, all while sitting in this huge rattan peacock chair popular during that era: the type of thing you would buy at Pier One before they became tricked out, back when Pier One meant “exotic imports” with things like…incense and wicker and brass gongs.

Don Cheadle as Petey Greene in Talk To Me

On July 30th, the Washington Post did a story about an upcoming movie on Petey Greene’s life, starring Don Cheadle. The movie will be called Talk To Me and, according to Cheadle, it will not be a heroic depiction. “I think that was his whole thing, being straight up. He saw what he thought were injustices, what he thought was right or wrong.” I was very hard pressed to even find information on Petey Greene online when I started writing this piece, and I never did find a photograph of him, only a humorous clip from his television show where he explains the proper way to eat watermelon. I would add that I already knew the trick about salting a watermelon, as my southern Mama taught me the importance of that to bring out the flavor. I’ve added a link from a clip of Petey’s television show. In this segment, he’s quoted as saying, “I got it off the vine. It’s sweet like honey, and I plug it all the time.” I don't think he's talking about watermelon.

Petey Greene - How to Eat Watermelon - Google Video

Petey was also an early user of the term “Chocolate City” to describe Washington. Many think the term originated with the release of a 1975 album of the same name, issued by the group Parliament, whose members included George Clinton and Bootsy Collins. (There was another great song on that album, “If It Don’t Fit (Don’t Force It.” Just sayin’.) In truth, the term had been in use on local D.C. radio stations for some time prior to that.

When he died in 1984, more than 20,000 people lined up outside the Union Wesley AME Zion Church over on Michigan Avenue in Northeast D.C. to pay their respects. I am hoping this new film brings up more facts and more stories so that people can understand that time in Washington’s history. Like Petey's grandmother complaining about how marijuana made him eat too much, at the beginning of this piece. She later went on to amend her view where she said she’d rather “have him smoking reefers and just sit and smile at people than drink old wine and coming in throwing chairs around.” Hopefully not that rattan chair, Petey. That’s history.

He would always end his show with a trademark sign-off. To this day, if you say “Petey Greene,” in D.C., this is what people will shoot back: “I’ll tell it to the hot. I’ll tell it to the cold. I’ll tell it to the young. I’ll tell it to the old. I don’t want no laughin’, I don’t want no cryin’, and most of all, no signifyin’. This is Petey Greene’s Washington.”


Postscript: We did get to the car rental place, and I told the dealer I didn't care what I rented because I could drive anything. He shouted out to his co-workers, "The girl can drive!" Or, to channel Petey, "I'll tell it to the North. I'll tell it to the South. The girl can drive, and that's no jive."