Donald ‘China’ Waugh, last of a breed of Baltimore arabbers, dies at 90

Last fall, Donald “China” Waugh addressed a joyous roomful of family and friends, all there to heap appreciation on him and his life of preserving the horse culture of Baltimore’s arabbers.

“If you ever worked on a horse and wagon, you would love it because you are constantly meeting all kinds of people and have a good time, and you will start selling way down here and then you will be coming home sold out empty,” he said.

He was speaking at the 4MLK building at the biotech campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, in a conference room decked out in his honor. There were several horses and wagons in the parking lot.

Waugh, the last of a breed of Baltimore arabbers, died at his West Baltimore home on Jan. 29, a day before his 91st birthday.

Arabbing — selling fruits and vegetables from a horse-drawn wagon — is a centuries-old Baltimore profession, though the number of operators has dwindled to just a handful today.

Waugh may have been the last of the old-timers, known by nicknames such as “Manboy,” “Fatback” and “Cabbage.” Even his daughter, Sonia Eaddy, would come by his house a block away and yell up to his window in an arabber drawl, “Hey Chinnna.”

That Waugh made a living clip-clopping through the streets with a fruit-and-vegetable wagon in the mid-20th century made him an anomaly even then. Wagons painted red, yellow and green passed through the streets with peddlers half-singing, half-calling, “Strawwwwwwberries, watermelons, sweet to the vine.”

Waugh was featured in the 1989 photo history “The Arabbers of Baltimore” by Roland Freeman. He also helped found the nonprofit Arabber Preservation Society, an eclectic group of horse people, artists and craftspeople who help obtain grants and advocate for the tradition that has been recognized by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

“He was an arabber to the bone,” said Eaddy, who recalled being hoisted up on his wagon as an 11-year-old and trotting through the city. With horse harness bells clanging, Waugh would roll up to beauty parlors, street corners and corner restaurants — many times knowing customers’ orders as he arrived.

Workers would sleep at Waugh’s house and join him for early-morning trips to “night markets.” At his peak, Waugh had five teams of horses lined up outside his house on Carey Street. And nobody could leave without Waugh inspecting the horses and the produce display on the wagon, geared to capture the eye and not to fall during the bumpy ride through town.

“Anybody could put fruit on the wagon,” said Waugh’s nephew Tyrone Siler, whose earliest memories involve being around his uncle’s horses at the stables. “No, it had to have presentation. He took pride and made you take pride.”

Waugh managed to ply his horse-and-wagon trade while maintaining a career at BGE Home, a retail operation across the city at Eastpoint Mall that sold home appliances. There, he was known as the “Mayor of Eastpoint Mall.”

As an arabber, he became known for detailing what he sold off the wagon — fish, wood, coal, live chickens, ice and produce. He’d carry hard candy for kids in one pocket, sugar cubes for his horses in the other.

His stories made him a go-to figure for writers, photographers and filmmakers, as he’d recall the days when he and other arabbers went to a produce market at the Camden Yards warehouse. He said he would also head up to Pennsylvania Dutch Country to buy horses that were more than likely heading to slaughter, talking shop with the Amish.

But according to family and coworkers, Waugh’s legacy went beyond “being horse crazy.” He used his knowledge of horsemanship, which included blacksmithing and wagon repair, as a way to mentor the young over the decades.

Waugh had a broad definition of the word “family.”

“Whenever he invited you into his world, you were his family and he’d put his arm around you [and say], ‘You’ll be OK,’” said Siler, his nephew.

Keith Brooks often refers to Waugh as a second father. Brooks started helping around the stable when he was 8 and went on to arab seriously for the next 40 years. And though his trajectory was complicated by drug addiction and incarceration, he said, Waugh stuck by him.

“He dealt with me through everything, drug addiction all the way through,” Brooks said. On Valentine’s Day, Brooks drove the wagon that carried Waugh’s coffin through the streets of Baltimore before the coffin was transferred to a hearse bound for the cemetery.

Nicole King, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, interviewed Waugh last year. She said he served as the tradition’s griot, passing down details of routes and blacksmithing tasks as well as why his trade brought so much cultural value to the city.

“He has this connection to the past, when arabbing was huge,” she said. “It wasn’t just fruit and produce — it was so many things.”

She saw how Waugh valued arabbing as a means to creating unique relationships throughout the city, “meeting people where they are.”

In that interview, which was filmed, Waugh told her, “It was just amazing because you know how people would be consulting you and telling you all their business and stuff.”

“I am glad to make him a part of the archives just so you can learn from a good model of what it is like to be a human being,” King said.

Knowing her father wasn’t a fan of gifts or birthday parties, Eaddy figured that if she held a public event celebrating the culture, he just might “sign off on it.” He did, showing up with his books and getting a chance to stand before admirers and thank them for being in his life.

“And so that’s why it was like a celebration of his 90 years of life and the tradition of the history of arabbers, because that’s what he was,” she said. “He was an arabber.”

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Charles Cohen is a freelance writer and filmmaker and a Baltimore native.