In the 1950s and ’60s, the streets of Martindale were lined with fruit trees and berry bushes. If Eunice Trotter forgot to eat breakfast, she could always count on plucking an apple or pear off of a tree on her walk to School 26.
It’s one of the things she remembers most about growing up in the predominantly Black eastside neighborhood. She remembers what she calls the entrepreneurship of the neighborhood, too. Martindale was full of local businesses serving the community.
“We had the ice man and the watermelon man and the vegetable man,” Trotter said. “All of these people would be in wagons that they would drive up and down the street to sell their products.”…