The streets of Baltimore city can be deathly chilling on a late February night. Bells draped from Joe's harnessing sound more like metallic walnut hulls than the gay, welcoming "tink-tingle, tink-tingle" of pony bells city people sometimes hear on warm day. The steel rims of the wagon wheels grate along macadam streets now frozen harsh in winter, soon to be softened in the coming spring. Joe's gait is rhythmic and easy, providing the only melodic line in an otherwise strangely hollow urban symphony. Huddled on the wagon seat is Paul Diggs, "Sonny" to just about everyone who knows him, a Baltimore arabber.

(According to "Sonny," White people ...