Third-grader Shane Broware walked up to Fletcher Axon with a fistful of money. He set one dollar in Axon’s hand.
“One,” Broware said.
Another, “Two.”
Another, “Three.”
Broware counted each dollar up to $15.
“That’s good,” Axon said.
Broware is one of about 10 children who sell boiled peanuts for the Marcus Garvey Youth Development and Sports Club Inc. The peanut program helps children who live around 22nd Street South stay out of trouble during the summer and learn to have a work ethic, Axon said. But the children who sell boiled peanuts for the club are getting more than some spending money; they are learning to count.
The second- and third-graders who work for the club learned to count by keeping track of how many bags of boiled peanuts they sell, and how much money they earn.
Axon, 49, has lived in the community for 30 years. He started hiring local children to sell boiled peanuts in 1982.
“Some of the kids come in years later and I don’t even recognize them they’re so big,” Axon’s wife, Faye, said.
Jeff James, a 30-year-old who sold peanuts for the club when he was in grade school, often visits Night Flow, a restaurant Axon opened in 1985.
The Axons pay attention to each child.
“I like it. The kids, they keep me young. They call me auntie, momma, whatever,” Mrs. Axon said.
Many of children live in single-parent homes or are raised by grandparents. The parents work during the day, earning what they can to support their children, but it’s often not enough to buy their kids nice clothing or toys, she said.
“Glen (one of the boys who sells nuts), he bought a real nice hundred-dollar bicycle, and Shane over there, he bought a pair of Nikes. He saved up his own money and bought them. They must have been $70,” she said.
A bag of boiled peanuts costs one dollar, and the kids who sell peanuts get one-fifth of that. The rest of the money pays for expenses and supports a sound studio. Axon teaches local children how to use a soundboard and allows them to rap or sing in the studio.
“Who knows how to rap?” Axon asks his sales force.
Immediately the children begin to chatter about who’s the best rapper, and their walking becomes more of a swagger. When one asks whether he could use the microphone in the studio, Axon just smiles.
“These kids, they’re just like a microphone; they ready to take it all in,” Axon said.
A 5-gallon pot hooked up to a propane gas burner, peanuts, water, spices and some patience are all you need to make boiled peanuts, a traditional treat sold in many Southern states. Axon sells regular boiled peanuts and a special blend of Cajun peanuts with corn and potatoes in them.
Axon’s business, on Ninth Avenue South just off 22nd Street, is in a neighborhood with “questionable traffic,” Computer Empowerment Center (CEC) worker Judie Fowler said. CEC is a local non-profit that provides after-school programs for students and General Education Diploma (GED) programs for community members.
“If I had a kid that needed to make some money, I wouldn’t send him over there,” Fowler said, though the CEC is located only a few blocks down 22nd Street South, and a few of the children who attend CEC programs also sell peanuts.
Fowler worries about drug dealers who are often found in the neighborhood and the effect they might have on young children in the area.
Axon recognizes that his neighborhood has problems with drugs and crime, but he has a different perspective on dealing with the people in his neighborhood.
Others in the neighborhood said they appreciate what Axon is doing for the community.
“He’s doing a good thing for them,” Julia President, grandmother of a peanut-selling boy, said. “He don’t let them get in trouble.”
Axon has high hopes for Broware and the other children he works with.
“It is about making an honest dollar; maybe when they grow up they’ll have a job,” Axon said. “They could be anything: Doctors, policemen, rappers, anything.”
