For more than 60 years, a ramshackle fruit stand — just bare wooden shelves protected by a striped canvas awning — stood on the northeast corner of Main and Beale, enduring heat and humidity in the summer, sleet and hail in the winter, and rain throughout the seasons. Tony’s Fruit Stand, as the little place was called, became a Memphis institution, where businessmen and -women would pick up apples, bananas, chewing gum, cigarettes, soft drinks, and candy on their way to work. Then one day, all it took was a piece of paper to knock it down.
An Italian truck farmer named Tony Bova opened his little stand in 1905. I’ve seen photos that show it was originally located in Court Square, but then he moved to Beale Street, renting space from the owner of the building behind him. The overhead sign spelled his name “Toney” but since he had it painted for free, so the story goes, he didn’t bother to change it.
Bova died in 1954, and his nephew, Joe Cianciola (that’s him in the photo above), who had begun working at the stand when he was just 11, took over the business. “A lot of people call me Tony,” he once told a reporter, “and that’s all right.”
