THE SHEENY MAN

“THE SHEENY MAN”

When I first started to look for details of “The Sheeny Man” along with the people who work with me, we came upon a couple of minor negatives in our subject. One such negative being the name “The Sheeny Man,” roughly translated as “one who picks through garbage” or something like that, the other negative being, “We don’t know what it means but we’ve been told it’s bad,” which sounds like a line from “Ghost Busters.”

It would seem that the people, who tried weak-heartedly to discourage us, didn’t realize that in not talking about “The Sheeny Man” they would never experience the smiles, nostalgic memories, the love and the yearning for a simpler day that just mentioning the word Sheeny brings out in people. These words are a direct quote from this unique, mysterious, sometimes funny, sometimes sad but always business-conscious man, who with his horse and wagon used to come clopping down the city streets and alleys blowing his cranky little horn and crying out, (block your ears if you don’t want to hear it), “Shee-e-eny Man!”