Lost in the 50's - nostalgia

[Carsman]

The Rag Man was a old man with disheveled clothes who sat on the seat of an open, weathered wagon drawn by a horse. Whenever the neighborhood children heard the sound of the clumping of the horse’s metal shoes on the pavement and the old man calling out “rags, rags,” in broken English, the children would stop what they were playing and run to the edge of the grass to watch the horse drawn wagon slowly pass by.

Some of the neighborhood women would come out holding armfuls of old clothes to give to the Rag Man. The Rag Man would pull the reins to stop the horse and then he would jump down from his wagon perch and greet the women with a wrinkled smile and take their dirty, torn rags/clothes and gently place them in his weathered wagon as if they were a wonderful treasure. Once his job was done, he climbed back up on his ripped wagon seat and gently shook the reins for the horse to continue the slow trot down the middle of the street while the old man called out “rags, rags” in broken English.

(In essence, he was a junk collector)