Pompano Paul

They called my father the Doctor

I'm Paul Boris. My grandfather came from Kyiv through Ellis Island and ran a huckster route outside Philadelphia. My father, Moe Boris, learned the business on that route, bought produce for the Army, then built Mo-Bo Enterprises at the Pompano State Farmers Market. Back then Pompano was the winter vegetable capital of the world, and Mo-Bo was known in the trade as the Beast of the East.

When a broker was stuck with product, Moe bailed him out and got him well. That's how he got the name. The story goes he once bought every bean that came across the auction out at the Lake and cornered the market.

He also put my baby picture on a label, PS Brand, for Paul Samuel. Before I could walk, my face was riding on crates of vegetables all over North America. That was my start in the produce business.

I worked at Mo-Bo for twenty years. Fifty years in, I'm still in the business.

The show: family by family

The produce business was built by families. Fathers and sons, uncles and nephews, people who shook hands on a load and kept their word. Most of those stories were never written down.

I'm sitting down with the people who built this industry, and the sons and daughters who run it now, to record how it really happened. First episodes are being recorded now.

The book: the old Pompano market

I'm also writing a book about the old Pompano market and the characters who ran it. Some of them you wouldn't believe. If you were there, or your father was, I want to hear from you.