Who remembers Hilton Head's Onion Man?

I went to get a haircut and came home with a 25-pound bag of Vidalia onions and some sweet memories.

Do you remember the Onion Man?

This is the latest in a million stories to come out of Harvey’s Barber Shop, Beaufort’s unofficial town hall on Bay Street since 1936.

Johnny Harvey was selling Vidalias for the Rotary Club of Beaufort and I expect he went home smelling something like a roadside stand. They came from Hendrix Produce in Metter, Ga., and they’re sweet as the morning dew.

On Hilton Head Island, before Vidalias were in every grocery store, we used to get them from the Onion Man.

He was a sign of spring. He arrived at a sandy lot near Sea Pines Circle, as regular as a nesting osprey. He had an old yellow school bus. The seats were all gone, and it was stacked to the ceiling with bag after bag of Vidalia onions.

His name was Jack Tapley, and he was from Vidalia, but we soon took him to be one of us. It was almost like he was selling a magic potion. He said his customers included the rich and famous, like Clemson’s ole Danny Ford, who was so much more than a football coach to this state.

It was a shame when the Onion Man puttered off into the sunset in the mid-1990s and never came back. But it was nice to get a 25-pound taste of that simpler time, soothing as that hot towel Johnny or Ray Harvey put on your neck.

Do you remember the Onion Man?

This story was originally published May 17, 2017 at 12:31 PM with the headline "Who remembers Hilton Head's Onion Man?."