Charlie Brocato (1906-1995) was the middle brother of the five sons of Vincent Joseph and Antoinette Antone Brocato of Clarksdale, Mississippi. Charlie left school early and went to work with his father selling produce off a horse-drawn wagon and later a truck.

In his twenties, Charlie went to work for Clarence Saunders Grocery as a stock clerk and butcher. There he met his wife-to-be, Lelia May Lawrence, who was also an employee at the grocery. They were married in the early 1930s. Because of the Depression, the store halved their salaries, but they kept working, happy to have jobs.

Charlie and a partner had their own grocery store in Clarksdale in the late 1930s, but in 1940 he purchased a truck and began hauling produce from South Mississippi and New Orleans to Clarksdale. Once World War II began, his trucking business became quite successful until he was drafted into the army in late 1942. Charlie served in the Army Air Corps at various stateside locations until the end of the war. He loved to tell that, when he went into the army, they asked him what his civilian job was. He replied that he was a butcher and a truck driver – so the army, of course, assigned him to be a cook. His comment was: “We’re going to lose the war now!” Although he became a great cook later in life, at that time he no experience in the kitchen. When he worried to a fellow cook about his lack of skill, the other soldier said, “Don’t worry – we won’t lose any customers.”

At the war’s end Charlie and his brother Jimmie went into the produce business together, hauling fresh produce to Clarksdale and selling to the townspeople. In the early 1950s they built Brocato’s Curb Market on the corner of Fourth Street and DeSoto Avenue in Clarksdale. Charlie primarily trucked and provided the produce sold at the Curb Market from New Orleans (often making the long trip twice a week) and, after he was older, from Memphis until he and Jimmie retired in the 1970s.

Charlie mourned the 1958 death from cancer of his wife Lelia May for the remainder of his life. After his health declined, Charlie moved to Brandon to live with the family of his son, Charles L. Brocato, and he continued to live there until his death in 1995 at the age of 88, having outlived all of his brothers.