Bugs Bunny eats a carrot that doubles as a piccolo before singing “Any Bonds Today?” a song adapted by Irving Berlin in 1941 to help sell Defense Bonds to finance the American effort during World War II.

A Voice of Baltimore Feature, an excerpt from

     ROOBY TAWR, a novel in progress
     set in mid-20th Century Charm City
 
                             By Joel Foreman
 
During the early years of WWII, Reuben Michael winced whenever Deuteronomy Graves reminded him with a self-satisfied laugh that the Ruby Tire Company was “in the money.”

With Bethlehem Steel building Liberty Ships at its Fair- field Yard and B-26 bombers coming off the production line at Glenn L. Martin’s Middle River plant, Baltimore was booming.

Just as Lee Conklin over at Erdman Tire had predicted, “Once the Japs take Malaysia and cut off the rubber supply, boys like you and me who know a thing or two about used tires are gonna make so much goddamn money we won’t know what to do with it.”

The Ruby Tire Company, now in business since 1935, was riding that wave.

But Ruby felt guilty about the $4,000 that had quickly accumulated — with more coming — in his Baltimore Federal S & L account.

It seemed unjust. How could he, his wife Hanna, and their two-year-old Edgar be living so well while so many were suffering? The wounded, the dead, and the dying haunted his imagination.

Although he had served in the military for a year at the end of World War I, he spent his tour of duty at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, located midway between Chicago and Milwaukee.

Ruby never saw a dead body with half a face or a shattered bone protruding from a thigh. Never saw a gunner bail out of a smoldering tank and shoot himself in the head rather than burn to death. Never crapped in his pants during an artillery bombardment.

Lacking any direct exposure to such horrors, all Ruby’s imagination had to work with were black and white newspaper photographs, newsreels “sanitized” by the Pentagon, and scenes from Hollywood movies. Scenes like the one in “Gone with the Wind” where Scarlett O’Hara stands amidst a bleeding mass of Confederate casualties littering the grounds of the Atlanta railroad depot.

Like Scarlett, Ruby was at a loss about what he could do for the war effort. And he felt guilty about it.

Shaarei Tfiloh Synagogue, located on Auchentoroly Terrace at Druid Hill Avenue adjacent to the epon- ymous park, was constructed in the 1920s and has functioned continuously as an Orthodox Jewish sanctuary ever since.  The fictional Reuben Michael attended a U.S. War Bonds meeting there in 1942.

MEETING ORGANIZED BY RABBI DRAZIN

Which is why he attended a “Support the War” meeting organized by Rabbi Nathan Drazin and held in the base- ment of Shaarei Tfiloh, the blue-domed synagogue on the western edge of Druid Hill Park.  (Baltimore-born film- maker Barry Levinson restored the ornate synagogue to its 1940s glory for “Liberty Heights” in 1999, the final film of his Baltimore quartet.)

One of a hundred men sitting in wooden folding chairs set up before a portable movie screen, Ruby had been invited to take part in a Jewish response to FDR’s radio appeal for a “demonstration of faith in America.”

Speaking to his co-religionists about their patriotic duty during war, Drazin asked, “What does it mean to be a good Jew? Not just a Jew. But a ‘Good Jew.’”

“Is it enough,” he inquired, “to stand by as bad things happen and to think that God is the Mr. Fixit who will make sure everything works out OK?

“It’s depressing, I know,” Drazin continued, “to read in the papers that German U-boats are sinking our ships, that Hitler’s Luftwaffe is bombing London, that the Japanese are in Singapore, the Philippines, and who knows where next.”

“We all ask why the Almighty is allowing this to happen? When is He going to step in and stop this evil?”

Ruby’s mind drifted from these questions to memories of Passover Seders where he dipped his finger in a glass of wine, once for each of the ten plagues God visited upon the Pharaoh in Egypt.

PHARAOH! HITLER! TOJO! MUSSOLINI!

Pharaoh! Hitler! Tojo! Mussolini! What’s the difference? he reasoned.

God turned the Egyptians’ drinking water to blood. He killed the firstborn in every Egyptian family. He parted the Red Sea and swallowed up the Pharaoh’s army!

So what’s he waiting for? Why doesn’t he just give Hitler a heart attack? Send a tidal wave to sink the Japanese aircraft carriers. Give all the kraut soldiers bloody diarrhea.

“The good Jew believes in God,” Drazin continued, “but does not depend upon Him. God may have better things to do than to kibitz with Mussolini. Maybe he just wants us to take care of our own problems.”

All that Ruby wanted at the moment was for the Rebbe to get to the point:  What’s he want me to do? Are we going to see a movie?

When the lights finally dimmed and the Bolex projector started to roll, everyone in the room was surprised to see Bugs Bunny limping like a wounded Revolutionary War vet in time to a drum and piccolo version of a patriotic song. The piccolo turned out to be a carrot, naturally, which Bugs promptly ate before launching into a song written by Irving Berlin:  “Any Bonds Today?”

Looney Tunes cartoon characters Porky Pig, left, and Elmer Fudd, right, join Bugs Bunny to help promote the sale of World War II War Bonds in 1942. The 90-second animated film took 3 weeks to produce and was completed 8 days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

It was a sales pitch. For U.S. Defense/War bonds.

Buy them in denomina- tions from $25 to $1,000. Get 3 percent interest. You say you can’t afford $25? No problem! You can buy stamps for as little as 10 cents, and when you’ve saved enough, buy yourself an entry level bond.

What a hoot, to see Ruby’s Looney Tunes favorite pitching defense bonds.

The “Any Bonds Today?” song sounded so familiar. The tune was kind of sexy. A puzzling fact. What’s sexy about investments and war?

[Watch the 90-second cartoon, in which Bugs at the end parodies Al Jolson as “The Jazz Singer” performing in blackface, singing to Uncle “Sammy” (not “Mammy”)  by clicking here.]

Ruby did not remember that he had heard the tune several years before in a song called “Any Yams Today?” which Ginger Rogers sang in one of her films with Fred Astaire.

Ruby had seen the movie at the Hippodrome on a date with his to-be wife, Hanna. Hanna had been married once before and had no qualms about resting her hand provocatively on Ruby’s thigh in the darkness of the theater. Toward the end of Ginger Rogers’ rendition of “The Yam,” Hanna gave Ruby’s thigh a little squeeze and whispered playfully in his ear, “Kinda makes you hungry for a warm piece of sweet potato pie.”

Which probably explains why, four years later, Bugs Bunny’s rendition of “Any Bonds Today?” sent blood rushing to Ruby’s groin.

The cartoon worked pretty much the way its Hollywood creators hoped. Deep in the recesses of Ruby’s brain an action was taking shape: Emotions, images, sounds, and memories were lining up in his head like the jackpot cherries in a Vegas slot machine churning toward a payout.

When the lights came on and the Rebbe resumed his talk, Ruby’s imagination had been comman- deered by a host of phantasms — the shimmering Ginger Rogers, Bugs Bunny, Revolutionary War Minutemen, and the wounded and dying in the Atlanta railroad depot depicted in “Gone with the Wind.”

ARE YOU ‘DOING ALL YOU CAN, BROTHER?’

It was as if they were all imploring him with a question he had seen on a war poster in the window of the fire station several buildings down from Ruby Tire:  Are you “Doing all you can, brother?”

The words were like tears whose accumulated weight carried a message down into the well of Ruby’s unconscious. The message had four words that seemed to point at Ruby like a fist with an extended forefinger: “YOU! BROTHER! ACT! NOW!”

Which Ruby did. Convulsively leaping to his feet, his arm raised to get the attention of the Rebbe, Ruby yelled, “I’ll buy some.”

This unexpected interruption evoked nervous laughter, then applause, and a rush of other raised voices making pledges.

Ruby committed to buy two $1,000 bonds each year the war lasted and determined to buy as many Defense Stamps as his monthly profits would allow, as a bonus for Deuteronomy Graves and the other Ruby Tire Co. employees.

In the following three war-years, when Ruby walked down to Baltimore Street for an over-easy egg on a Kaiser roll at Louis the Greek’s eat joint, he’d check out the latest war bond poster in the window of the fire station. It was usually a picture of a soldier or sailor or a child.

Ruby would nod his head in passing and say softly to the picture, “I’m doing what I can, brother.”

joelforeman@voiceofbaltimore.org

CHECK OUT EXCERPTS 1 & 2 OF ROOBY TAWR (ROGERS ROOBY — Waiting for a streetcar in 1930s Baltimore; and PAGET’S DISEASE — Deuteronomy’s grave vision of a vortex, while trimming tawr teats)  by clicking here  AND  here.
 
EDITOR’S NOTE:

Ginger Rogers dances “The Yam” with Fred Astaire in the 1938 film “Carefree” after singing the Irving Berlin song, “Any Yams Today?”  Astaire reportedly thought the song was silly and refused to sing it with Rogers, which is why she sings it alone; however he did dance The Yam with her, a highlight of not only this film but of all their dances together.

The working title of Joel Foreman’s book, Rooby Tawr, refers to the character Deuteronomy Graves’ Baltimorese pronuncia- tion of the word “tire.”  The song “Any Yams Today” — itself a modified version of the song “Any Love Today?” that Irving Berlin wrote in 1931 but never had recorded — was sung by Ginger Rogers in the 1938 film “Carefree” prior to doing The Yam dance with Fred Astaire. Berlin adapted the song in 1941 for the Bugs Bunny version.

All characters depicted in Rooby Tawr are fictitious. Any resem- blance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. However photos depicting fictitious characters and places are grounded in reality.

The novel in progress Rooby Tawr is Foreman’s initial foray into fiction.  (For his complete thumbnail biography, click “Staff”
under the Main Menu at left.)