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.

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Volvo sales team lines up outside car dealer showroom to “wel- come” prospective customers (i.e., to offer new-car “deals”).

IS SWEDISH CARMAKER’S SHIFT
TO ONLINE AUTO PURCHASING
THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE?

TURNING THE TABLES
ON THE CAR DEALER
 
By David Maril
 
Volvo has never been perceived as a trend-setter or a tradition-breaker.

The Swedish carmaker, now owned by China’s Geely, has always been known as an upscale, luxury car company that offers somewhat traditional looking station-wagons with a premium on safety from a reinforced body frame.

But that may all change.

With the recent announcement by Volvo to begin offering its cars for sale digitally online, the long- established tradition of going into a dealer showroom to negotiate over purchasing a new car may be coming to an end.

Volvo is quick to point out customers will still go to dealers to actually pick up the car and get service. However, if the online plan catches on, the most formal part of the selection process will be done ahead of time electronically.

Will this trend spread and eliminate the traditional battle of wits in the showroom?

Maybe it’s a good thing. Sometimes the process of buying a car can be an unpleasant, irritating experience. You feel the dealer always has the last laugh and you are at a severe disadvantage.

Most of us have had the experience of going to a car dealer and feeling overmatched. It can seem as futile as trying to win a basketball game yourself against a team of five veteran all-star NBA players.

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Orioles’ Executive Vice-President of Baseball Operations Dan Duquette, who is under contract until 2018, de- serves a one-way ticket to Toronto — if that’s where he now wants to work — to be paid for by the Blue Jays.

SOON-TO-BE-UNEMPLOYED O’MALLEY
DESERVES LIFETIME CASINO JOB OFFER;
EHRLICH NEEDS A GHOSTWRITER

Personalized speed/red-light cameras
would make nice stocking stuffer
for Mayor Rawlings-Blake

ORIOLES’ EXECUTIVE VP DAN DUQUETTE
QUALIFIES FOR ONE-WAY TICKET
TO TORONTO, PAID BY BLUE JAYS
 
By David Maril
 
With time running out for this year’s holiday gift shopping, here’s a list to get us into the New Year:

For retiring Gov. Martin O’Malley:  A lifetime job offer to be a dealer at one of the Maryland casinos. Helping bring legalized gambling to Maryland will go down as O’Malley’s biggest legacy.

For Comptroller Peter Franchot:  The chance to steer the state Democratic party back into common sense, smart economic liberalism.

For Congressman Andy Harris:  An issue he can support without taking a contrarian stand.

For Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake:  Personalized, working speed and traffic-light cameras for City Hall to make sure nobody runs too aggressively against her.

For former Gov. Robert Ehrlich:  A ghostwriter to make his Sunday political column in the Baltimore Sun readable if he decides not to run for president and it resumes in the newspaper. Ehrlich was a much better radio-show host than he is a columnist.

For Orioles Executive VP Dan Duquette:  A one-way ticket to Toronto, with compensation from the Blue Jays, if that is where he wants to work. Years ago, Hall of Fame broadcaster Jon Miller was not rehired as voice of the team (1983-96) because he “didn’t bleed” Orioles orange. The same standard should apply to the executive making player personnel decisions.

For Manager Buck Showalter:  A five-year contract extension with an option that he moves up to the Orioles’ front office if he tires of managing. Showalter, not Duquette, is the key to the refurbished standing of the team.

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Retired Johns Hopkins pediatric neuro- surgeon Ben Carson is one of 3 Mary- landers virtually unknown nationally to be contemplating a run for president. Of the three, which includes two gover- nors, Carson has never run for office.

Best way to protect against community injustice
is to register voters, increase fair representation

A FOUR-YEAR CONTRACT FOR MARKAKIS
WOULD HAVE REQUIRED A COMPLICATED
AND TOUGH DECISION FOR THE ORIOLES
 
By David Maril
 
While wondering if any of the three Marylanders, Martin O’Malley, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Dr. Ben Carson, who are indicating they may decide to run for the presidency in 2016, would even generate enough local support to win the primaries in their home state, it’s interesting to note the following:

  Retiring Gov. O’Malley, who seems to have been running for president since he was in high school, doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere in his bid for the White House. Despite numerous appearances on network television Sunday news/talk programs, he remains unrecognized outside of Maryland.

Locally, he lost a lot of traction with his anointed successor, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, getting crushed by Republican Larry Hogan. It also doesn’t help gifting a reported $900 million state budget deficit to Hogan as he prepares to take office.

The worst indignity, however, was when Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski encouraged a group of Hillary Clinton supporters in Baltimore County that there would be plenty of support for the former First Lady if she runs for president.

“We need Hillary,” she told the group at Goucher College.

If powerful state Democratic leaders like Mikulski are behind Clinton, O’Malley is in deep trouble.

  While O’Malley has been commuting back and forth to states like New Hampshire seeking political headlines, many Marylanders were astounded to read last week in the Baltimore Sun that his former election sparring mate, Ehrlich, has also been out on the campaign trail and is starting to catch the presidential fever.

Besides being even more unknown nationally than O’Malley, the one-term former Maryland Republican governor would face a huge problem delivering the type of message Tea Party and hard-edged members of the GOP are demanding.

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The author’s vision of what Deuteronomy Graves, a worker at the Vulcan Tire Co. in 1930s Baltimore, would look like, were he not a fictional character.

A Voice of Baltimore Feature, an excerpt from

     ROOBY TAWR, a novel in progress
     set in mid-20th Century Charm City
 
                             By Joel Foreman
 
When Deuteronomy Graves told Reuben Michael he would mitigate, he didn’t say noth’n ’bout the vortex.

Ruby wouldn’t have paid it no mind — D had all kinds of wild imaginings. Harmless stuff that Ruby listened to semi-seriously with one cocked eyebrow.

So there wasn’t any point in D sharing the bad feeling he got about the doctor Ruby was going to see up the Circle.

D had been up to Park Circle himself. Once! To mount a rush order of retreads on a used Chevy waiting for its new owner to drive off the lot at Park Circle Motor Company.

When D finished the task, he figured it’d be OK to spend a few minutes taking in the suburban neighborhood.

He’d read about it in the Jewish Times — read for-sale notices for the porched two-story row houses that lined the streets of Cottage, Towanda, and Park Heights Avenues.

Read ads for the strip on the 3500 block where you could get challah and sticky buns from Holtzman’s Bakery; corned beef, whitefish, and kishke from the Lapidus Delicatessen; and yahrzeit candles from Bertha Friedman’s dry goods store, to commemorate the Jewish dearly departed.

D had always thought of Park Heights as being way way out, a neighborhood he was never likely to visit. Yet here he was, taking it all in from the cab of the Vulcan Tire pickup truck.

He drove slowly around the Circle so as to contemplate the exotic entranceway to Carlin’s Amusement Park, with its twin towers, pagoda windows, ornate architectural details, and the façade of the skating rink, Iceland, looming above.

He drove past the green edge of Drew’d Hill (Druid Hill) Park, past the corner where the No. 5 and No. 33 streetcars stopped before splitting off to glide up the major arteries of Park Heights Avenue and Reisterstown Road, and decided to head north a few blocks.

He wanted to see the new synagogue — Shaarei Zion — that his and Ruby’s fellow Jews had built. It looked like a Greek temple with its triangular pediment and three columns in front.

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