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Smile, Hon, You're in Baltimore!
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Willam P. Tandy
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Baltimore, MD
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Introduction: Buying Wholesale
by William P. Tandy

Steve had gone back to Jersey for the weekend to party with old friends. It was during his tenure as a car-insurance salesman, and he had driven up to the One-Horse Burg after work one Friday, no doubt still wearing his shirt and tie when he got there. I always thought he enjoyed showing up like that in those days, in the sort of way, when you’re in your late teens or early 20s, that you want your friends to know you’ve “made it”.

I never liked the One-Horse Burg myself and had given up even driving through it years before I ever left Jersey, primarily because their local police force (and that of the adjacent Burg, as well) was of the “high school diploma preferred” variety. The State Police, with their required bachelor’s degree, had far higher expectations than these good ol’ boys could ever meet. They’d reached top end, and they knew it, and god bless the poor dumb fuck who happened to let slip with some Minor Infraction of the Rules. Domestic violence and the odd assault-and-battery were the heaviest things these boys were accustomed to handling on a daily basis; most of the time, though, they generated revenue for the town by pestering motorists, both foreign and domestic.

Two major north-south arteries course through the Burg: the four-lane Garden State Parkway, patrolled by the State Police, and Route 9, a winding, two-lane mess of blind curves, residential and commercial driveways, and fluctuating speed limits, lorded over by the One-Horse Burg’s Finest. Though the Parkway is a toll road, I’d been pulled over by the yokels on so many bullshit “suspicions” (as a young male driving an admittedly beat-looking 1983 Oldsmobile 98) that I eventually opted to pitch in my 35 cents each way and take my chances with the state cops, and avoid 9 (and the rest of the Burg) altogether.

My brother Steve, however, is cut from a slightly different cloth. He rolled into the Burg sometime around dark, and the shit hit the fan not too long thereafter. The Finest, having gotten a whiff of what was going on, crashed the party later that night. Steve, with his city duds and smart (but no less frank) manner no doubt stood out from the crowd.

“What are you doing here?” one cop demanded.

“I’m just visiting,” Steve replied. “From Baltimore.”

“Baltimore, huh,” the cop grunted, eyeing my brother with heightened suspicion. “You here to buy drugs?”

Steve shook his head, probably straining to suppress the urge to cackle sharply in the cop’s face. “I told you I was from Baltimore,” he sighed. “Why would I drive three hours to pay retail when I could stay home and buy wholesale?”

Thinking about that story, it’s particularly fitting, perhaps, that I write this introduction now, when about a dozen people have been shot citywide in the last 48 hours, bringing Baltimore City’s 2007 homicide count, according to The Baltimore Sun, to 114 - up from 102 at this same time last year.

I haven’t had the same sort of problems in Baltimore that I encountered in Jersey all those years ago. I’m not quite as young as I was then, of course, and I now drive a much younger car. But in a city rife with drug- and gang-related violence, I’d say it’s pretty safe to conclude that the Baltimore Police Department has more serious matters to address.

In the meantime, my brother has since traded his snappy shirt and tie for a sheriff’s uniform, and recently completed training at the city’s police academy. There’s a decidedly sharper edge to his chosen vocation, but it is his choice, and as such I respect it - much more so than if he had donned a badge and gun in, say, the Burg. Plus, he’s Very Good at What He Does. It’s why you’re the sheriff, I kid him, and I’m the editor. And some of the stories that he brings home are an absolute hoot, like the one about the tenant, faced with eviction, who ripped the natural gas line from the kitchen wall in the face of encroaching law enforcement . . .

Because it’s important to remember to laugh at what’s funny, even in life’s darkest moments, and that, sometimes, only sharing a drink with Absurdity will help bring sense or reason to any of the rest of it.