Merchants

It is inexplicable that in an article about merchants bemoaning credit card interchange fees, the cost to businesses of processing cash and check purchases is never discussed ("Fee to pay with credit card could be in offing," Aug. 14). I worked in retail for many years, and I know that accepting cash or checks costs merchants time and money. There's the issue of counterfeit bills, mistakes in making change, employee pilfering and bad checks that can require the merchant's appearance in court as a consequence.

One of the largest business expenses for Santoni's Supermarket in Highlandtown is interchange fees — what the grocer pays a bank to process customer's credit card transactions. Even so, Santoni's has no plans to charge shoppers more for paying with plastic. "That would be retailer suicide," says Rob Santoni Jr., the grocer's chief financial officer. Merchants haven't been allowed to add a surcharge to credit card purchases, but that would change under a proposed settlement announced last month to resolve a seven-year legal battle over interchange fees.

Kenneth Lyles, a barber at the Total Male on East Monument Street, described the devastating scene: a loud bang on the street that sounded like the passing tow truck had hit something and then a deep hole in the pavement opening quickly, peeling down away from the surface like Play-Doh. "You couldn't see the bottom," he said. "It was a scary sight, man. " Lyles said he and others outside at the time told the truck driver to quickly keep driving. He said they rushed to both ends of the block between North Patterson Park Avenue and North Montford Avenue to divert traffic away from the widening trench.

Jimmy's Restaurant in Fells Point ran out of hot dogs, potato salad and macaroni salad and scrambled to replenish all weekend as hordes of hungry Sailabration visitors jammed the popular diner. Even on Monday, as rain moved in after days of sunshine, the crowds kept coming on the last full day of the Star-Spangled Sailabration, which kicked off the two-year commemoration of the War of 1812. "It's been the greatest thing to happen in the city as far back as we can remember," said Jimmy Filipidis, whose father owns the restaurant on South Broadway.

Karl Max Jenkins, a former German merchant mariner who jumped ship in Baltimore and later became a stationary engineer and building superintendent, died Saturday of heart failure at Oak Crest Village retirement community. The former longtime Lauraville resident was 104. "He was an old salt and a walking history book," said Frank G. Lidinsky, a Baltimore attorney who was Mr. Jenkins' personal representative and friend for more than two decades. "He was a smart and engaging guy. " He was born Karl Max Jeglinski (a name which was later changed to Jenkins when he served in the U.S. Army)

The Baltimore Sun's front page on July 22, 1959, carried the news accompanied by a six-column photo: The world's first nuclear-powered cargo ship had been launched at Camden, N.J. The christening of the $47 million N/S Savannah was bigger than news about legislation to extend the GI Bill of Rights, bigger than a Cape Canaveral rocket launch, bigger, even, than a federal court ruling to allow the steamy novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" to be...

Nothing leaves a person jaded like a good Goliath-beats-David story. Such was the case in Baltimore in the mid-1980s when electronics giantSony Corp.famously succeeded in running a Filipino restaurant out of business because the owner had the nerve to attach her name to it. Her name was Sony Florendo. Sony Corp. attorneys came to town and filed a $2.9 million lawsuit against Sony's restaurant on Park Avenue, claiming trademark infringement. It didn't seem to matter that Sony Corp.

Well, the decorations are up. The judges have judged. The votes have been tallied and these are the results of what promises to be the start of an annual holiday competition - the Hampden Village Merchants Association Storefront Decorating Contest. Congratulations go to Best Overall winner Hampden Junque, 1006 W. 36th St., and runner-up Paradiso, 1015 W. 36th St. But the real winners are all of us who get to walk around and see the results of the decorating efforts of about 25 participating businesses.

The owner of a dress shop is so fearful of crime along Greenmount Avenue in Waverly that she keeps the door locked even when her shop is open. The man who runs a discount store a block away feels it is safe enough to stroll the avenue with his three young children. A young clerk who just started behind the counter of a doughnut shop is happy to have found work amid the sour economy, but says, "It's scary in here. " The proprietor of the avenue's most expensive restaurant is threatening to leave.

Thomas Talbott Bond, founder of the T. Talbott Bond Co., a Baltimore-Washington photocopier dealership, died Friday from complications of dementia and a broken hip at Keswick Multicare Center. The longtime Ruxton resident was 85. The son of Henry M. Bond, who had been president of the Bond Brothers Paint Co., and Lala Belle Bond, a homemaker, Mr. Bond was born in Baltimore and raised on Roland Avenue. Mr. Bond was a descendant of and named for Thomas Talbott Bond, one of the defenders of Fort McHenry during the British invasion of 1814.