If consumers had a buddy in the linoleum business in 1946, it was not the 16-year-old kid selling rolled-up vinyl from the trunk of a 1937 Plymouth with no back seat.

        Burton Benjamin Kallick, a salesman from shortly after birth, would say what people wanted to hear.

        Ma'am, I just finished a job down the street, and I've got this leftover linoleum I'll sell you at a great deal.

Buddy Kallick at home in Centerville. (Enquirer photo) | ZOOM |

        “It was sort of like a Tin Man kind of thing,” says Mr. Kallick — “Buddy” to millions of television watchers ambushed repeatedly by a shrill voice hawking products from Buddy's Carpet stores. “Everybody has a little larceny in his heart.”

        There was, of course, no job down the street; there was no great deal.

        Today, at 70, Buddy Kallick is “a very, very sweet, decent, caring human being” who deserves his success, his younger brother, Kenny, of Hartwell, says with affection.

        “He's a very talented, generous guy, very self-made, very inspirational and very encouraging,” says his son, Mark Kallick, of Pleasant Ridge.

        “He's a sophisticated, cultured humanitarian — and a pain in the ass,” he laughs. “As kids, my sister and I took a lot of ribbing over those commercials.” Young friends saw it as a wonderful opportunity to tease. “Around the clock. Constant. Better get your homework done before Wednesday night at 9” was a common joke, based on Buddy's still-familiar sale-deadline warnings in television spots.

        Always healthy and always busy while growing up on Avondale's Cleveland Street, Mr. Kallick remains active in semi-retirement and appears vibrant despite a kidney-lung cancer diagnosis in April.

THE BUDDY FILE

Name: Burton Benjamin Kallick.    Birthday: Oct. 20, 1930, in Chicago.    Residence: Centerville, Ohio.    Family: Son, Mark Kallick, Pleasant Ridge; daughter, Lauren Hoven, Centerville; two grandchildren.    Marital status: Single.    Pet: King Calvin, a fat Himalayan cat.    Transportation: Mercedes Benz S500 sedan.    Favorite music: Classical.    Favorite spots: Family room, with glass walls, mostly glass ceiling, and upstairs bedroom suite in very comfortable 4,000-square-foot house on almost 5 acres.    Favorite carpet: Plush, “The softer the better;” neutral tones.    Biggest source of pride: My children.    Biggest secret: “I don't care about selling carpet. I just loooove to make money.”

        “He's had a very good response,” says oncologist Dr. Douglas K. Hawley, Mount Auburn. “Usually, this would be a fairly late situation, with a pretty low response rate.”

        He estimates Mr. Kallick's cancer shrinkage at 90 percent (lung) and 50 percent (kidney).

        “I attribute a lot of it (success) to his own personality and attitude . . . not only to tolerate the therapy but to fight the cancer, too,” he says.

        “He's an eternal optimist,” says Elizabeth Fine, a close friend who is working on a Buddy Kallick biography.

        While one doctor told him he would not live beyond next spring, Mr. Kallick rejects the notion of dying.

        “I figure my life is half over, now that I'm stuck with this cancer crap,” he says. “I'm not ready to go yet. The world's not ready for life without Buddy.”

        There are stories to be told.
       

Riding the streetcar

        As a student at Hughes High School, “He used to love to skip school,” brother Kenny says. “One day, he was riding a streetcar when an older man asked him if he shouldn't be in school.”

        “I'm skipping,” Buddy replied proudly, revealing his name and his clever methods of escape.

        The man, the city's head truant officer, of course, would see him again the following day, when he was summoned to the principal's office.
       

Driving the secretary

       

        “My dad was a tough guy,” Mr. Kallick says. “If he lost his temper, I'd disappear.”

        As an older, more responsible son, 19-year-old Buddy was asked to drive an attractive secretary home after a bar mitzvah at a downtown hotel. When he returned more than three hours later, “My dad was fuming,” he remembers. “FUMING.

        From about 100 yards away, “I yelled to dad, slid the keys down the sidewalk and took off running. I could run like a deer.”

        He returned home the following day, by which time, “My dad had cooled off.”
       

Finding good times

        At home, the boys had no television and, of course, no computer to keep them occupied. So it was natural, Kenny says, for Buddy to find himself in trouble.

        “I used to hang out at the Newport gambling joints and casinos until it got to the point where my dad told some of the owners to "Keep my kid out of here,' and they threw me out,” he says.

        To this day, he says, some of his best times are in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

        And at work.
       

Door-to-door

        While he might not have been completely responsible when it came to spending his money, Mr. Kallick knew the importance of jobs. His first one, at 13, had him changing tires at a neighborhood Gulf station for $13 a week. Within a year, he was serving vegetables at the former Pressler's Cafeteria, downtown, . . . until he was dismissed for being Jewish.

An early ad for Buddy's Carpet

        He was recruited from his door-to-door linoleum entrepreneurship by Harry Goldstein, the owner of Harry's Corner, a floor-covering retail chain, where Mr. Kallick worked for 23 years before opening his own stores, Buddy's Carpet City, in Dayton and Springfield.

        After his first wife divorced him and moved to Montgomery, Ala., he left Ohio to be near his children. In Montgomery, he sold Buicks for seven years to get back on his feet.

        He had no money when he moved to Alabama. And, when his first wife remarried and moved abroad, he assumed custody and raised his daughter and son himself.

        When he returned to Cincinnati, he sold even bigger cars at the former Jennings Buick, before returning to the carpet game.
       

Making impression on TV

        Buddy's Carpet, under new ownership since last January, continues to benefit from the Buddy magic in a deal that kept the former co-owner in place as consultant. His work — two or three days a week — includes taping all of the Buddy's commercials.

        He's one of a kind, says Jeff Schroeder, producer at Channel 22, NBC's Dayton affiliate, where the commercials are taped. He wears no makeup, uses no script.

        “I ad-lib the whole thing,” Mr. Kallick says.

        The commercials, which began in 1957 when Mr. Kallick worked for Harry's Corner, were a natural.

        “From the time I was 10, I wanted to be an entertainer,” he said. “I have entertained all my life in one way or another.”

        His brother remembers Buddy's Al Jolson impersonations as a kid, and, as a teen-ager, singing with the big-band Horace Height and His Musical Knights.

        “He wanted to be this Frank Sinatra-type of guy,” Ms. Fine says.

        Much of his success has been linked to bravado and determination.

        “He never gave up,” Ms. Fine says. Even in difficult times.

        During a period of what his son called “tight circumstances,” he lived out of his car in Montgomery, for the sake of reuniting with his children. A carpet partnership had just fallen apart in Cincinnati, and he was almost penniless.

        “I was so poor I couldn't pay attention,” Mr. Kallick jokes.

        But there was good fortune, too.

        “I got lucky in 1983,” when he partnered with longtime friend Leif Rozin and opened their first Buddy's Carpet store in Fairfield. Within two years, sales grew to more than $1 million. Eventually, 48 stores in five Midwestern states carried Buddy's name.

        And his voice.

        “I have called information and had operators ask, "Is this Buddy?”' he says. “I've had people recognize me in Europe when I speak to them.”

        Apparently, they listen to what he has to say.

        “You talk to him long enough, and he'll convince you today's Monday,” his brother says.
       

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