Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Charlie Broeckel was the Silver Fox or The Creep. He went by both names. He was a burglar and hit-man in Collinwood –- a neighborhood in northeast Cleveland.

Charlie Broeckel, Plain Dealer drawing by Dick Dugan, 7/7/74

I’m not sure where Broeckel is now. Maybe he’s dead. Or maybe he’s in a safe house in Ada, Oklahoma. For a while he was “John Bradford” (federally protected) in the Pacific Northwest.

Broeckel and Phil Christopher — another Collinwood burglar — did a bank heist at Laguna Niguel, California, in 1972. It was supposedly the biggest bank burglary of all time. Charlie and Phil flew to California from Cleveland for the job. California didn’t have quality bank burglars back then, I guess. Collinwood did.

I saw Broeckel and Christopher at trials in Cleveland. They would periodically come in from their federal prison cells or witness protection program locations. One trial was for murder: Christopher and accomplices took a pimp, Arnie Prunella, out on a boat, shot him and drown him.

Collinwood was “think ethnic”-to-the-10^th power. There were four distinct neighborhoods in Collinwood: Slovenian (St. Mary’s parish), Italian (Holy Redeemer), black (west of the E. 152nd Street, aka the DMZ) and Lithuanian (Our Lady of Perpetual Help). Broeckel’s ethnicity was indeterminate. Maybe German, maybe Slovenian. Christopher was Italian.

Broeckel and his fellow burglars stored nitroglycerin — used for blowing up safes — on a Lake Erie beach. In 1983 a Cleveland policeman operated a backhoe at the local beach, searching for old, very unstable nitro. Traffic cops kept reporters and passersby at a distance. Charlie was supposedly in bad health and wanted brownie points for helping the cops find old explosives.

The chief cop in the neighborhood — Capt. Ed Kovacic — had a warm spot for highly skilled crooks. These thieves would drill out safes and jump burglar alarms. They weren’t entirely stupid. Kovacic often said, “If there was a hall of fame for burglars and safecrackers, it would be in Collinwood.”

In 2006, Lyndhurst police chief Rick Porrello wrote a book, Superthief, about Christopher. Then Tommy Reid, a Hollywood entrepreneur, made a documentary movie –- also Superthief — which came out in March. The movie is mostly talking heads: old cops and old thieves sitting in living rooms, reminiscing about old days.

The documentary ran exclusively in theaters in Euclid and Lake County — where many former Collinwood residents moved to. There were three people in the Lakeshore Cinema.  One elderly man, with a walker, said on his way out, “Phil is a thief!” His wife said, “I like Phil!”

Christopher, 66, is out of jail. He has spent nearly half his life in prison. What if Broeckel — the creep, the silver fox, the rat — comes out of hiding and puts Christopher back in prison?

Just like old times.

–
I was a police reporter in Collinwood for Sun Newspapers in the 1980s. (Last time I’m going to mention this factoid for a while. So please remember.)

—-

SIDE B

Here is the annual “inside baseball” post.  Your name might be in here . . .

NAMING NAMES

We interrupt this blog to tell you this blog is three years old.

“I’ve read every word of your blog!” a musician told me.

Hooray for him.  I wrote every word.

A blog reader said, “You found your subject — your father, Toby.”

No, you did.  I’ve had Toby on the brain for decades.

A woman said, “I look forward to your posts every Wednesday morning . . . I don’t do comments.”

Here’s my comment: Nine-tenths of Klezmer Guy readers don’t do comments.  They want to protect their animosity.  Listen, you are not above comments; you are not paying for this; chip in the occasional enlightening, humorous or really stupid comment.

Several other readers claim to have read every word of the blog.

What was the first word?

Special thanks to our major donors (commenters).  I could have done it without you, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun.

In no particular order, thanks to Marc Adler, Jessica Schreiber, Gerald Ross, Seth Marks, Ted, Adrianne Greenbaum, Bill Jones, Mark Schilling, Harvey Kugelman, Ellen, Susan Greene . . .

David, Margie, Irwin Weinberger, Jane Lassar, Zach Kurtz, Alice Stratton, Alan Douglass, Steve, Jack, Don Friedman, Kenny G, Steven Greenman . . .

Charlie B, Don Edwards, Garry Kanter, Jack V, Ari Davidow, Emilie, B Katz and Richard Grayson.

Get your name on this list next year by contributing at least $2,500 or writing comments.

Special thanks to Ralph Solonitz, the blog’s illustrator.  He adds a lot.  I encourage him to throw in as many pics as possible.  Works out well.  Ralph had a Klezmer Guy illustration in The Forward recently.

I met Ralph about 21 years ago when he designed Yiddishe Cup’s logo.  That’s still your best logo, Ralph.

Sometimes I send my stories to the media before posting here.  This past year Klezmer Guy articles were published throughout the planet: the International Herald Tribune, New York Times, City Journal, Ann Arbor Observer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jerusalem Post.  Did I miss any continent?  I’ve started to link to some of the newspaper articles.  Please see the right side of this blog, under “Articles.”  Also, check out “Categories” there.  “Categories” is particularly useful if you want to read 68 posts in a row about real estate. 

Google Analytics — a spy op — says there are Klezmer Guy readers in every state and many foreign countries.  Ohio has the most Klezmer Guy readers, followed by New York, California, Michigan and Massachusetts.  The top foreign countries are Canada, United Kingdom, Israel, Germany and Australia.

Google Analytics, for your information, zeroes in on readers by their hometowns, not their names.  For instance, somebody in Chico, California, reads this blog.

The bell rings, round four.

—-

I wrote this op-ed, “The Impossible Dream,” for Mother’s Day for the Cleveland Plain Dealer (5/13/12).  It’s about listening to the radio with my mother.

Illustration by Ted Crow, Plain Dealer

After my mother died, I put her furniture in storage in the basement of one of my apartment buildings on the West Side.

The furniture sat there for five years.  My older son, Teddy, took the furniture when he went off to law school.  The furniture was mildewed, but usable.

When I visited Teddy, I saw my mom’s furniture and suffered post-mom stress disorder.  My mother’s sectional sofa meant nothing to me, but her yellow kitchen table was like a punch to my solar plexus.  I had eaten at that table for my first 18 years, and now it was in marginal student-housing in Toledo, Ohio!

Unacceptable.  My mother’s table belonged in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The table was worth something.  It was Formica.  It was 1950s.  I hope my son doesn’t sell it on eBay or Craigslist.

During high school, I was historically laconic at that table.  How’s school? Forget it, I ain’t talking.

My dad, for that matter, didn’t talk much either.

My entire family didn’t talk much.  We didn’t watch TV during dinner either.  We ate a lot of fish.  Fish was cheap.  Halibut was very cheap, believe it or not.

For breakfast, we ate pink grapefruit quietly.

—-

SIDE B

Hitchhiking story . . . Ple-ease, no!

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE
TO 1970

I occasionally meet young people who lament they didn’t live through the hippie era.

They lived through nothing.

I know that feeling — living through nothing.  I missed World War II and felt bad about that.

Skip Heller, a rockabilly musician, posted a video “Reflections of a 44-Year-Old Middle-aged Jewboy.”  It was his reminiscence.

About what?

Heller was born in 1965; he missed not only World War II but the hippie era. What could he possibly reminisce about?  Transformers?

I hitchhiked across America four times, I think.  That’s worth talking about for a minute.  One minute . . .

I spent eight hours at the on-ramp in Needles, California, in 100-degree heat. I counted so many Roadway trucks and “Humpin’ to Please” trucks and Consolidated Freightways trucks and Winnebagos . . . it was forgettable.

Worse, no driver ever told me the secret of life.  Drivers often asked me my college major and if I knew anybody in Flint, Michigan.  (I told drivers I was from Ann Arbor, close by.  That got a better response than “Cleveland.”)

Mark Schilling (L) and Bert Stratton, 1970. The sign says "Ann Arbor."

A man in Arkansas said he was the youngest person to ever have a heart attack.  I gave him a $10 traveler’s check.  That was a lot of money in 1970. You could hitchhike cross-country on $5 in the 1970s.  (Five dollars equals $29 in today’s money.)

The hippies — aka freaks — had the worst cars.  Alternator troubles, steering problems.

The city of Flagstaff, Arizona, didn’t allow hitchhiking.  You had to walk through Flagstaff.

Jim Mandich, a Miami Dolphins star, gave me a ride out of Toledo, Ohio.  He had been a standout player at Michigan.  He was coming from Ann Arbor, where he had partied with former Michigan players — “studs,” he called them. (Studs die.  Mandich died of cancer last year at 62.)

I hitchhiked across country with an English girl.  She was cute and Jewish.  The problem: she was meeting her boyfriend in California.

In Nebraska I stayed at the house of a future congressman, Mezvinsky.  No, that was in Iowa.  Mez got busted a decade or so later.  For what, I can’t remember.

I last hitchhiked about 1975.

I hitchhiked too much.  I should have done something more productive.  My knowledge of  trucking companies has yet to come in handy.

Italians have great names, grant them that.  The best name from my old neighborhood was Bocky Boo DiPasquale.  Bocky led a band, Bocky and the Visions, a local version of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.  Bocky Boo was a pre-Beatles greaser with a strong regional following; he got significant air play on Cleveland radio and on Detroit’s CKLW.

Bocky Boo, second from left, early 1960s

The Bock became a Cleveland legend.  I, however, was too young to grasp Bocky’s vision.  I didn’t listen to his music.  I just knew his name and wondered, Can Bocky Boo be real?

I knew an Alfred Mastrobuono.  Real.

I knew Carmen Yafanaro.  Real.

Ralph Dodero.  Real.

Bocky Boo’s real name was Robert DiPasquale.

Robby Stamps – another musician from my high school — knew The Bock and all other local bands, past or present.  Stamps was a rocker, riding the first wave of psychedelia.  (Robby’s sister incidentally was Penny Stamps.)

Stamps never showed up at high school reunions.  He said the Italian greasers would  harass him for being a radical.  Stamps was a misher — a meddler — more than a radical. He was always around the action, like Zelig.  Stamps was shot in the buttock at Kent State on May 4, 1970.

After graduating Kent, Stamps worked jobs as an adjunct faculty member in Hawaii, California and Florida.  He majored in sociology and Spanish.  Stamps was half Jewish — an oddity, at least in the 1960s.  Back then you were generally all Jewish, or you weren’t.   Robby’s father was Floyd.  (Not a Jew.) 

Robby Stamps, 1996, at Kent State

Stamps hung around with just about everybody in high school: racks (aka greasers, dagos), white-bread American kids (aka squids, collegiates) and Jews (aka Jews).  Stamps was an emissary between the various groups; he had a pisk (big mouth), played music and was fearless — except at reunions.

Stamps wasn’t part of the “in” crowd or the “out” crowd.   Stamps was his own man. He  scribbled “pseudo-freak” on the photo  of a hippie poseur in my yearbook.

In middle age,  Stamps developed every kind of illness: Crohn’s, Lyme Disease and pneumonia, plus he had the May 4 bullet wound.  He died in 2008 at 58.

If Stamps had come to the reunions, he probably would have shed light — some sociology — on the various cliques.  Stamps’ perspective was bitter, sarcastic and funny.  He would have said something like: “Those Jews at the bar, see those guys at the bar, they wore penny loafers in seventh grade without pennies in them, and yelled at me because I put pennies in mine.   They threw pennies on the floor.  If you picked up the pennies, you were a
‘cheap Jew.’

“I threw pennies,” Stamps continued. “I worked both sides of the street.”

In 1988 Bocky Boo was shot and killed in a bar.  The cops — some who had grown up with The Bock — tried hard to find Bocky’s killer.  There was even a website, whokilledbocky, for a few years ago.  (Now down. )  No Luck.  The Bock and Stamps didn’t stick around.

Well, that’s one thing I can say about that boy, he gotta go.
–Paul Butterfield Blues Band, “Born in Chicago,” lyrics by Nick Gravenites

Tombstone Eyes

—

Old Jewish man (Harvey) in the supermarket line

I wrote a review of  Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland.  Most posthumous work — by Hem, Hendrix, Heller, whomever — should stay buried.  The Pekar review is here, at today’s CoolCleveland.  Need  more Pekar?  See the archived “Klezmer Guy” posts about Harvey Pekar.

—

Check out Jack Stratton’s dog music vid  . . .

One dog isn’t enough.  When I walk around Horseshoe Lake by my house, I see a lot of people with two dogs.

On my last walk, I saw five people with two dogs, and one schnook with a schnauzer.

My family was a one-dog family for 13 years.  This was before the two-dogs-are-mandatory rule in the Heights.  My family’s dog, Sammy, was a meshugenner who liked to play in traffic and bark a lot.

Sammy

I Hate Barking Dogs was my bumper sticker, so I had a problem.  The barking dog was my dog; I couldn’t call the cops.

The other day I called my cousin Howard in Colorado; he told me he had been up since 5 a.m. because of barking dogs.

My wife, Alice, is bugged by our neighbors’ barking dogs.

We have new neighbors on the other side.  The day they moved in, I said, “Give me the bad news.  How many dogs do you have?”

The neighbor said, “None.  My daughters are allergic to dogs.”  I couldn’t believe it.   Even if he turns his house into a crack den, I’m ahead.

Years ago –- when I lived on Oak Road — I approached a neighbor and said, “Your dog is barking.”

The woman stared at me, at her dog (who was yapping 24/7 on a chain in her backyard) and said, “No, he isn’t.”

She didn’t “hear” the dog barking, and she certainly didn’t hear me.

Our dog, Sammy, was a standard poodle.  Supposedly poodles are smart and non-allergenic.  Doubtful on both counts.

My kids in particular loved Sammy, who died exactly when the youngest kid went off to college.

I knew the pediatrician John Kennell.  He should have had two dogs.  Him.  Nobody else.

—

This clip is “Critters” . . .

—

Yiddishe Cup plays tonight (Wed. 4/25) at Fairmount Temple, 6:40 p.m., Beachwood, Ohio.   Free. The community-wide Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration.

I run a bar mitzvah-party think tank.  It’s the only one in the world.

I have clients — mostly DJs.  I supply them with explosives, lyrics and games.

Some of my games are free, just to build up website traffic.  For instance, take my humiliation game: the bar mitzvah boy stands on the dance floor surrounded by searing sterno cans.  We throw napkins at him.

My best-selling games: Twine Fun, Narcissism Express, Beach Sand Saturation, Toxic Candy, Enjambment and Trunk-like Bodies, which is shooting darts at kids hiding in potted plants.

I have very few klez-band clients.  Wake up, Jews, I have Jewish-themed stuff!  Bottle caps are cool.  The kids wear bottle caps on their heads, and the last kid to lose his “yarmulke,” wins.  Lots of body contact.

My best-selling game is Trash Floating in Punch.  We throw chicken bones, children’s books from the centerpieces, and empty plastic wine glasses into the punch bowl.  Kids reach in and fish for prizes.  Nobody loses.  And it’s ecological.

I strained my back.  Bingo, new game . . . The Grandpa Shuffle.  Kids walk like old men and mutter creative Yiddish curses.  It’s shameful, yet stunning to see teenagers limp and spew: “Zol er krenken un gedenken.” (Let him suffer and remember.)

Irwin Weinberger, regional distributor of toilet slime.

Of course, I have normal games.  I have laughing gas, toilet slime kits, photo booths, giant inflatables and partisans.

We’re full service.

—

SIDE B

Does the KlezFiction piece, above, bug you? A reader dismissed my previous KlezFiction pieces as “avant-garde.” Here is something more concrete . . .

BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES

My rabbi criticized me for mispronouncing a word — not a Hebrew word either.  I mispronounced “Route 66.”   I said Rout 66.  My rabbi is from St. Louis and takes Root 66 personally.  The road and the song.

I like roads, borders and boundaries. In Ohio it’s Rout.

In college I honked whenever I crossed the Michigan line into Ohio on U.S. 23.  All hail The Buckeye State.

Michigan was The Water-Winter Wonderland for many lame years.  The Great Lake State is better.

I was in Seligman, Arizona — on Route 66 — last week.  (The road sign says “Historic Route 66.”)   Every tchotchke shop in Seligman had Route 66 gear.  Thirty Japanese motorcyclists in black leather pulled into the tchotchke shop.  (I wasn’t there.  I heard about it.)  Seligman is named after a Jew.  I just learned that.  So two tchotchkes in this paragraph is OK.

I would like to see 30 Japanese guys on Harleys pull into Cleveland Heights.

Suburban boundaries are locatable by checking street-sign colors.  For instance, Cleveland Heights signs are green; Cleveland, blue; and Shaker Heights, white.

Northern South Euclid — the area — perplexed me as a kid.

Cormere Avenue in Cleveland is a street to ponder.  It’s near Shaker Square.  Carl Stokes lived there.  Many locals mistake Cormere for Shaker Heights.  Shaker Square is in Cleveland too, not Shaker Heights.

Last week, when I was at the Grand Canyon, a Californian called me “Iowa.”  He called me “Iowa” even after I said “Go Bucks” to him.

He was from Anaheim.  Just say “I’m from L.A.,” please.  Same for Orange County.  Say “L.A.”  I saw a lot of Californians in the Grand Canyon.  One was from Atascadero.  What?  I’m weak on California.

Ohio is my strong suit.  I built a plaster of Paris model of the Ohio Turnpike for my 8th-grade Ohio History project.  My wife built the Terminal Tower in 4th-grade Ohio History.  (She’s from Columbus, Ohio.)  Ohio has 88 counties. Not many states have that many counties.  [Wrong. Twelve states have more counties than Ohio.  Texas leads with 254; Georgia, 159; Virginia, 134.]

Nobody cares there are only 3 people left in the city of Cleveland.  The question is, How big is the metro region? Cleveland-Akron is the 17th biggest TV market.  I mistakenly told several Grand Canyon hikers that Cleveland is the 30th largest market.  I didn’t know Cleveland is that big.

I like rankings and a certain amount of order.  I like boundaries.  I like to know where I am.

Lakewood International News, a magazine store, carried the Paris Review, Partisan Review, Kenyon Review and porn.  About half the store was porn.

The proprietor, Gil, was a part-time railroader.  He and several railroad buddies manned the elevated counter, which was a lookout tower for nailing shoplifters and pervs.

I went to Lakewood News.

Where else could I read an interview of William Styron in the Partisan Review, and Bustin’ Out in the same visit?

Gil lost his lease.  (I wasn’t Gil’s landlord.)  I had a vacant store.  Maybe Gil and I could do business together.  A bank tenant had bailed on me down the street.  I thought I was good for 30 years with the bank, but then all banks in the world started merging in the late 1980s.

The bank owed me rent until the bank was re-leased.  The bank, through back channels, quickly found a new tenant — the city.  The city planned to open a health-department annex.  Fine.  Cockroach inspectors would be my new tenants.

Except the city didn’t move very fast.  There were various “readings” at various city council meetings.  Meanwhile, Gil, the magazine store owner, told a couple people he was getting the bank store.  A Plain Dealer reporter called me.

Possible PD headline: “Stratton New Porn Czar.”

The old porn czar was Reuben Sturman, a local-boy-made-good and the nation’s largest porn distributor.

I got scared.  I hand-delivered a media package to the Plain Dealer reporter.  I did a Q&A with myself.  I answered: “I believe in the First Amendment and the bookstore would be an asset.  It isn’t just porn.  Ever heard of the Paris Review? I’ll rent to the magazine store.”  I wanted the city to hurry up, so I had created a little tension, via the press.

Plain Dealer, June 21, 1989. See text below.

The Plain Dealer story came out.  (Nothing too horrible.)  But suddenly the city fast-tracked the legislation and rented the space.

That was the only time I ever spun the press.

Don’t believe half what you read in the papers.  For the real story, go to the memoirs 20 years later.

But by then, you probably won’t care.  But maybe you care in this instance; you read this.
—

Here’s the beginning of “Adult store’s Detroit Ave. move thwarted” by Paul Shepard, Plain Dealer, 6/21/89:

“My only goal is to rent the store.  Whoever signs a lease first gets it, but I think both would be fine tenants for me.”

—
I wrote an op-ed, “The Old Seder Table,” for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, online, Friday (4/6/12).  The op-ed is the only Passover story ever to mention Yazoo City, Mississippi.

Ken Goldberg, a friend, came over for shabbes dinner and brought not only dessert, but an eyewear catalog.

The catalog was from Ben Silver, a store in Charleston, South Carolina . . . “Tasteful and refined eyewear for men and women.”

Ken said his favorite Cleveland eyeglass shop is Park Opticians, the fashionable and expensive store near my house.

I ran into Susannah Heschel — the daughter of  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel — at a wedding; she said she was going to Park Opticians the next day.  Susannah has many frames.  She lives in New Hampshire.  She is a scholar at an Ivy League school.  She shops at Park Opticians.

Susannah Heschel

My frames adjuster at Park Opticians is Mickey.  Keep your hands off my glasses if you’re not Mickey!

My daughter, Lucy, bumped into my glasses when I gave her a horsy-back ride.  (Lucy was 4 at the time.)  My glasses wouldn’t fit right after that.  I went to the headache center at the Cleveland Clinic.  Either my eyeglass frames were askew, or I was.

B. Stratton, 1973

I like clear frames, aka “crystal.”  I’ve been a crystal wearer for years.  My younger son, Jack, jacked a pair of my crystals.  What’s with that, son?  (I have extra crystals lying around the house.)

I usually unveil a new pair of crystals after visiting Les Rosenberg, an optometrist who works out of a box, 20/20 Eyewear, on the West Side.

Les doesn’t care that I don’t buy his frames.  Les makes a living, with or without my purchases.  Les is simply happy to see a fellow yidl and old high school buddy.

Jack Stratton w/ child (seltzer machine) and crystals, 2011

Les didn’t hang out with  the smart guys in high school.  Les was a goof-off.  But a smart goof-off.  Les dated, did little homework, and went to Ohio State and partied.  He eventually studied, I guess.  He is a doctor.

At 20/20 Eyewear, Les gives me the latest info on the popular “kids” from high school, and I give him the latest on aging eggheads like Marvin and Howard.  Les says, “I was as smart as those guys!”

Yes, you were, Les.  And you were a goof-off.

Les is not a goof-off  now.  He’s a skilled professional, and bonus, he’s empathetic.  He does not criticize my crystals or my supplier, Park Opticians.

Life with tortoiseshells is not an option.  Les knows that.  Goldberg, my shabbes guest, knows that too.

I once had ultra-light rimless frames.  The frames were so flimsy they fell off  my head whenever I put on a pullover sweater.  Ski caps, another big problem.  The ultra-lights were Swiss; you’d think they’d be good.

One word:

Crystals.

***

Lucy Stratton at the White House, 2011.  Her eyeglasses are partially wood.  (The White House hired a Jew to decorate the Christmas tree.  I hope she put a Jewish star on top.)

—-

SIDE B

’Tis the season to be . . .

PASSED OVER

Giant Eagle asked me to play at its pre-Passover shopping extravaganza last Sunday.  Giant Eagle, headquartered in Pittsburgh, called me in Cleveland and said they needed two musicians at Legacy Village, the “lifestyle” shopping center in suburban Cleveland.

I’m anti-“lifestyle” centers.  And I don’t like the phrase “playing in the aisles.” The Giant Eagle booking agent said, “We can pay X dollars for this.”

I said, “X + 50 percent.”

She said she’d get back to me.  She didn’t.

She hired my competitors.  Actually, two musician friends of mine.

The Sunday morning of my non-gig, I said to my wife, “I could be at Giant Eagle right now playing.”  She was impressed.  She likes Giant Eagle.  (I’m more a Heinen’s supermarket guy.)

I ran into Irwin Weinberger from my band, Yiddishe Cup.  I said, “Right now we could be playing Giant Eagle.”

He shrugged and said, “We don’t have anything to prove at this point in our careers.  Now if you said you just priced us out of a gig in Fuerth, Germany, that’s a different story. But not Giant Eagle.”

The musicians with the grocery-store gig worked Facebook hard that morning.  They elicited 10 comments about how cool it must be to play a grocery.

Ten Comments on Facebook is commanding.  Why had I quoted such a high price to that Pittsburgh agent?

And I probably could have gotten a free box of matzo, too.

Later, I read the eleventh-or-so Facebook commandment.  It was from a Giant Eagle musician: “Sure wish the agent who hired us could have notified Giant Eagle that we were playing.  Sorry to all those who made it out to see us.  We are very disappointed.”

What?   Did they make you guys play over the Muzak?  Did people throw Tam-Tams at you?  Did a kid spill grape juice on your violin?

I suddenly felt pretty good about the gig.

Happy Passover.

The next day, my first question to the musician was “Are you getting paid?”

“Yes, we are getting paid in full,” he said. “The store manager, who wasn’t the main manager, didn’t know we were scheduled.  The main manager wasn’t there.  So we went home.”

The check is coming by giant eagle from Pittsburgh.

Rabbi Samuel Benjamin — from my synagogue — was arrested by the cops and beat up by congregants.  Then he got fired.  He went off to Jerusalem.

He resurfaced stateside in Jacksonville, Florida.

This was in 1926.  Rabbi Benjamin fought the great Conservative-Orthodox civil war at the Cleveland Jewish Center, East 105^th Street, in the early 1920s.

Rabbi Benjamin oversaw the construction of a huge new sanctuary, complete with a swimming pool, and was supposed to keep the shul Orthodox.  He tried.  But the Conservatives wanted him out.  Punches were thrown.  One of the punchers was a certain Philip Rocker.  Check it out.*  The rabbi left town.

The Cleveland Jewish Center, aka the “Polish synagogue,” aka Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo, stayed at East 105^th Street for a couple decades, then moved to a park-like setting in Cleveland Heights.

I belong to the Heights shul — Park Synagogue.  I do not see any signs of civil war.  Very few congregants know about Rabbi Benjamin.

Rabbis don’t get in fights like they used to, either.  Does any rabbi don boxing trunks with the Jewish star?  I think there is a Russian rabbi in New York who does.  [Yes, Yuri Foreman. Photo: Foreman taking a punch from Miguel Cotto.]

My rabbi doesn’t fight — my guess.  If he does, he’s a welterweight.  He’s not big.

Some rabbis play basketball.  Several Cleveland rabbis played an exhibition basketball game at the Cleveland Cavaliers pre-game this month.  There was no score in ten minutes.

Next year for the pre-game, the rabbis should reenact the Conservative-Orthodox civil war of 1921.
—

* “Near [Rabbi Benjamin's] house was Philip Rocker, son of Samuel Rocker of The Jewish World. He waited for the rabbi and when he saw him he attacked him and beat him up quite severely.”  From Jewish Life in Cleveland in the 1920s and 1930s by Leon Wiesenfeld, 1965. 
—
SIDE B
Jumping ahead about 90 years . . .

THE JEWISH WEDDING BAND WARS, 2009

The Orthodox Jewish (OJ) music scene is centered in New York City, where most of the OJ gigs are.

An OJ band not based in New York is called an “out of town” band, even if the band plays its own hometown.  There are a couple home-grown “out of town” OJ bands in Cleveland.

The Barry Cik Orchestra dominated the Orthodox Jewish Cleveland music scene in the 1980s.  Cik had yikhes (lineage), coming from a long line of distinguished Hungarian musicians.  I played a couple gigs with him.  His talented son Yehuda became an Ortho pop star.

Barry Cik was superseded in Cleveland by the Kol Simcha Orchestra in the 1990s.  Some bridal couples perceived Cik as not being frum (religiously observant) enough.  The Orthodox world, in general, was becoming increasingly more ritually observant.

Cik placed an ad in the Cleveland Jewish Times (no longer in existence) in 1991 that read in part: “I am as scrupulous in shimras Shabbos [guarding the Sabbath] as I can be, and I don’t believe that I’m any less Shomer Shabbos [Sabbath-observant] than most anybody else.”

Cik sometimes played for non-Orthodox Jewish simchas (celebrations) with mixed dancing — men and women dancing together.  Kol Simcha — the new band– typically didn’t play for mixed dancing.  Kol Simcha picked up a chunk of Cik’s frummer gigs.

Kol Simcha’s drummer got in trouble for using treyf (non-kosher) meat at his kosher Chinese restaurant, so he left town.  Still, Kol Simcha — the band — stayed in business.  The lead singer, Rabbi Simcha Mann, was a very good singer.

Several years later Simcha Mann’s expert keyboard player, Yosef Greenberger, put together a one-man band, which cut into Kol Simcha’s full-band wedding business.

Simcha Mann and Yosef Greenberger took their dispute to an unofficial beis din (house of judgment), where three rabbis decided Greenberger could keep his one-band and Rabbi Mann could have the full-band scene.  The two musicians agreed not to cut into each other’s turf.

This ruling held for 13 years, 1996 to 2009.

In 2009 Greenberger and Mann remembered the ruling differently.  Greenberger recalled the rabbis saying the ruling was void if new competition came to town.  Greenberger’s Jewish-law counsel, his toyan, backed him up in writing.  Mann disagreed.

New bands were playing Cleveland.  Yosef expanded to a full band.  Orthodox bands from Columbus, Ohio, and Detroit came through.  A young Orthodox musician started a new Cleveland Ortho band.

Yiddishe Cup joined the fray!  But Yiddishe Cup had three major flaws:

1. Yikhes (lineage/pedigree).  We had none.
2. We didn’t know the OJ repertoire very well.
3. Yiddishe Cup’s name was unorthodox.

For Ortho purposes, Yiddishe Cup became Shir Perfection.  (Shir is Hebrew for song.)   We had an Ortho singer who knew all the Ortho tunes.  We  held a couple rehearsals.  These get-togethers were secretly called Project O.  (‘O” for Orthodox.)  One musician called our project “Project Zero”; he didn’t like OrthoRock music and dropped out.

We didn’t get any gigs.  We thought we might get a couple.  For instance, Yiddishe Cup once played an OJ wedding for the daughter of an Orthodox blues harmonica player.  The dad, who didn’t blow on shabbes, sat in with us.

We were looking for Ortho gigs like that.

Still looking.

I remember Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. Who wrote the Fail part?

I remember Ted Williams could read the label on the ball.
I remember the Cream-O-Freeze.
I remember when the Air Force Academy sent me an application. I was only 10. I wanted a catalog.

I remember Larry and Norm Sherry of the Dodgers.
I remember Summit, the board game.
I remember Burger Chef.
I remember crepe dreidels hanging in the dining room.
I remember the biography of Robert E. Lee.

I remember my mother’s apple sauce. Always lumpy.
I remember the CTS 45 bus to the JCC.
I remember the Boy Scouts’ Life badge.
I remember my dad “hitting them out” to me in the park.

I remember playing “Exodus” on the clarinet at the sixth grade assembly.  I remember playing “Margie.”

I remember the shofar player missing every single note on Rosh Hashanah.

I remember 1950-D nickels.
I remember U.N. stamp souvenir sheets.
I remember the H-bomb.
I remember Continental pants, Pedwin loafers and
alpaca sweaters.

I remember Chemical Bond Approach Chemistry.
I remember Charlene Cohen, homecoming
queen runner-up.
I remember “Hands Off Cuba” graffiti by the Rapid.
I remember Saturday Night at the Movies on TV.
I remember slow-dancing to “Moon River” with a
Christian Scientist.
I remember the Roxy.

I remember the JCC’s vending room and how the pop machine was always broken.  The milk machine worked.  I got a lot of chocolate milk.  Was that a parents’ plot?

I remember Walter Lippmann.

I remember my mother writing: “Bert was absent from school yesterday due to religious observances.”

I remember T.A. Davis tennis rackets.
I remember How to Play Better Tennis by Bill Tilden.
I remember Rich Greenberg lost to Bobby McKinley (Chuck’s younger brother) in the National 16-and-unders.

I remember the bell at 3:30.
I remember Harvey Greenberg got a 799 Math
and 785 Verbal.
I remember more Greenbergs.
I remember Madden Football.  No, I don’t.
I remember Chap’s GTO.
I remember Geronimo, a Landmark book.

I remember Bruno Bornino’s “Big Beat” music column in the Cleveland Press.  (He also wrote “Pit Stop” about cars.)

I remember when I was 21 and remembering all this and feeling old.

—
This  post is a riff on poet Joe Brainard’s I Remember.

—
You may not have seen the post below.  It went up this weekend.  The cartoon at the end is super.

(Ivan Demjanjuk died today, 3/17/12.  This post is a rerun — a slightly altered version of a 3/31/10 post  titled “War Luck.”  The Ralph Solonitz cartoon at the bottom is new.)

I was interested in seeing a Nazi.  I had thought and dreamed about Nazis, but had never been in the same room with one.  (I dreamed about being in the same room.)

At the 1981 Ivan Demjanjuk trial in Cleveland, lawyers argued about forensics, among other things, at the federal courthouse.  I looked on, as the prosecution presented a handwriting expert who had studied over 4,000 signatures.  He said Demjanjuk’s signature on the prison guard ID card was the real thing, not a Soviet forgery.

The judge agreed on that and a few other things — after months of testimony — and revoked Demjanjuk’s citizenship.

Demjanjuk then spent some time in various American prisons for technical violations, such as missing his first deportation hearing.

In 1986 Demjanjuk was sent to Israel for a second trial.

A cop at the Sixth District police station watched a small TV hidden under his desk. The TV was always on. (I was covering the police news.)  The cop said, “Hey, there’s that guy — What You Call Him — getting off the plane in Israel.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t take a pill,” I said.

“For what? He didn’t do it.”

“There are five witnesses,” I said.

“So what. It’s the past. Let it die.  But the fucking Jews keep bringing it up.  He didn’t do it. He was told to, or else.”

A lieutenant interrupted, “What would you do if somebody put a gun to your head and said, ‘Do it or else’?”

“He didn’t have to do it,” I shrugged.  I was down for the count with F-ing Jews.

Israel convicted Demjanjuk, and he was in an Israeli prison for years.  Then Israel’s high court overturned its verdict on various technicalities and sent him back to America.

When Demjanjuk returned to the States, he went on trial again in Cleveland and was ordered deported.  Nobody wanted him until last year, when Germany said yes.

Damned John’s junket: Kiev Oblast, Flossenberg, Trawniki, Treblinka, Sobibor, Cleveland, Jerusalem, Munich . . .

Vat?  Dis not Pearly Gates!

Daniel Ducoff, Yiddishe Cup’s dance leader, is the all-in-one-machine: booking agent, valet and shrink.

Daniel has a social-work master’s degree and does free counseling.  For instance, when the musicians go out — like to CVS for candy bars and clubs for drinking — Ducoff hangs back with me  and says:  “What’s a couple extra bucks for beer and Snickers for the boys to to keep them happy?  Don’t fret. ”

Daniel handles all contract negotiations.   It’s not right for the bandleader to yak on the phone about “wiggle room” for the Oshkosh Opera House contract.  That’s Daniel’s job.

Ducoff handles the press too.  Reporters ask, “Why is this klezmer band different than all other klezmer bands?”  Daniel’s  answer: “Yiddishe Cup plays naked.”   The reporters – shlubs who sit in cubicles all day — buy it.

Daniel, who swam competitively in high school, calls ahead for dimensions on  pools at hotels.  Nobody likes to pull up to an “Olympic pool” that is four raindrops.

Daniel knows his way around snack shops.  Sun-baked chips are popular with the band.  Daniel says, “Sun baked chips are still chips, guys. You think the sun zapped the calories out?”

Daniel Ducoff

Daniel knows how to find exquisite — by Midwest standards — sourdough pretzels at all Pilot and Duke truck stops.

Ducoff is also the enforcer.  For example, Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, Don Friedman, occasionally blasts hard-bop jazz, like Art Blakey, inside the van.   This is borderline acceptable; it gives the band a certain panache when we pull into Bob Evans in Celina, Ohio, with  “Moanin’” blaring.   But, Don, turn the jazz off already!  That’s Ducoff’s job to tell Don.

Daniel Ducoff is the all-in-one machine.

—
This post, “He Gets Paid Extra,” is 49-percent true. It’s klez fiction.

—-

SIDE B

More klez fiction.  Readers demand it.  Certain readers, that is.  Pete Rushefsky, a NYC klezmer musician, told me, “I don’t read any of your real estate stuff.  I skip that and read the klezmer.”  There are 398 klez fans in the world.  They read this blog.  Enjoy.

GREEN MAN GROUP

I auditioned for Green Man Group at the Cleveland home of klezmer violinist Steve Greenman.

I didn’t play clarinet for Greenman.  I played my eyes.  I looked maniacally Jewish, then playfully Jewish and, finally, soulfully Jewish. I thought “Einstein” the whole time.

I got a callback!   Me and five other guys.

At the callback, Greenman sprayed us green and had us play fiddle patterns in E minor.  This was awkward for me because E minor is a bad key for my axe — clarinet.

But I did OK.

I made it to the final audition.  Me, Pete Rushefsky, tsimbl; and Jeff Warschauer, mandolin.  Greenman knows us all personally.  (That’s show biz.)

We didn’t get sprayed green this time, nor perform. Greenman interviewed us separately.

GREENMAN: A deer jumps on stage while you’re performing.  What do you do?

STRATTON: I play “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” in E minor, then shoot the deer.

GREENMAN: A customer in a wheelchair says, “Stop talking and start playing!”

STRATTON: I say, “I’ll start playing when you stand up.”

GREENMAN: Can you make hot hors d’oeuvres pop out of your instrument?

STRATTON: Yes, and candy apples on Simchat Torah.

GREENMAN: What is the most creative thing you’ve ever done on stage?

STRATTON: I tore up a $100 bill on stage at the Omaha JCC while the audience screamed at me:  “Stop, I’ll take that!”  It was art.

GREENMAN: What if nobody showed up at your gig?

STRATTON: I play hard for zero people just like I play for 6,000, which is what I’m used to.

Jeff Warschauer got the job.  Greenman and Warschauer are both short.  Greenman didn’t want anybody taller than him on stage.  That’s why I didn’t make it.

—
I have a piece, “For Cleveland Jews, Schvitz is Must,” in The Forward (online) this week.  Check it out, or read an extended version here in a few weeks.   The longer version should be better; it will contain profanity-laced, schvitzian dialogue.
—
A word from Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader:

re: my op-ed  in today’s NYT (2/29/12).

Do you want to read more landlord stories?  I have millions.  Here are two good ones: “Diving for Dollars” and “Tossed Out.”  Or just scroll down to the next post.

Best idea: Read my piece in the latest City Journal mag.  This article is my best writing.  If you are looking for top-quality real-estate lit, the City Journal article is the way to go. 

Must read long amusing article about real estate now.  Yes, you must.

I do a two-man music/prose show, “Dear Landlord: Real Music and Real Estate.”  You — or your real estate group –  should hire “Dear Landlord.”  We’re ready for the real estate conventions.

My band, Yiddishe Cup, plays all over the country.

I post up here every Wednesday morning.  Please subscribe to this blog.

Thanks.

–Bert Stratton

P.S.  Regular blog readers,  please read the post below too.  It’s fresh.

When a rent check bounces, the bank charges me $23.  I didn’t bounce the check.  Am I supposed to ask my tenants, “Is your check good or is it tissue paper?”

Eve, a tenant, ran a beauty parlor and was a chronic check-bouncer.  She once screamed at me: “My freaking check is good! Why don’t you put it in! I hand-delivered it to the manager yesterday.”

“The bank charges me!” I said. “I just called the bank.  The teller said it was no good.”

Eve was at the bank. The check was now good, she claimed.

Damn, I had just gone to city hall and filed an eviction on her for $100.

Now Eve owed me $100, plus the rent.   I said, “OK, I’ll put the check in if it’s good.”  (I would eat the $100 filing fee.)

“The check is good!” she said. “I pay my rent and I intend to pay it until the end of my lease, at which point I’m out of here! And you haven’t fixed the back screen door.”

Unfair fighting, Eve.  I said, “I’m evil, I know that.  You don’t like me, and I don’t like you.” I hung up and called the bank.  The check was good.

Peace and prosperity.

Next month Eve was back in Bounce City.  At the eviction hearing, she cried and walked out, wailing, “I’m crying just like a girl!”  The bailiff red-tagged her; he taped a red writ of restitution to the door of her store.  She had 10 days to move.

She didn’t.

She paid her rent.  She was legally “evicted,” but not in real life.

The following month Eve didn’t pay her rent or show up at court.  She called and told me her “baby daddy” wasn’t giving her kid enough money.  Also, the store’s electric was off.   She hadn’t paid the bill.   She couldn’t cut hair without electricity.

That was her problem.  The bailiff gave her a second red tag.

My locksmith picked the beauty salon’s front door lock, re-keyed the cylinder ($142 for the pick job), and I walked in.  Everything was gone — the barber chairs, wash stations and wall cabinets.  Ripped out.  The red tag was still there.

Jimmy Sollisch, a friend, plays basketball at age 53.  But he’s hurting.  Jimmy has plantar fasciitis and is temporarily out of action.

Diagnosis: Alter Kockeritis

I’m glad Jimmy is hurt.  Guys in their fifties, they think they’re going to be pain-free forever.  It’s sick fun to watch them get zapped by the middle-age hand buzzer.

I ran into Ken Kurtz, who was on Penn’s all-star lacrosse team.  Not now.  In 1955.  Ken is 78, but looks 65.  He played singles tennis until several months ago.  He said, “You have to know when to quit, but it’s impossible to know.  I never know.”  Ken has stopped playing lacrosse, squash, basketball and, now, singles tennis.  His advice: “Take up painting.”

I said, “I already do things like that.”  (Like klezmer music.)

Jimmy — the basketball player –  wants to play basketball at 70.  That’s like climbing Mount Everest.

Jimmy’s “painting” is cooking.  He makes an excellent roasted lamb.

Sacrifice the lamb, kid.  That’s the way to make it to basketball at 70.

Every decade or so, I throw out my elbow braces, thumb splints and knee braces.  Sometimes I get emotionally attached to the stuff, and it’s hard to throw out certain items.  Like, if you sleep with a molded arm splint for three months, you can’t just pitch it.

My friend Carl wears a knee brace when he plays tennis.  I refuse.  Knee braces are crutches.

I threw out my “clarinet tendinitis 1991” notes and exercise diagrams.

I did biofeedback back then.  I did it just once.

I went to a blind masseuse who believed in inducing terrific pain in me.  His dog should have stopped him.  Deep tissue, deep purple.   He was accused of  rape.  (Different customer.)

I have a new bag of orthotics — mostly knee braces and exercise diagrams.

I’m supposed to balance on one foot for 30 seconds with my eyes closed.

Try it.  If you succeed, you are completely well.

You shouldn’t have read this.  You might become “worried well.”

Retirees usually make good tenants.  Unfortunately, I don’t get many retiree tenants, because most old folks don’t want to live in pre-war hardwood-floor apartments with no dishwasher or A/C.   Been there, done that.

I had an application from Joe, 71, a retired factory worker.
He made $1600/month.

Welcome, Joe.

I ran a criminal search on him as a formality. Aggravated arson, forgery and sexual battery.

Pre-Internet, I would have rented to him.  Pre-Internet,  it was hard to run background checks.  I once rented to a rapist/murderer because I wasn’t schlepping to county records, and the rapist wasn’t volunteering he was a rapist/ murderer.  (The man got picked up on a parole violation and moved out of my apartment without killing or raping.)

I rented to a retired nurse whose previous landlord followed her to my place.  He told me the old lady was a forger and felon.

But she already had the keys to my place!  My building manager had given her the keys in exchange for a dime store ring.

My custodian, Buck, always subverted me.  For example, he thought junk mail should stay in perpetuity; watering outdoor plants was ridiculous; and accepting fake rings was part of the job.

I helped Buck move the retired nurse’s belongings into the basement.  I locked the basement door.

“Give me my meds!” she said.

She had a point.

I gave her meds, plus her toothbrush.

This cost me.

I was young.  I learned two things: a) Don’t ever do a “self-help” eviction.  Lawyers love self-help evictions.  b) Screen all tenants like crazy on the way in.

Cleveland is in the middle of the cereal belt.  Shredded Wheat of Niagara Falls, New York, is to the east, and to the west is Kellogg’s of Battle Creek, Michigan.

Shredded Wheat moved from Niagara Falls years ago, but the cereal belt remains.  Cleveland is the buckle.

Clevelander Marty Gitlin just published a cereal encyclopedia, The Great American Cereal Book  (Abrams Images), featuring “hundreds of images of vintage cereal boxes and spokes-characters — Tony the Tiger, Snap, Crackle, Pop, and Lucky the Leprechaun.”

Test-marketed in Cleveland

I had a prospective store tenant who wanted to open a cereal store.  He opened down the street and went under almost immediately.  He was Cereal Central, aka Cerealicious.   Nobody in Cleveland wanted to eat cereal in a store.  (He also had a store in Columbus near Ohio State.  Apparently,  OSU students were willing to eat cereal in a restaurant.)

Most people like to eat cereal alone and not talk about it.  That’s my guess.

In my temple bulletin, no bar mitzvah kid’s profile reads: “Jacob is interested in cereal.”  More often it’s “Morgan enjoys  Sudoku and chatting online, and is a member of the recycling club.”

What is Morgan’s cereal?

Marty Gitlin and I want to know.

***

Musicians — at least one — eat cereal at home after late-night gigs.  Musicians can’t fall asleep after gigs.  Musicians’ heads are filled with fruit loops of “Simon Tov” and “Hava Nagilah.”  (Klezmer musicians’ heads, that is.)

Shredded wheat choices at 1 a.m.: Barbara’s shredded wheat or Quaker shredded wheat.  (Shredded wheat is not trademarkable.)  I mix Barbara’s with Autumn Harvest (Kashi).

—-
I wrote an “advice column” for the Ann Arbor Observer (February 2012).  Check it out: “Hit the Road, Jack . . . A dad’s advice.”   

Click here to hear what junior (Jack) is up to today:  “Louder Naftule.”  The latest in klezmer.

Drummer Jack Stratton, backed by clarinetists Merlin Shepherd and Lucy Stratton. KlezKamp, 1993. (Photo by Al Winn)

If I didn’t lead a klezmer band, I might not hire one.  Yiddishe Cup might be too Jewish for me.

“Too Jewish” means anything — or anybody — more Jewish than oneself.  Example: Franz Rosenzweig, a German Jewish intellectual, said nothing Jewish — no matter how far out — was alien to him.  I tried Franz’s approach: I davened (prayed) with the yeshiva buchers in Boro Park, Brooklyn; drank schnapps at Telshe Yeshiva, Cleveland; and soaked in the mikvah (ritual bath) in Cleveland Heights.  Also, I read Rabbi Sherman Wine’s God-is-dead books.  I covered a lot of humentashn (bases).

Would I hire a klezmer band?

Yes.

I did.  I hired Yiddishe Cup three times — for my kids’ b’nai mitzvot parties.  (And I got a decent price.)

1. For my daughter’s bat mitzvah party, I also hired a troupe of hospital-therapy dogs for the cocktail hour.

2. For my younger son, we had a DJ party, plus the klez band party.  My son organized the DJ party.  He hired the DJ — himself.

3. My older son had a trivia quiz, plus the klezmer band. That worked out well.  He wound up on Jeopardy!

Yiddishe Cup plays, at minimum, 15 minutes of Jewish music, and we use a dance leader, so everybody knows what to do.

Naturally, the goys like us best.  Jews have hang-ups.

I know about Jews and hang-ups.  I have belonged to more shuls than the Pope.  I was Reform, then Conservative, then Reform, and now Conservative again.

My friends and relatives don’t always hire Yiddishe Cup.  But I go to their parties and have a good time.  The weddings are enjoyable; the bar mitzvahs are sometimes difficult.  The DJ and his “dance facilitators” can be loud and obnoxious.  The DJ announces, “The young adults will gather on the dance floor for a group photo.”

Get in the picture, yourself, DJ.  You look 18.   And the “young adults” are not young adults, they’re animals.  Stow the glow sticks.  Bring out the cattle prods.

The optimal level of Jewishness is Yiddishe Cup with therapy dogs.

—

Yiddishe Cup plays  The Ark 8 p.m. Sat (Feb.4), Ann Arbor, Mich.   Here is an unrepresentative video from last year’s  show:

Every January I spend a day filling out employer tax forms.

My favorite is the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) form.

I did my first FUTA Form 940 in 1978, when my dad went to Florida for the winter.  He and his high school buddies golfed in Boca Raton, and I filled out FUTAs in Cleveland.

Not bad.  I like tax forms better than golf.

Toby Stratton (far L) w/ friends at Boca Lago CC, 1983

The treasurer of Ohio likes his W-2 reconciliations promptly.  The Ohio Bureau of Employment Services also likes its money quickly.  The  Ohio Workers  Compensation bureau has rachmones (pity) and bugs me only twice a year, not quarterly like everybody else.

I used an IBM Selectric-style typewriter for tax forms until the machine died last year.  The A key wouldn’t work.  That was its main drawback.
“ lbert
Str tton”  didn’t cut it with the government.  I threw out the typewriter and several boxes of Ko-Rec-Type.

Now I use IRS computer forms, except for my Yiddishe Cup 1099s, which I do by hand.

Last year I used blue ink on Yiddishe Cup’s 1099s.

The gobierno prefers black ink, I’ve learned.  I’ll get with the program this year.

What are you in jail for?

Blue ink.

No thanks.

***

I wore a camping headlamp and crawled around the attic, culling old manila folders, making room for new files.

The old files weren’t read by anybody.

Why did I save all this stuff?

Because the government wanted me to.

I got insulation flecks on my fleece jacket.  It was freezing up there.  And there were mouse droppings and desiccated rubber bands.

My dad used to recycle manila folders.  For instance, he would reuse the file “1975 Plumbing” in 1981.

I threw out 30 pounds of paid invoices, checks and rent rolls.  I do this every January.

Should I feel nostalgic?

I don’t.

—-
Here’s an op-ed, “From Soltzberg to Stratton,” from last week’s Jerusalem Post (Jan. 17).

Theodore "Toby" Stratton (ne Soltzberg), 1938, age 21

Louise Stevenson, an elderly tenant, plastered 3- and 4-cent stamps on her rent envelope.  This was in the 1980s.

Miss Stevenson was an old maid and very old school.  She patrolled the building  in a nightgown — a house coat — whatever women wore in the 1950s.  My mom wore one too.  Yes, a house coat.

Miss Stevenson didn’t like the custodians.  These workers never met her standards.  One custodian showed off too much butt crack when he scrubbed the floors.  Another manager supposedly broke into Miss Stevenson’s apartment and stole a book.  A third custodian went barefoot “like a hillbilly” in the hallway.

Miss Stevenson could guess whenever I was coming by; she stood guard by the building’s front door.  I listened to a lot of her diatribes about the decline of the West (Side).

I had a stamp collection too.  I should have talked stamps with her.  But I didn’t.  Miss Stevenson was a bit frightening, and my dad had always taught me: Don’t get personal with the tenants.

Miss Stevenson claimed she was related to Robert Louis Stevenson.  (The stolen book was an autographed Stevenson, she said.)

She carried a shopping bag and took the bus downtown every day, wearing her house coat.

Miss Stevenson died in 1992.   That year a first-class letter was 29 cents.

I hope I get a letter today with eleven 4-cent Lincolns on it.  I won’t, unless Miss Stevenson sends this . . .

—

Postage goes to 45 cents Sunday (January 22).  Add:

I maintained records on my bike, like car owners keep track of oil changes.  Like when I last greased the hub.

I stopped with cleaned power chain in 1983.  I have winged it since.

My bike has  miles on it.  I bought it at Heights Furniture & Toy for $169 in 1978.  ($586 in today’s dollars.)  It’s a 10-speed Kabuki Superlight, which is not super light.  The bike has been to both oceans and several foreign countries.

It’s my wife’s fault.  When I met her, she was training to be an American Youth Hostels bike trip leader.  On our honeymoon, we biked in the Yucatán, where we sucked high-sulfur Mexican truck fumes on jungle roads.  It sucked.  We parked the bikes in Mérida and took the train to Palenque.

The bike and skipper, 1978, Mexico

These days — particularly on weekends — my bike goes automatically to Chagrin Falls, 12 miles east of my garage.  Chagrin Falls is very pleasant.

Chagrin Falls has ice cream shops, a popcorn shop and a bookstore.   Along the way, there are hills and valleys.  Novelist Don Robertson called Chagrin Falls “Paradise Falls.”  The town is, except when I can’t get a free cup of  water at Dave’s Cosmic Subs.   Lighten up, Dave.   How many stores do you own already?

When I’m in southern Ohio on the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure (GOBA), my Kabuki bike is the source of  ribbing from bike geeks.

I don’t mind their kidding.

My bike doesn’t mind either.

Ask the bike.  Go ahead, ask the bike . . .

***

Chagrin Falls, January 10, 2012.  Endless summer . . .

—
Jack Stratton’s Funklet made Kickstarter’s list of Top 12 Videos of 2011. See the videos here.