Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Eric Krasner wanted to make a movie about Mickey Katz, the Cleveland-born klezmer clarinetist and comedian. Eric came to Cleveland from Atlanta to look around. He wanted to see where Mickey was born, and where Mickey’s wife grew up, and where Mickey’s father’s tailor shop had been. I said, “I’m not a filmmaker — and I don’t want to tell you what to do — but if you want another opinion, I don’t think you should show every place Mickey took a shit.”

1959 album

Eric and I visited the Euclid Avenue Temple (now Liberty Hill Baptist Church), where Mickey was married in 1930. Eric filmed the men’s room and said, “This is where Mickey urinated after his wedding.” Eric asked me why Katz (1909-1985) wasn’t more acclaimed in Cleveland. For one thing, Mickey is not well-known here. He’s not Bob Feller or Superman, or Pekar.

Eric and I went to Glenville, an East Side neighborhood where Mickey spent his teenage years. We found the Glenville Hall of Fame but no Mickey plaque. At Katz’s birthplace, near East 51st and Woodland, Eric drew a sign, “Birthplace of Mickey Katz 1909,” and hung it on a fence and filmed the sign.

Eric announced on Facebook he is giving up on the Mickey Katz film. Mickey’s son Joel Grey has declined to participate in Eric’s film, and that’s a big neg. The movie is toyt.

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I write about 50 business checks a month. The other day I hit check number 10,000. This made think of some old-timers (not me, other old timers).

I’ve had tenants whose personal checks went into the 8000s. I respected those people, their age, and their numbers. Also, I knew their checks wouldn’t bounce. The scariest check number is 101. Young tenants don’t even know how to write checks I have to fill in certain lines for them.

That 10,000. Please respect it.

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I followed klezmer clarinetist Sid Beckerman around KlezKamp — the annual music conference in the Catskills. Sid talked to me. Big deal? Yes. Sid was paid staff, and I was just a paying student. Staff had a lot of demands on their time.

Sid had no ego. Sid was “discovered” by klez revivalists and made his first record at age 70. (He died in 2007 at 88.) Sid had a proprietary book of his own tunes. The book was nicknamed “the sheets,” short for “sheet music.” Sid’s sheets were guarded — quarantined — by pianist Pete Sokolow, who had transcribed the tunes.

Sid Beckerman 1998

I wanted a copy of the sheets, so I gave Pete a xerox of a 1938 magazine article about “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn,” hoping to get in Pete’s good graces. Pete was not impressed. He said, “The sheets? What sheets? I’m so busy. I’m working up an arrangement for fifteen people. What did Sid say?”

Sid said, “What transcriptions?”

I offered Sid $20 for the sheets, which he turned down.

A year later, 1991, the sheets came out as the Klezmer Plus! Folio by Tara Publications. Everybody could now buy the sheets. Pete and Sid had just been protecting their intellectual property.

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Brian said he was good for the rent. He said, “I’m not like that [a deadbeat]. I pay. I’m an artist. I have $750 tied up in PayPal right now that won’t be released.” His paintings were dark and red like Franz Kline’s. He didn’t pay and I evicted him. The good news: he paid after the legal hearing, so he stuck around. I said, “Modigliani didn’t pay his rent either.”

“The guy who did the long faces?”

“Yep.”

Brian didn’t pay his rent the next month, so I evicted him again, and this time he moved  out, and left a wall of splattered paint, like Jackson Pollock. Also, he wrecked the bathroom floor because he never used the shower curtain. He left one painting, which I offered to the building manager.

The bailiff bumped into me at the city court and said, “Your tenant knocked over a couple display shelves in Drug Mart and is under psych observation for a couple weeks.”

“He’s already out of my apartment,” I said.

I told an employee about Brian. This worker liked to stay up-to-date on horror stories. The employee said, “There are two sides to this. Everybody is mentally ill.”

“He sold paintings in Germany on the internet,” I said.

“Everybody is a star on the internet. There are two sides.”

At least.

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The clarinet can injure your right thumb, which holds a disproportionate amount of weight when you’re standing. I had a pain in my thumb that lasted one and a half years. I drove to Cincinnati to see a specialist. Then I did Alexander Technique and every other technique short of amputation. The clarinet is not only the licorice stick, it’s also the agony stick.

Here are another couple reasons the clarinet is the agony stick: The fingering patterns for clarinet are harder than sax, and the clarinet has the “break,” the awkward leap from A to B in the middle register. And the clarinet sounds horrible the first year or two you play it. I asked a sax guy in a big band if he played clarinet. He said, “I have a clarinet.”

—–

Theodore “Toby” Stratton, age 67, 1984.

Hey, I have something else for you to read. My latest essay in City Journal.
The essay, “Beating My Dad,” is about how I hope to outlive my father.

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The bride can ditch her own wedding. She gets the flu, or a headache, or a swollen ankle, and lies down for a few hours. Misses the whole party. Or what if the mom dies during the “Chicken Dance”? That happened. Not at my gig, but at my video guy’s gig. Did he get it on tape? I don’t know. My video guy died.

The video guy had a video rack which I called the Tower of Power. He barely budged from the rack the whole night. That bugged me. For instance, when Yiddishe Cup strolled table-to-table taking requests, the video guy would tell me which tables to go to. Like “Can you do the head table next?”

I thought to myself, “Why should I do the head table next? I’m in charge of this band.” I told him no. The head table was nowhere near us, but it was near the Tower of Power. I said, “Why do you want me to go over there now?”

“Because I want to sit down,” he said.

Screw that.

“I’ll remember this when you want a favor,” he said.

Then he died. I didn’t know he was gravely ill.

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I like the woman who beat James Holzhauer on Jeopardy! Monday night. I think she’ll go far. (If she lost last night, please ignore this paragrah.)

When my kid Ted — he was 23 at the time — won on Jeopardy!, our family had to keep his wins a secret for a few months. If the news got out, Ted wouldn’t get the money, for one thing. Jeopardy! tapes its shows a couple months in advance. How does Jeopardy! keep the taping results a secret? [Maybe Robert Knecht Schmidt will read this “Klezmer Guy” post and tell us. He’s a former J! contestant and expert.]

Relevant to this — today’s date, June 5. For Ted’s second game, the Final Jeopardy category was Middle Eastern Affairs, and the “answer” was “The Arab-Israeli War that started on June 5, 1967, ended with a cease-fire on this date in Israel.”

Ted knew about the Six-Day War, and so did the two goys who rounded out the panel. I — watching at home — did some easy math; I added 6 to June 5 and got the answer: June 11.

Wrong, Pops. It’s June 10. (Use your fingers to figure out the right answer, and while you’re at it, check out the math concept “fencepost error” on Wikipedia)

Ted answered correctly, and the others got it wrong. I have never been more flabbergasted.

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When Allen Ginsberg visited my college poetry class in 1969, he said we only had five years left. He said, “I’m afraid to read the papers.” And he said Burroughs claimed we had less than five years.

Mark Schilling (L) and Bert Stratton. 1970, hitchhiking from Cleveland to A2. Sign reads “Ann Arbor.”

How was I supposed to get through pre-med if the world was ending? The Ann Arbor Bank sign read 15 degrees. The sign at the First United Methodist Church was “Are you going through life with a kindergartner’s conception of God?” Probably. Ginsberg had a beard.

The first Earth Day was in April 1970. People suddenly were talking about duck-down and goose-down sleeping bags instead of the Vietnam war. I bought a bag for $35. The feathers kept coming out the seams. It was sewn-through, so where the thread was, there was no down. The seams were supposed to keep the down from rolling down to one end. It didn’t work too well. I couldn’t even turn in it. It was called a mummy bag. I felt dead. But the world didn’t end.

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This blog has been around 10 years. Sometimes I think of hanging it up, but then I post a rerun and carry on. Over all, I enjoy writing the blog.

If I hadn’t started the blob, I wouldn’t have had any op-eds in national publications. My first New York Times piece  — about my mom shopping at Heinen’s — was written for this blog, but then I figured, hey, why not first send it to the Times for Mother’s Day. I sent it to “oped@nytimes.com,” and bingo, millions of people read the op-ed, including my ex-girlfriends, long-lost college and high school friends, Obama, Kissinger, and Dylan (or so I imagined).

My mother and father at Ohio Stadium, 1959.
Julia and Toby Stratton

Some people don’t want to be in this blog. I once showed a friend a rough draft about him, and he said, “I’m a private person. Please don’t run that.” And the piece was all flattery, too. Another time, a woman asked me to delete a post about her because she didn’t want me to be remembered the way I remembered her.

I started the blob to leave footprints in the sand, as the great Mileti said about his arena at Richfield, Ohio. I wonder if my kids, after I’m gone, will pay GoDaddy to keep the electricity on at this site. I doubt they will, and I don’t blame them. I might quit this blog at any time. Just a heads-up. I don’t owe you a 30-days’ written notice.

Thanks to everybody who write comments. Have you noticed how it’s 90-percent guys who comment?

The hard-boiled reason I started the blog: to promote Yiddishe Cup’s 2009 CD, Klezmer Guy. (Buy the CD here.) What’s a CD? What’s a blog?

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I ignored several voicemails during Seder. Finally, at 11:15 pm, I listened to my messages:”You really should call me. The main sewer line is backing up and my snake broke. I know it’s Passover but you should call me.”

I talked to my plumber and a couple other guys. My best shot was Roto-Rooter (commercial division), which a few years back had cleared the line with a water jet. My second choice was a plumber from Bay Village with a big snake.

Mr. Bay Village showed up the next morning — Easter morning. RotoRooter — I never heard from them.

A store tenant, Rush Inn Bar & Grille, was part of the problem. Rush Inn has the fourth-best french fries in Cleveland, according to Scene Magazine, so the building’s sewer line, shared by all the tenants, sometimes gets greasy.

I got the snake-job invoice the other day: “Opened line at 103 feet just before line tied to city sewer. Blockage was grease, rag and a shirt in pipe just before main. $867 (holiday rate).”

I’m not complaining. I‘m happy Bay Village showed up. An Easter Sunday of floating fries, feces and baked ham would have been miserable. And I had a nice Seder.

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A Yiddish singer from Massachusetts used to skewer fellow Jewish musicians on the internet for performing in Germany. One of the singer’s lines was “Nobody looks good in brown lipstick.” (Meaning, don’t kiss German tush.) “Heaven forfend that any unpleasantness intrudes upon your pursuit of the deutschmarks.”

Nevertheless, most American klez bands wanted to play in Germany. Yiddishe Cup wanted to. A klez festival in Fuerth, Germany, said the festival committee was looking forward to a Yiddishe Cup appearance. Then the festival switched leaders, and I didn’t hear from the organizers for a long time. I emailed a few more times. No answer. Finally, I phoned Germany and asked the receptionist, “Do you speak English?”

He said, “I’ll give it a try,” in easy-breezy English. His only bad line was the last: “Ve vill not be needing you.”

But let’s not forget, Yidd Cup has played abroad: the Windsor, Ontario JCC.

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I shot a cow because it was crippled and couldn’t walk. Then my dad sold the dead cow to the Amish for meat. We couldn’t sell it to anybody else because it wasn’t “choice.” My dad loved everything about cows: barns, ice cream, blintzes. He had me throw baseballs against the side of  the barn like Bob Feller used to. My dad thought I might be the next Rapid Robert. Didn’t happen.

I planned to attend Ohio State to major in dairy science, but my high school buddies — all non-dairy types — talked me into Michigan, where I majored in diary science (creative writing).

After college I spent a year in Israel at a kibbutz milking cows in the refet (dairy barn). I like unpasteurized milk, but it’s hard to find. I like ordering milk at bars. Women love that. They say, “James Cagney!”

I have zero tolerance for the lactose intolerant.

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“Don’t play any klezmer music, nothing ethnic,” the mayor’s assistant said. Why did the city hire Yiddishe Cup?

Our contract rider stipulated a fruit platter, bottled water and diet colas. A good gig, food-wise, but what were we going to play? I said, “You don’t want to alienate anybody with ethnic music?”

Wolf & Hake Soltzberg (with  daughter). Ukraine. Bert’s great-grandparents

“That’s the mayor’s thought,” she said.

“How much non-ethnic music do you want?”

“All or mostly.”

“Can you give me a percentage?”

“Ninety-percent American music,” she said.

It was an Orange Jews crowd. With pulp. About 90-percent Jewish. (Orange, Ohio.)

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The medical office building was right next to Pizza Hut, Burger King and Boston Market. Every time I went to the medical building I felt crappy. What was I doing in Pizza Hut land?

Who owns all the restaurants, office buildings, and gas stations in Solon, Ohio? Guys like me. I owned a medical building, complete with docs, dentists, massotherapists and chiropractors. I ran a 30,000 square-foot mini-hospital. A hazardous-waste company picked up surgical needles. The HVAC filters were hospital-grade so the patients wouldn’t breathe anything but the purest air. The windows didn’t open much.

I put up some oil paintings in the lobby. My friend Irwin Weinberger painted them. A tenant, a doc, texted me: “If you can put that up, how about painting my wall?” So we painted his wall. That doc was picky. He had vanity plates that read “DDS MD.” (A real estate broker once told me doctors are the worst tenants “because they think they’re God.”)

The A/C bill for the building was $2,500.month. That’s some air. Also, I paid the snowplow guy an extra $125 per push for salt because I didn’t want any patients falling in the parking lot. Don’t forget the elevator guy, the security company, and we had a phone line to the elevator in case anybody got stuck in there. One day the elevator went out completely. That was a bad day. There was only one elevator in the building. “How are my elderly patients going to get to the third floor!” They’re not.

Every Dollar General Store, Burger King, medical office building and car lot in the world is owned by somebody. I already said that but it bears repeating. I’m an owner. I took a risk buying that medical office building; I wasn’t sure docs would re-up because independent docs were phasing out. I sold the building. Now I never go there.

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There was fervid heckling at the 2018 Workmen’s Circle concert. The show, at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights, featured Yiddishe Cup / Funk a Deli. The emcee was Michael Wex, author of Born to Kvetch. Wex is a kamikaze raconteur. He takes chances with his monologues, playing with self-immolation. Wex wears elves shoes to bring him luck. The shoes curl up at the tips.

The Yiddish-concert audience can be unforgiving, maybe because the show is free and attracts all types. One year Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled, was heard backstage saying, “Why do they bring freaks like me here!” Maybe Dolgin was having second thoughts about how the AK crowd would respond to his hip-hop klezmer. The Cleveland audience is mostly baby-boom AKs, plus a few genuine WWII types, and some Russians and Orthodox. Every year there are fewer bodies at the show. Six-to-eight hundred is a typical turn out. Used to be around 2,000.

Miguel Wex

At last year’s concert, a man interrupted Wex with “When’s the music start!” Wex was discussing hok a tshaynik and how it related to funk (as in Funk a Deli). Wex told the heckler, “This is the music, schemdrick!”

Wex also did a comedic bit about fat Hasidim. (Before the show, Wex had noticed some yarmulkes in the crowd and wondered if his shtick would fly. He told me his humor had gone over well with frum Jews before.) In his monologue, Wex said many Hasidim don’t exercise but do seem to like to push. Wex said the inventor of Roller Derby, the late Leo Seltzer, was a former Hasid. Wex said if four Hasidim gathered in opposite corners of the Cain Park amphitheater, the four Hasidim would eventually meet in the middle of the theater and push each other. Wex said he had been to Japan (not true) and wanted to start a new sport, Frumo. A concertgoer stood up and yelled, “Stop it. Stop it right now!”

Wex said, “This is what I get paid to do. You don’t have to listen to me if you don’t want to.”

We were witnessing a Lenny Bruce reenactment — for free yet.

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I couldn’t get Alice, my wife, to go to KlezKamp. I went without her (1989). I took our kids Teddy and Lucy, and spent a lot of time in the game room and swimming pool that year. The pool was slightly larger than a silver dollar, and you had to coat yourself with skin cream, or get a rash. The kids and I went to New York City afterward. Lucy, then 5, made me carry her everywhere. We weren’t going too far. We ate at Popeye’s on Times Square.

When we got back to Cleveland, my wife said, “The kids look anemic!” But we ate beans and rice and lemonade at Popeye’s, Alice! (The kids weren’t crazy about the borscht and herring at KlezKamp.) Alice never trusted me with food-and-kids.

The next year Alice came to KlezKamp, and we brought the entire family, including toddler Jack. Alice took folk dancing classes but the sessions weren’t enough exercise for her. She found an indoor tennis court which was dusty and dark, like playing in a parking garage.The balls turned gray in a minute. Also, we went skiing on Christmas. I thought the slopes would be empty. No, a lot of Asians and Jews were there. Also, we sneaked into The Pines resort for ice skating. The Pines was a 1950s Borscht Belt movie. Trivia contests in the lobby.

We kept going back to KlezKamp, and every year Alice would complain, “I can’t believe we’re going to KlezKamp again!” After 12 years, we hung it up. Alice had learned all the dances, the kids were thoroughly brainwashed with klez and Yiddishkeit, and I had met all the old klez guys: Max Epstein, Felix Fibich, Danny Rubenstein, Velvel Pasternak, Paul Pincus, Leon Schwartz, Ray Musiker, Ben Bazyler, Sid Beckerman, German “That’s Herman in Russian” Goldenshteyn, Howie Leess and Elaine Hoffman Watts. KlezKamp was great.

Jack, drums, Lucy, clr, KlezKamp 1993.

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Every few days I get an email from my synagogue that reads something like this: “Subject — the passing of Melvin Weiner.” About three people die per week at my shul. (I belong to a big shul.) My rabbi must live at funerals. Yes, he has an associate rabbi, but still, I think he — the senior rabbi — does most of the heavy lifting. The senior rabbi told me Costco has the best lox in town. He should know; he must see at least five dairy spreads a week. (I see my fair share, too. I love a dairy spread.)

The passing of Albert “Bert” Stratton. No, I prefer “the passing of Albert Stratton.” Cleaner. I visited my mom’s grave a while back and couldn’t find it because it had snow on it. The headstones are flush to the ground. I guessed the approximate location of the grave and drew a Jewish star and Mom. She’s at Hillcrest Cemetery with my dad.

My wife doesn’t want to be buried in our shul’s cemetery (Park Synagogue /Bet Olam) because it’s too cramped. I’m fine with Park. My wife wants to be in Lake View Cemetery. Actually, she doesn’t “want” anything. She doesn’t like to discuss this. I wonder if my rabbi does burials at Lake View. [Yes.] Lake View is a nondenominational garden-style WASPy place. I’ve seen Jewish stars on some of the tombstones there. Lake View is in Cleveland Heights. Nice. It’s not by the freeway. Nice. But if I die today, put me in Bet Olam — by the freeway.

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I knew a college counselor who if he put in a good word for you, you were in. Harvard, Yale, Harvey Mudd, Deep Springs. That’s what we parents all thought, but the counselor didn’t produce every single time. He said go to a college that was a “good fit.” He, himself, went to Harvard, always a good fit for a college counselor.

Here’s my approach — and  a tip for high schoolers. Describe a setback you have faced. “My parents don’t like klezmer music. They are so wrong. I’ve been playing klezmer my whole life. It has made me think for myself and be my own person.”

I attended a college-rejection shiva in 1968. A high school friend was rejected by every college he applied to. He got in nowhere! And he was in the top 10 in our class. (We’re pretty sure, in hindsight, the guidance counselor blackballed him.) We sat in a corner booth at Corky & Lenny’s and drank chocolate phosphates. My friend eventually got in to Ohio State on a late application. OSU had rolling, open admissions. In Columbus, my friend lived in a high-rise dorm with 16 guys per suite. It was not exactly the house system at Harvard.

My dad with his dormmates at Ohio Stadium, about 1935. The men lived in the stadium. All in one room, on cots.

—
Yidd Cup / FAD (Funk a Deli) is at Park Syn, Pepper Pipes, Ohio, tonight (March 20) at 7:15 pm. Free. Happy Purim!

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Do I get new plates or keep my 2003 Ohio bicentennial plates?

Whichever is easiest.

Entering the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, I had Harvey Pekar-level anxiety. But I lucked out; I was a plate transfer, not a new driver’s license, so I got to skip to the head of the line.

I had bought a Subaru Legacy and sold my Ford Fusion. Both cars are red, so nobody knows I have a new car. A disappointment. I wanted a blue car, but the Subaru Legacy doesn’t come in blue. I refuse to drive gray, silver, black or white. I miss the purple on the Plymouth Duster.

I was in and out of the BMV in 15 minutes. Can you beat that? I accidentally left one of my plates on the counter and a clerk ran out, yelled “sir” at me, and handed me the plate. I said to her, “At least I got you outside! Thanks.” It was 20 degrees and snowing. She said, “I don’t want to be outside.” The BMV. I miss Harvey Pekar.

Not my plate, btw.

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Howard Metzenbaum was a big name in my father’s generation. Metzenbaum made millions in parking lots, and eventually became a U.S. senator. My father and Metzenbaum were born the same year, 1917, in Cleveland. My dad didn’t know Metzenbaum but enjoyed following his career.

Metzenbaum, in his later years, owned a condo at Three Village, the holy of holies for upscale living on East Side Cleveland. The building went up in 1978 near Cedar Road at I-271. The Three Village condo development was wooded and secluded. My parents lived nearby, at the Mark IV apartments (now called the Hamptons). My parents liked brand-new housing; they weren’t keen on used. Everything had to be shiny and new, maybe because they grew up in poverty.

Across from the Mark IV was Acacia on the Green — a step up, rent- and prestige-wise, from the Mark IV. Next to Acacia was Sherri Park, a step down. Across from Sherri Park was Point East, a step up from Acacia but down from Three Village. These buildings all went up in the 1970s and were popular with my parents’ generation.

My parents never went inside Metzenbaum’s building. I did. I visited a rich friend who bought a condo in Three Village. Metzenbaum was long gone — dead as of 2008. The building’s buzzer directory read Maltz, Mandel, Ratner, Risman, Weinberger and Wuliger.

Maybe you have to be an old Cleveland Jew to appreciate that. If you’re not an old Cleveland Jew and have read this far, please explain why.

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