OLD GUYS
The phone number at AAA Window Shade Co. was 221-3700. The proprietor, Joe Villoni, started there at 13, and was 87 when he pulled the last shade down. Seventy-four years: same job, same location.
He quit in 2003 because nobody was buying window shades anymore. Everybody was into $5 mini-blinds at Home Depot. My father,Toby, and I had kept Joe’s rent low because Joe never asked for anything.
The store’s wood floor had a grooved path circumnavigating the huge window shade—making machine. That apparatus, and possibly the whole store, belonged in the Henry Ford Museum.
I always liked Joe — and the other old-guy tenants. I was just a baby, a pisher (pisser/youngster), to these guys. Another old tenant, Jim English, gave me a metal Phillies cigar box full of screws. I appreciated the cigar box more than the screws. I was in my twenties and collected anything older than myself.
An old custodian, Jeanne Saunders, left me several novel manuscripts when she died. She had one lung, a great disposition, and a tough life; she should have written her life story and gone easier on the long, lanky cowboys and gladiators.
Another old custodian, Mary Kubichar, produced a concert for Yiddishe Cup. It was at the Beck Center for the Performing Arts on the West Side. That was the first — and last — West Side Yiddishe Cup concert. (West Side means “not a lot of Jews.”)
Mary was from western P.A. (You need to say each letter: P. A.) She never married. After retiring from Higbee’s department store, she became a super volunteer at her church and the Beck arts center. So when she told the arts center to hire Yiddishe Cup, they owed her. The concert turned into an appreciation party for Mary. (She died the next year.) Even the publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer showed up. It was a very big deal. We played a couple Slovak pieces for Mary.
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1 of 2 posts for 10/28/09. Please see post below too.
4 comments
Reminds me of living in Little Italy, where there was an old woman named Frances Riolo living in the apt above me.
I moved into that two-story building, which used to be a shoe repair shop, according to Frances, that her late husband ran.
When the business ended, or he passed, she stayed upstairs and rented the apt from the people I rented from.
Eventually Frances’ kids took her out and took her to a Catholic home on the east side of town. This was, of course, years ago, as I moved out of Little Italy in Feb. of 2003.
Francis was always ill, it seemed, but she was friendly to me and to Mike Fahey, my first roommate there, back in 1990-1991. She didn’t mind my violin practicing and I would go up and talk with her. She introduced me to some of the interesting characters of Little Italy, and there were many, esp. in the early 1990’s, which was really towards the end of that area being dominated by Italians/Sicilians.
I’m sure that Frances has passed. She was in her 90’s as long as I knew her, and wondered how she managed to hang on all those years, but she was a tough cookie. She was always mad at her doctors.
When she moved out, a guy addicted to drugs moved in, and he had a roommate who got drunk, passed out and played his stereo so loud that the entire neighborhood could hear it.
This started at 3pm and kept going and going. I called the cops in the evening and they didn’t come until 1am with the music still blaring. When they came, they told me to call my landlord (which I was reluctant to do at that late hour) for the key to the guy’s room.
But I did and woke them up, and Carmen Pinzone, my landlord, came by. The cops came in and fined the guy, and the guy was told to evict that night.
But best of all, the loud stereo music stopped around 1:30am. What an ordeal for the whole neighborhood.
After that, I knew my Little Italy experience wouldn’t be the same. Mrs. Riolo would never do that.
Bert,
That was a great event at Beck Center, and Mary was a great woman: relentlessly energetic, hopeful, and cheery.
I’ve got nothing to do with being Jewish, but I love your blog.
Was Mary Kubachar Slovakian or Slovenian? I thought she might be Slovenian ’cause that senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar, is Slovenian.
Might need to consult Waltkipedia on this.
Ted, Mary Kubichar was of Slovak descent. For sure.
One of the tunes we did for her was “A La Taka Dzivocka” (That’s the Kind of Girl I Am). A popular tune from eastern Slovakia.
Our then-accordionist, Walt Mahovlich (a.k.a. Waltkipedia), knew the piece.
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