Posts from — December 2025

 
When I came home to Cleveland after college, I hung out at Case Western Reserve University. I wanted to stay in the college bubble. I didn’t like the alternative: the real world. I was helping my dad in the real estate business, and that was too real.

I met a medical illustrator at a Case party. When I told her,  “I manage apartment buildings,” she walked away. I had a harmonica in my pocket. She just didn’t know.

A friend whispered to me, “It’s not in her experience — apartment building management.”

A woman asked me, “Are you in OB?”

“No, I’m not in medical school.”

“Organizational behavior.”

“I’m not in that either.”

At Case, you were either a doctor, nutritionist, organizational behaviorist, or medical student. I ran into another medical illustrator. Nothing happened.

An OB grad​ student, Marcy, talked to me. She was doing her Ph.D. thesis on “the event of play in a closed group.” She had just graduated from Harvard.

“So many Harvard people here!” a man called out to Marcy. Three Harvard people, to be exact: 1.) The host,  2). Marcy, 3.) and  a Harvard grad on his way to Washington to become a lobbyist. All these Harvard people were on their way somewhere.

I was on my way to Lakewood. People called me up about low-water pressure, mice and clanging radiators. We had a tenant with no kitchen sink for two weeks because he ripped out the sink trying to install a butcher-block countertop. He wanted to charge us for dining out. Another  tenant lost his hot water for three days; I don’t remember why. I wrote him a Japanese-style apology. The tenant deducted a significant sum from his rent. I couldn’t blame him. A tenant saw a mouse and asked for a hotel room. That bugged me; mice are good people..

I recently googled the Harvard woman, Marcy. She’s a professor emerita at a university in Massachusetts (not Harvard). I don’t think I’ll contact her.

Maybe I should. I still have the harmonica.

Screw up

 
I grew up in Manhattan next-door to where John Lennon was killed. My parents ran an art gallery. They still do. They have a place in Switzerland and New York. I ran the Switzerland office for a while.

But I’m tired of the whole arts scene. I want out. I’m 30. I want to hang around with oil men, real estate guys and cowboys. Men who have never read the New York Times, particularly the Style section.

In college, at Kenyon, I had a roommate, Schwecky from Cleveland. I visited Cleveland a couple times with him and fell in love with the place. People in Cleveland have lawns and don’t pay $3000/month for a one-bedroom.

I have a one-bedroom in Cleveland Heights for $1200. Tricked out too. Marble countertops, dishwasher. I’m going to use my nest egg (courtesy of my old man) to buy up Cleveland. I can buy Cleveland’s whole East Side, I figure, for what my parents’ Central Park West condo goes for. But my dad wants me to stay in New York. No thanks. One question, Pops: what can I buy in New York for 1.5 million? Gornisht!

I’m hanging around with hustlers in Cleveland and loving it. This town – Cleveland’s East Side at least – is just old Jews, and when these boomers hear I’m from New York, they say, “I have a daughter in Brooklyn for you!” I groan. Those Brooklyn girls are trying to get jobs with my folks at the art gallery.

I’ve made some errors here in Cleveland, like an old Jew had me over for dinner and quizzed me on a couple things, and I guessed a milk chute is “maybe for the seltzer delivery,” and I didn’t know what treelawn meant.

I don’t think I’m ever leaving Cleveland. Cleveland Heights — where I live — is like Hoboken. Nice. Urban. But not too urban.

When I’m with my folks in the city, just going down to the deli for a sandwich is a major proposition. The crowd, the line, the elevator. I got mugged once. Eighth grade. Some kids pushed me over and took my book bag.

I don’t walk much in Cleveland. The roads here are bare — empty. There is infrastructure here for twice as many people as there are people. These are the wheels I’m going to buy:

fiction

 
Here’s my latest essay from the Cleveland Plain Dealer  . . .

Dick Van Dyke turned 100 on Saturday. That’s no big deal — in my world. Last month my klezmer band played a 100th birthday party — our fourth in three years. There was a chair placed prominently in the middle of the dance floor, to lift the birthday “girl” for “Hava Nagila.”

I said to myself, “No way.”

Correct: No way. We did not lift the celebrant on a chair. But the birthday “girl,” Etty Hoffman of Beachwood, did dance. She was out there on the dance floor. She boogied. And she gave a moving speech afterward, touching on more than five generations of her family, including “mommy and daddy.”

Nearly 10,000 Americans turn 100 each year, according to the Pew Research Center. The United States has the second-most number of centenarians in the world. Japan is first.

After the hora, I asked a dancer — Ms. Hoffman’s niece Joyce — if she was going to live forever. “What do you mean?” Joyce said. “Me or my aunt?”

“You. Do you assume you’re going to make it 100, too?”

“I’m planning on it!” she said. Joyce is in her 70s and plays flute, does yoga, lifts weights, walks a lot, and is skinny. Bonus: Joyce’s mom is 103. She’s Etty’s older sister. (Joyce’s mother was at the party, too.)

My dad made it to 68. Shvak. (Yiddish for weak). My mom died at 83. Better. A year before my father died, I interviewed him; I said, “You don’t talk much about your mother. Do you ever think about your mother?” I annoyed my dad. He said, “Of course I think about my mother!” My dad’s mother had single-handedly run the family’s candy store on Kinsman Road at East 151st Street. My dad’s father had been hit by a May Company truck in 1924 and spent most of his time hanging out at the pool hall after the accident.

At Julia Stratton’s gravesite in 2020, on the 100th anniversary of her birth. (Julia Stratton, 1920-2004.) From left: Lucy, Bert, Jack, Ted Stratton

At Ms. Hoffman’s birthday party, my band played: “My Girl” by the Temptations; “I’ve Just Seen a Face” by the Beatles; Tin Pan Alley classics; klezmer instrumentals; and some Yiddish songs. The partygoers applauded our wide-ranging set list. At a 100th birthday party, everybody is 100% mellow. A 100th birthday party is not a wedding — no anxious bride. It is not a bar mitzvah — no sullen 13-year-olds. There is no kvetching, period.

In the 1920s, Ohio-born vaudeville clarinetist Ted Lewis popularized the phrase, “Is everybody happy?” And yes, everybody was happy at Ms. Hoffman’s party. She was born in 1925 and grew up in the Glenville neighborhood and attended synagogue at the Cleveland Jewish Center (now Cory United Methodist Church) on East 105th Street. Etty was in the temple’s Confirmation class of 1941.

Her 100th birthday celebration was at Park Synagogue in Pepper Pike. Park Synagogue is a direct outgrowth of the Cleveland Jewish Center. Same congregation, different building. Ms. Hoffman has been a member of Park Synagogue since 1930. I wonder how many relatives at Ms. Hoffman’s party think they’ve inherited the family’s longevity gene.

They’ll find out.

Mary Tyler Moore died at 80. Keep that in mind.

And happy birthday to Dick Van Dyke, Etty Hoffman, and everybody trying to emulate them.

—

Link to Plain Dealer article here.

 
I knew a building inspector who could smell rats. He didn’t have to see rat droppings; he could smell rats.

I knew a handyman who could jimmy almost any apartment door with a credit card.

My talent is figuring out if a tenant has skipped out or not. I knock loudly on the tenant’s door. If there’s no response, I yell “maintenance” a couple times and bring out the master key. I yell “maintenance” a third time, and step into the apartment. A couch, a bed . . . always. Skippers leave behind the heavy stuff. TVs, for sure. Everyone upgrades his TV on move-out. Some small items are left behind: beer bottles, pennies, unopened bills. Usually enough to fill three or more garbage bags.

The stove is fried. The refrigerator is always missing a plastic shelf. Why?

Underwear and socks . . . gone.  No socks means no tenant. The guy definitely skipped.

Some of his clothes are on the floor. Some good, some bad. I found a tux left behind. The guy was 6-4. I had the pants legs shortened. (He wasn’t a skipper. He was a dead man. And his place was clean.)

I enjoy wrecked apartments. Who doesn’t? A building manager once phoned me with on-the-scene reporting from a wrecked apartment: “It looks like a cyclone went through here crossways!”

But occasionally a manager will not react positively. “I’m creeped out,” one manager told me, standing in the common-area hallway while I went into the suite. She was creeped out by a few bottles of beers, cat urine and cigarette butts. (Probably because she had to clean it.)

I phone the skipper to make sure he’s definitely gone. I say, “You out?”  Nothing more that than. No lectures about housekeeping. Nobody wants to be criticized on their house-cleaning skills. 

 
Why don’t columnists write about pet peeves anymore? That bugs me.

Why do nursing-home administrators insist on peppy tunes? Oldsters sometimes want to hear contemplative tunes.

Why do eyeglass adjusters have so much power over us? Did they all go to I.U.?

Why do “highly sensitive” people insist on telling us they’re bothered by the labels on their shirts? That’s irritating.

My wife took our electric toothbrush on her trip to Columbus. The electric toothbrush is a “permanent attachments to the dwelling,” ma’am.

What about those phone calls from my kids’ alma maters? I already give zero to my own alma mater.

When my computer messes up, why I do I feel like my arm broke? Why can’t I feel like a mosquito bit my ankle?

What about friends who grow arugula and offer you some? Why don’t they grow dates or figs?

Why do symphony-goers applaud wildly after every single piece? These people nap for 54 minutes during Mahler, then give the conductor multiple curtain calls. Applaud this!

Don’t get worked up over house address signs like “The Smith’s.”

I am worked up!

If you want to discuss cars, first ask: “Do you mind if I talk to you about cars?” Yes, I do mind.

Which is preferable: (1.) “He passed away” or (2.) “He passed.” Both stink. He passed what — Wendy’s?

Who’s nostalgic for mimeo machines? Somebody should be.