AN ACCENT-LESS SEDER

 
My last cousin left Cleveland in 2001. My relatives went to warmer places or died. Cleveland was not hopping. (Still isn’t.) I’m in about two traffic jams a year in Cleveland. I would prefer five. I don’t relish the horrible traffic of Chicago or Washington, but just a few more traffic jams in Cleveland would be nice.

I’ve got mishpocha in Chicago, and that’s where I’ll be for Seder tonight My daughter and family live in Chi, plus my wife also has a slew of first cousins there. They all moved to Chicago decades ago from Clarksburg, West Virginia. Just upped and left Appalachia for pancake-flat Chi. (The West Virginia exodus makes Cleveland’s population-loss look like nothing.)

I remember, in the 1970s Clevelanders first began imagining the whole town could go under. A musician in Milwaukee even wrote a song called “Thank God This Isn’t Cleveland.”

Some Clevelanders never got over the trauma of the 1970s. I know Clevelanders who vacation on Cape Cod because they’re instructed by the national media to vacation on the East Coast. They wait an hour for ice cream on Cape Cod. Why?

Some of the best scenery in America is the bike path from Gambier to Coshocton, Ohio. Rolling farm country, horses, sheep, cows, pigs and Amish buggies.

But some Midwesterners need to see the ocean. They drive all day to the Carolina shore. Hey, Lake Erie has beaches, waves and miniature golf. Check out Geneva on-the-Lake or Put-in-Bay.

Willie Sklar,1920s. Louise, Miss.

After my relatives bailed, I looked for distant relatives elsewhere. I found them via the media. My son Teddy found a Mississippi connection on a PBS documentary, “Delta Jews,” about the Jews of the Mississippi Delta. The mayor of Louise, Miss., had been my mother’s cousin. (My mother grew up in Yazoo City, Miss.) Teddy called a Mississippi relative who had been in the documentary. We eventually met the Mississippi clan and have gotten together with them several times. Most are lawyers. They have Southern accents. That’s what you want from Southerners — an accent. So often an educated Southerner will disappoint you on that front.

My West-by-Gawd Vuh-gin-yuh relatives don’t have accents. Maybe I can induce them with wine and afikommen money to fake accents tonight.

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I’m part of a kosher-style, David Sedaris-ripoff reading / music gig  7 pm. Sat., May 2, at Heights Arts, 2175 Lee Road, Cleveland Hts. It’ll be klezmer, spoken word and Motown. The trio is Tamar Gray (vocals), Alan Douglass (keys), and me on clarinet and spoken word. The event is free but get a TICKET prior because the gallery will probably “sell out.”