OVERLOAD

 
I biked to Whole Foods in University Heights and decided I needed a bit more exercise, so I headed north to neighboring South Euclid, where I grew up.

Here’s something new-ish in South Euclid: Oakwood Green, a park next to Walmart, where Oakwood country club used to be. At the park entrance, there’s a boulder with a memorial plaque about Bennett Yanowitz — the late macher, lawyer, philanthropist and hiker. The plaque  pointed out Yanowitz spent his whole life in Cleveland except for “the University of Michigan and the Army.”

Hey, Yanowitz was me! Minus “Army, lawyer, philanthropist and macher.”

South Euclid looked the same. The houses looked the same. Today’s demographics: way more blacks. Another South Euclid park (Bexley Park) is next to my old house and doesn’t have tennis courts anymore. It’s got futsal, whatever that is. No basketball courts, for sure.

I biked past the childhood homes of a couple guys I’m still in touch with. One grade-school chum lives in California and was glad to see maple trees in his front yard, via my photo. (No green in SoCal.)

Another guy, I’m not sure he’s going to get back to me. He’s famous — in my mind –for being the son of a milkman and one of eight children. Sealtest.

There’s a quadrant of South Euclid called Little Israel — a 1950s development of bugalow-lined streets where most of the yidn lived. Levittown, basically.

I bike through the alter heym every four years or so. Can’t go there more often. Too emotional. Too much incoming data.

(I didn’t grow up in a bungalow. I lived in a colonial in the Gentile neighborhood, adjacent to Little Israel.)