Real Music & Real Estate . . .

 
There was a Playboy bunny in my high school. A future Playboy bunny. The bunny — now 75 —  recently called my daughter in Chicago. The former bunny is a gardener and landscaping consultant. When she saw my daughter’s area code (Cleveland / 216), the former bunny said she had been a party animal in high school —  Charles F. Brush High. My school. She said she didn’t know me.

I was no party animal.

The ex-bunny said she never paid for a drink until she was 30. My daughter said I had been a “nerd.” (Nerd wasn’t even a word in 1968! We were called “dips,” short for dipshits.)

After powwowing with my daughter, I got out my yearbook for the lowdown on the ex-bunny. The ex-bunny had been a blond Jewish majorette. Really?  And I didn’t even recognize her pic. (Hey, it was a big school.)

[Correction: she was no Jew. See postscript at bottom. The future bunny was just an above-average-intelligence, blond shikse. Boring!]

Also, there was a page in the yearbook of National Merit semi-finalists and commended scholars. I wasn’t on that page. The ex-bunny was. Whoa.

My friend Hersky wasn’t on the National Merit page either, and he got a 789 on the math SAT (before the math SAT was recentered, in 1995, which jacked up many math scores). Hersky specialized in numbers and Cliff Notes. He never read a book — and still hasn’t. I read some books — short ones, like The Time Machine and Goodbye Mr. Chips. (I started reading in college.)

In high school, I hung out with many commended and meritorious people, but not the future bunny. She must have been dating. I liked hanging out with people smarting than me. My crowd devoured the Comparative Guide to American Colleges, which we called the Bible. We learned about Reed, Pomona, and Rice. Rice’s freshman class had an incredibly high median math score. Emory was another good school. Swarthmore was harder to get into than Harvard.

Northwestern . . . I flew student-standby to Evanston for an interview. At the Cleveland airport, the ticket agent asked if I was an attaché because I didn’t have any baggage. I didn’t know what attache meant.

I expected some tough questions at Northwestern, maybe about the latest book I had read. I had read a book about Nazis — my favorite subject. The interviewer didn’t ask me anything about books. Instead, he extolled the university’s six-year medical program. (I was pre-med, like everybody else.) Northwestern smelled like dead fish from Lake Michigan. I could hardly breathe. Northwestern was a playboy school.

I flew to Johns Hopkins –a pre-med powerhouse. I talked about Nazis, and then the interviewer segued into mainstream material. He said Twain wrote Ethan Frome. No way! He didn’t catch me. Hopkins was isolated and there was no social life.

I’ll get back to the Playboy bunny eventually.

The admissions interviewer at Washington U. said I’d get in. Washington U. was easy to get into back then, just like Northwestern.

Meanwhile, back in Cleveland, at a cocktail party, my parents ran into a very savvy parent who said the best way to get into medical school was to attend a state school and get good grades. Go to Ohio State and get A’s, which was better than C’s at Harvard.

I wasn’t going to no Ohio state school, folks!! Ohio State was open-admissions then and took everybody. I hadn’t memorized the Comparative Guide to American Colleges to go to no Ohio state school.  Not even Miami U. of Ohio. As a consolation, my parents said I could try for Michigan, Michigan State or Wisconsin.

Michigan didn’t do interviews. Not their thing. Too big.

I got into Michigan early decision. The ex-bunny went to the University of Miami in Florida. More power to her, for getting out of Ohio. Maybe someday she and I will meet up and discuss how we didn’t know each other.

Charles F. Brush High was a big school. Six-hundred thirty-five kids. Yes, there were bigger graduating classes in Cleveland, but not many. And very few had bunnies-to-be.

—

Correction: A Brush alum — who had been to the future bunny’s house back in the day — wrote me: “No Judaica around. Mother and sister were blond and Protestant. No accents. Lived in a goyish neighborhood.” Oops.

I had presupposed the bunny was Jewish because of two things: when talking to my daughter, the bunny had mentioned a South Euclid Jewish neighborhood that she called “Chanukah Heights.”  So I figured the ex-bunny was from there. But she wasn’t. Also, the ex-bunny’s last name is vaguely Jewish — like Lewis, Brooks, or Cole.

 
I have this mishegas, where I detach uncanceled postage stamps from envelopes and reuse the stamps. I get a ton of mail, and some of it has uncanceled stamps.

Deeper: some of the uncanceled stamps are actually my own  — stamps I put on envelopes and, for whatever reason, I don’t use the envelope. Maybe I put a check in an envelope and then notice I’ve put the wrong check in. I rip open the envelope. The stamp is still good. (The envelope isn’t.)

I’ve been around stamps a while. I collected UN stamps and first-day covers. Some plate blocks. When I was in junior high, I took the bus downtown to the Manger Hotel for stamp shows. I was probably the youngest guy in there by about 50 years.

I collected stamps until college. My mother sent first-day covers to my dorm, and I had to tell her to stop. It was too embarrassing.

My stamps

I made $28.47 today, in a half hour, by rescuing uncanceled stamps from envelopes in my office. [39 “forever” stamps X 73 cents =$28.47]

I once had a tenant who used uncanceled stamps from the 1960s to send in her rent. I got 4-centers up until 1992, when she died.

I had the first stamps from Malaysia.

There was a stamp dealer, Mr. Stern, on Superior Road in Cleveland Heights. Alfred Stern: not a Jew. That shocked me. He was a German with a Christmas tree. My mom occasionally drove me to his apartment. He got me the Malaysian stamps.

I subscribed to Linn’s Stamp News from Sidney, Ohio. I had a friend — named Stamps, of all things — who collected coins. He subscribed to Coin World — also from Sidney, Ohio. Stamps collected brilliant uncirculated rolls of coins. I think his dad was into it, too. The Stamps were more like speculators. I was a collector. Still am.

 
I wish I had been in the military. I could have been in, but I didn’t go. I was against Vietnam. I learned quagmire — the word — from Walter Lippmann in Newsweek.

I can take orders and I don’t generally sass people, and I’ve never argued with cops or umpires.

Some of my high school classmates went into the service.  Some are on the war memorial on Green Road. By and large, these deceased guys weren’t in the college-prep classes.

One high school friend — a Jewish guy — went to Annapolis, though. He eventually became acting head of the FBI in Cleveland. I visited him at his office, and we brainstormed on ways to thwart terrorists. I didn’t have much to contribute.

When I was in elementary school, I sent away to the Air Force Academy for photos, and the academy mailed me an application.

I was mistaken for a military man only once, when I represented the Armed Forces at a sign-review meeting at Lakewood city hall. The Armed Forces rented a store from us. A sign-review board member said, “You walk like a military man.”

Atten-hut! Thank you.

The Armed Forces recruiting center housed the four major branches: Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force. The Army turned its basement area into a gym with punching bags and a Nautilus.

In 2008 the recruiters moved out and went across the street to a newer building, and left us with three ratty sofas, a rusty Nautilus, barbells, a mini-trampoline and a punching bag. For starters.

I wrote to the Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville, Kentucky, re U.S. lease W912QRM504000025:

There is 40 years’ worth of  junk in the basement: 27 chairs, a punching bag, American flag, scrap shelving, metal framing, boxes of “Army of One” promotional material, two bikes, six pieces of Nautilus-like weight equipment, barbells, a mini-trampoline . . .

A 1970s stereo system, file cabinet, and a lot of assorted paperwork, of which I’ve enclosed an invoice from 1991, just to give you a flavor for what’s down there.

The government paid for the hauling. That was my last dealing with the military. “Sgt. Stratton” never happened. Nor did “Private  Stratton.”  I feel somewhat guilty about that. (I know, typical ex-hippie revisionist thinking.)

 
I worked on the Hot Pockets campaign. I worked on Snickerdoodles. I did Crown condoms; they were big in Japan. I did Ovaltine. Ovaltine was big in Japan, too. I may be wrong about that. It’s been years since I worked in advertising.

I got into Japan early, thanks to my friend Mark Schilling (more on him below). In the 1970s Japan was taking over the world, and Mark and I were on it. Hondas were suddenly everywhere. First Honda motorcycles, then Honda cars. Then came Toyota, and Toyota was no toy.

Mark and I hitchhiked to California right after college, hanging around UCLA. We slept rent-free on a flat roof in Westwood. I had an orange mummy bag and Mark had a beat-up flannel Boy Scout bag. Mark was selling Christmas trees so he could get money to leave the USA. Nothing political. Simple wanderlust.

Mark Schilling, 1977

He got an offer to teach English in Barrancabermeja, Colombia. He looked into that, and “no way” — the heat, 100 degrees almost year-round. Then Mark got an offer to teach ESL in Japan.

And he’s been in Japan ever since. Fifty years.

At UCLA there was an acid-rock band called the United States of America. I never actually heard them, but the drummer, Craig Woodson, wound up playing a couple years with my klezmer band in Cleveland. Small world.

The United States of America was big — in an off-beat, avant-garde way — in Japan. Maybe because of the name “United States of America.” They made it onto the Japanese charts. The band lasted about year.

Meanwhile, in Tokyo, Mark began writing about all-things-Japanese: sumo, Pink Lady, yakuza films. He has made a career of that. Ask around, he’s the man — the heir to Donald Richie.

After California, I returned to Ohio and got into advertising (Snickerdoodles, blah, blah) thanks to a a friend’s dad who worked at the agency. Then my dad called, so to speak, and I went into his real estate biz. You don’t hang around Cleveland unless you have a family-biz connection.

My kids are in real estate. I brainwashed them. I drilled them: “Buy a double, live in it, the tenant pays 80 percent of your mortgage, you move out, then rent both halves of the house, and buy another house. Repeat as necessary.”

I wish I had gone with Mark to Japan in 1975.  I would have lasted 50 days max –not 50 years like Mark — but it would have been eye-opening, no doubt. Joan Jett. Remember her? She was big in Japan. The Ventures, too. Mark says, “Japan was like an annuity for them in their old age.” The Ventures toured Japan every year.

The Ventures are dead. And I’m not getting any younger. I should visit Japan.

. . . Done. Just bought a ticket!

—
fiction

 
The mayor’s assistant told us not to play any klezmer music — “nothing ethnic,” she said. Just American.

No klezmer? Why did the Orange Village (Ohio) mayor hire Yiddishe Cup for their city’s summer concert series?

This was 11 years ago. All forgiven now. By the way, Yiddishe Cup plays at the Cleveland Heights Rec Pavilion this Friday (July 18, 2025), 5:30-7:30 pm. Free. And well play whatever we want! (Part of the Coventry PEACE Pops event.)

At the Orange Village concert, our contract rider stipulated a fruit platter, bottled water and colas. A good gig, food-wise. But what were we going to play?

I said to the mayor’s assistant, “You don’t want to alienate anybody with ethnic music?”

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

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

“All or mostly.”

“Can you give me a percentage?”

“Ninety percent American music,” she said.

Yiddishe Cup played “Dock of the Bay,” Motown, Beatles, “Hang on Sloopy” and “Old Time Rock And Roll.” A Chinese woman liked “My Girl” so much we played it twice.

I told the crowd that Yiddishe Cup started out as a deli — as opposed to a band — on Kinsman Road, then moved to Cedar Center, and ultimately wound up on the far East Side. I kept up that quirky patter throughout because “My Girl,” the second time through, wasn’t doing it for me. An Orange councilman asked where Yiddishe Cup had been at Cedar Center. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. I should have said, “Between Abbey’s and Solomon’s.”

We snuck in “Miserlou,”a Greek tune. We did a Macedonian tune. We did an Israeli tune!

Think ethnic.

 
Violinist Yale Strom of San Diego led a terrific trad klezmer band at a recent Cain Park concert in Cleveland Heights. Then a Michigan bar band followed, playing klez-infused jazz improvisation. But neither was the highlight.

The highlight was when the emcee announced a raffle for a Glock gun. The audience — approximately 75  mostly elderly Jews — heard a Glock-shpiel.

Here (see below) is pretty much what the emcee said. [This is from a Facebook post, edited for clarity and length.] This is not fiction:

SAVE THE “CONCERT IN THE PARK” FUNDRAISER

July 13  1-5 pm
The Parma Armory
5301 Houserman Rd.
Parma OH

$40 per ticket. Each ticket gets you in the drawing for a chance to win a new Glock 9 mm pistol.

Only 50 tickets will be sold!!!

Shooting lanes open to ticket holders only.

Don’t have your own gun? You can rent one at the armory.

The Workmen’s Circle Educational Center of Ohio wants to thank you for your donation to help save the Concert in the Park.

To win the firearm you must pass the FFL background check.

If the winner fails the background check, another name will be drawn!!!

Thank you for your donation to help save the klezmer Concert in the Park.

 
My life flashed in front of me. I was walking to the bank. I was at Courtland Oval at Fairmount Boulevard, when a funeral cortege went by, and right off, I knew who was in the coffin and where it was going and where it had been. It was going to the same place I’m going some day. The coffin contained Jerry Zober (1948-2024). I knew him slightly. He was a shrink. I knew his sister, Muriel, better; we were in the same grade in school.

Jerry’s cortege proceeded from the Berkowitz Kumin Memorial Chapel in Cleveland Heights to Hillcrest cemetery in Bedford Heights. I knew all this because I had just read Jerry’s obit. The mourners’ cars had Berkowitz’s orange stick-on Jewish-flag ornaments.

I didn’t want to get too close to the cortege because I was feeling somewhat guilty about missing the funeral. I was busy that day! And I had never socialized with Jerry. Not even once. And I was flying to New York the next day and had to deal with stuff before leaving town.

Here’s the way I appraised the situation: at the funeral parlor — prior to the service — there would have been very little  time to schmooze with Muriel, Jerry’s sister. She would have been surrounded by relatives in the family-seating section. Who’s this guy Bert?

Shiva would have been great, but I couldn’t make it. I had last seen Muriel at her mom’s shiva 10 years ago. Muriel lives in Virginia. Also, I had been to the Berkowitz funeral parlor just a week prior for a friend’s aunt’s funeral. My friend lives in Israel and couldn’t make his aunt’s funeral so I repped him.

Give me a papal dispensation on Jerry’s funeral, please.

I sent Muriel an email saying I was sorry I couldn’t make the funeral and shiva. She wrote back, “Thanks. I was hoping to see you. Be well.”

If you ever see my coffin going down Fairmount Boulevard on its way to Hillcrest cemetery, considering waving. Or hide. If you didn’t know me very well, please have ambivalent feelings about the whole thing.

 
My wife tells me to never play for free. I do it anyway. Like the other day I played a luncheon for seniors; I did “Tumbalalaika,” “Moscow Nights,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and klezmer. I was supposed to get a free lunch out of it, but the organizers ran out of food. Did I make a stink about that? No, I relished the slight. I went home, ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and mumbled about my temporary low status.

At the gig I answered my phone in the middle of a tune. A friend had called to brief me on his bronchitis. I said, “I’m playing a gig right now and probably shouldn’t talk.”

Why did I take the call? Because I was playing for free and not getting fed, so I drifted into unprofessional behavior.

“Never play for free” — Alice.

When I’m not fed at a freebie gig, I give the client what they paid for.

 
(This essay was in Sunday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer.)

The last time my father, Toby, ate out was at Wendy’s, on his way to a leukemia treatment in Columbus. My dad really liked Wendy’s. He thought he had a quasi-business relationship with the chain because he had almost invested in Wendy’s — headquartered in Columbus — before the chain got big. Almost is the key word. My dad’s near-miss with Wendy’s always topped my uncles’ near-miss get-rich-quick chronicles at Passover Seders.

I sat at Vintage India Restaurant on Detroit Avenue in Lakewood recently, thinking about my dad. My dad bought the building – not the restaurant, the building – decades ago. My family still owns the building. My dad died in 1986. I’m pretty sure Toby never ordered saag paneer in his life. Haagen Dazs, yes, but not saag paneer.

Vintage India is nothing special to look at. It has big plate-glass windows facing Detroit, and a laminate floor and drop-ceiling tiles. Bland decor, good food. The owners Ram and Shakuntla Lal do the cooking and their two adult children are servers. The son studies pre-med at Cleveland State University, and the daughter does nursing. The restaurant space, in previous iterations, was a medical-supply house, mattress store, office-supply house, furniture store and a video rental outlet called Cinema Transit. None of the businesses got the foot traffic of Vintage India. I counted more than 20 diners, plus a line of take-out customers, on a recent Saturday night.

Theodore “Toby” Stratton (1917-1986). 1985 photo.

My dad knew something about restaurants and food. His immigrant mother became a part-owner of Seiger’s deli at East 118th Street and Kinsman Road, and she also ran a mom-and-pop candy store further east on Kinsman Road. One of my dad’s childhood laments was that he couldn’t try out for the track team at John Adams High School because he had to work in the candy store after school.

“Financial security” was my dad’s watchword. He started early. One summer, he worked at Cedar Point, selling corned beef sandwiches on the beach. That’s the same beach where Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne supposedly developed the forward pass. It would be great if Cedar Point put up a plaque for my dad, maybe something with wording like, “Toby’s favorite food was a good piece of rye bread.” Chocolate phosphates were a close second.

At Ohio State University, Toby lived in the Tower Club, a scholarship dorm in a wing of the stadium. It was a bunch of guys on cots in a big room. Toby majored in chemistry and made Phi Beta Kappa. After college, he had a lot of different jobs – none of them in chemistry. The chemical industry wasn’t hiring a lot of Jews when he graduated in 1938. He eventually wound up – 27 years later — a real estate investor. He put down 8% on the Vintage-India-Restaurant-to-be building in 1965 and “carried paper,” meaning he had first and second mortgages. He loved leverage.

If my dad is reincarnated, I hope he and I go to Vintage India. Toby will definitely appreciate the Lal family’s hustle and drive. I’ll advise my dad to stick to “1” on the 1-to-10 spiciness chart. The food at Vintage India food is hot, and my dad was a Wendy’s guy.

 
He said he was the last private-practice ENT in Northeast Ohio. I found him online — called him because my ear-wax appointment at the Cleveland Clinic was for six weeks out. Six weeks out for ear wax? Ridiculous.

I had already gone to the CVS Minute Clinic, in Chicago no less. I went to that CVS while visiting my daughter. I thought CVS’ exploration of my ear canals would be free because I’m old (Medicare), but I got billed $100. And they didn’t get the ear wax out.

The private-practice doc in Cleveland was Bert Brown. He said, “I hope you’re B-e-r-t, not B-u-r-t.” So we hit it off. He had a hook tool that got the wax out in about 3 seconds per ear.

The balls of wax were the size of blueberries. CVS had used water spray instead of a hook. Dr. Bert said I should come back every year to get cleaned. I asked his nurse for the ear-wax balls to take home but she had already pitched them. I should have at least taken a photo. My wife would have been interested.

—
Free Father’s Day Concert: Yiddishe Cup plays 7 pm Sunday, June 15, at the Alma Theater at Cain Park, Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

 
You know Jim Sollisch. Or somebody like him. He’s that “gray-haired, middle-aged man in jeans and tennis shoes” (his words), hanging around Cleveland Heights. “If you ran into me on the street,” he noted, “you might guess that I was father or a husband. You might think I was Democrat or the owner of a foreign car.”

Sollisch, 67, has just published a collection of his personal essays, How Donating a Kidney Fixed my Jump Shot. How’s that for a catchy title? Sollisch is a copywriter at the Marcus Thomas ad agency and has written two Super Bowl commercials. Who else in Cleveland can say that? His side hustle is publishing op-eds in newspapers like the Plain Dealer, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. He has had hundreds of essays published the past several decades. He had an op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about colonoscopies. [Link at end of this post.] For a while, in the 1990s, he read his essays aloud on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”

Sollisch is well-rounded. He is feminine, marvelous and tough (to steal a phrase from poet Ted Berrigan).

Jim Sollisch

The feminine Sollisch . . . In high school, he badgered the administration at Cleveland Heights High into letting him take home economics instead of shop (1972). He likes to cook. He writes that he goes to various grocery stores up to four times a day to shop for fresh food. “And I was the only guy in my dorm [at Kent State] of 400 guys who ever used the kitchen. I became as powerful as the inmate with cigarettes.”

At 13 he wrote such poignant bar mitzvah thank-you notes that his recipients wrote Sollisch back, thanking him for his thank-you notes. His mother saved the notes. Nice.

The marvelous Sollisch. He donated a kidney to a co-worker. Who does that? A co-worker, not a relative. After giving up the kidney, the doctor told Sollisch he couldn’t take ibuprofen ever again, which he had regularly used to mask a sore hip. The hip — now unmedicated — started hurting so badly he got a new hip, and that improved his jump shot.

The tough Sollisch. He was scheduled to start at quarterback at Heights High his senior year, but at the last minute decided against it because he was only 5-8 and might get squashed. He stuck with basketball. He played basketball into his 60s.

The most interesting part, though, is Sollisch is a major-league kvetcher. He writes: “I hate bike riding . . ,  I hate summer camp . . . I hate fall, and there’s a fall phrase I detest: sweater weather.” Also, he doesn’t like bucket lists: “It’s not that I don’t like new experiences, I just like routine more. I like knowing where I’m going to have my coffee in the morning. I like not letting the grass grow too long.”

There you have it; Sollisch enjoys cutting his grass. He is the opposite of a down-and-out bohemian. Sollisch writes, “I was born here in Cleveland and grew up here, because that’s where my family lives. I own a home, I have a good job, plenty of friends [including me, writing this], and every Thanksgiving I play in the annual Turkey Bowl game on the football field I played on in junior high.” (One of Sollisch’s Turkey Bowl teammates was Steve Presser of Big Fun fame. Small world — the Heights.)

Sollisch’s essays have appeared in publications from Anchorage, Alaska, to Japan, and yet he’s Full Cleveland. He sticks to the unglamorous, to the quotidian. He writes, “I don’t live large. I get most of my clothes at thrift stores. My cat is 9 years old. I don’t dine at pricey restaurants. But I’ll tell you one extravagance I’m not willing to give up: yawning. I like to get up in the morning and yawn, really stretch my arms.”

Sollisch doesn’t write much about his advertising job, but I bet he could make that interesting. Maybe he’s waiting until he retires. Sollisch ponders what might have happened if he hadn’t gone into the ad biz. “I wonder what I might have written, what ideas I might not have censored, what risky paths I might have taken.” In other words, what if Sollisch had gone full-bore literary? Would he have deserted us for  a cabin in Maine? Doubt it. He would have been an adjunct prof at John Carroll, I think.

Sollisch’s book is a 166-page collection of concise, well-written essays about a Heights man who likes to cook and hang out with his wife, children and grandchildren, and who hates certain things. He’s writing about life. Make that “life in the Heights” — although there is one essay about North Carolina, which he didn’t like.

If you want to know what your neighbor is up to, read this book.

—

Here’s a link (no paywall) to Sollisch’s op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

On Sunday, June 22, Sollisch gives a reading at Township Hall, 83 Main Street, Chagrin Falls, Ohio, 3-5 pm. Sponsored by Fireside Books.

How Donating a Kidney Fixed my Jump Shot is available at Cleveland-area bookstores and online at Amazon.

This review appeared, slightly abbreviated, in the June 2025 Heights Observer.

—
Yiddishe Cup plays a free concert on Father’s Day at Cain Park, Cleveland Heights, 7 pm Sun. June 15. Alma Theater.

 
I’m not a foodie. I don’t go nuts about meals, good or bad,
but . . .

I had a bad sandwich at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant at O‘Hare Airport. Alice and I had just arrived in Chicago, and it was noon (= 1 pm Cleve time), and we thought we’d get a bite at the aeropuerto before taking an Uber to our daughter’s house. At O’Hare, the line for the Mexican place was long so I got a very crappy, expensive Puck sandwich, which was cold-cuts —  “cold” as in just out of the freezer. Bad bread, too. I was “hangry.” Get over it.

Three days later — heading back to the airport — Alice and I decided to pick up sandwiches in my daughter’s neighborhood, in the city. Why did we choose Jimmy Johns? I ordered a cold tuna sub on a spongy white bread roll.

Stop complaining.

Why?

Back in Cleveland . . .  We shouldn’t have stopped for dinner on the drive home from the Cleveland airport. You’re antsy to see if your house is still there. You’re tired.

We went to a hole-in-the-wall, Pupuseria La Bendicion, on the West Side. I’d never heard of it but our son Ted had, and he drove us from the Cleveland airport. La Pupuseria would have been decent but the wait was too long. “Hangry” again. I paced outside the store for 35 minutes. The pupusas were cheesy things that stuck to the aluminum- foil wrap.

Is there a lesson here?

Yes. Pupusas are the national dish of El Salvador.

 
My friends and I go back to K-thru-6. You might think that’s odd, but only if you’ve never lived in Cleveland. My buddies and I all grew up in bungalows in South Euclid and went on to Ohio State, except one guy went to Miami (of Ohio). We were Zeebs (ZBT) in Columbus. A couple Sammies.

Mr. Miami U. — the outlier — called me the other day for a loan, like I’m the loaded-guy in the bunch. Maybe I am. Who knows. We’ve all been reckless with money. I like Mountaineer Casino in West Virginia, and have no problem traveling to Vegas multiple times a year. Do you remember my dad? He loved the ponies and bet football. He also liked Raisinets, as do I.

Mr. Miami U. is being evicted, as we speak, from his apartment; he hasn’t paid his rent in four months. I said to him, “You’re ahead, man. Four months’ free rent!” What kind of idiot landlord lets a tenant fall four months behind in his rent? Maybe that’s how it’s done in California. My friend is in Los Angeles. Before that, Massachusetts. I said, “You’re so broke and yet you’re living in the second most-expensive city in the country!”

“That’s why I’m broke — L.A.,” he said. “My old lady insists on staying out here.” (His third wife.) “She likes the weather.”

“Go back to New England.” I gave him $500, straight out. “It’s tzedakah, not a loan.”

Then a couple days later he called and wanted $1500 more. He said, “I’m going to an extended-stay hotel tonight. The bailiff is coming any minute.” I declined on the $1500. Where are his grown children and his two brothers in all this?

Fact: my friend deserted Cleveland and that costs. The internet says he’s an “emeritus professor of educational studies” from Farkakte U. in western Massachusetts. He’s smart, but not that smart. I’m as smart him! He definitely has played a few too many World Series of Poker.

I’ll stick with my low-stakes poker game here in Cleveland. We’re going to keep playing until we’re all in Bet Olam Cemetery, and we’ll keep playing there, too.

My kids live out of town. That hurts — the kids and grandkids out of town. Do you remember when all your friends and cousins lived within five blocks of each other, and Mom called out the door, “Be home before dark!” Remember biking to Little League? Those were the days. We thought they’d never end.

“Those Were the Days” — the song — I hear it frequently. A friend from third grade (1958) has a klezmer band here. The music all sounds the same to me, except he’ll occasionally throw in something recognizable, like “Those Were the Days.”

I recognize it.

Ralphie, the only Jewish greaser at Brush High in 1968. The rest of us were collegiates.

—
fiction

 
(From the Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mother’s Day).

My mother sent me a letter about dope. This was my freshman year of college. The fifth floor of my dorm was called the “dope floor.” You name it, we had it: heroin (“scag”); marijuana (“grass”); and cocaine. Some guys even sniffed gasoline from cars at the nearby parking structure. That was called “hitting the tank.” Many of the heavy dopers eventually dropped out. This was at the University of Michigan, where the Hash Bash – a celebration of marijuana – started.

I got harassed for non-toking by my dormmates. I was a mama’s boy. The boys on my floor couldn’t believe I didn’t partake. Two inner-city Detroit boys, in particular, were quite often amused by me, calling me “Expletive-deleted Bert!” and ”Bert be trippin’. That Expletive-deleted be trippin’. You be trippin’, Expletive-deleted!”

The Detroit boys were charismatic. They wore berets and used a lot of Black slang. They wore silky colored underwear and put Vaseline on their skin in the winter. This was all new to me – a white kid from South Euclid. The Detroit boys were from Cass Tech, a Detroit science-magnet high school. They were pre-med, like almost everybody on our dorm floor. The Cass boys aced inorganic chemistry that freshman year. But they did too much dope. That was a problem. The Cass guys were gone by sophomore year.

Tune in, turn on, drop out. Many did. The Jewish boy from New Jersey stopped studying altogether and giggled a lot. It seemed like he was high almost every waking moment. He dropped out and drove a cab around Ann Arbor. The Italian boy from Chicago dropped acid, dropped out and became a brakeman in Chicago, in imitation of Jack Kerouac. I saw the Chicago boy a couple times after college. His primary concern was passing the periodic railroad-mandated drug tests.

My mom wrote me regularly. (Phone calls were expensive back then.)

Here’s her letter to me from October 1968.

Dear Bert,

We had a wonderful visit with you last weekend. It was great seeing you and finding that you haven’t changed — you’re still the same old nudnik that we love! Still, I have a worry. I only wish I could express myself well on paper so I could be sure to reach you.

Bert, you’ve always had a strong will and mind of your own. I’m praying that you use your good judgment and not be swayed by good fellowship and badgering. What I’m leading up to is this: marijuana. I’m not sure, but isn’t that the same thing as pot? Whatever it is, it scares me. What does it do for you? You don’t need pot to tell you it is a beautiful day. From the time you were a child, it has always been a pleasure to go places with you. You were the first to see the horses, the water, the points of interest.

You have the makings for a wonderful, happy life. You have it in yourself. Keep it that way. Don’t let the boys tease or try to shame you into doing something you don’t need and know isn’t right.

Love and Kisses,

Mother

That was 57 years ago. I confess, I smoked marijuana the following year and periodically after that. But not that much. I never bought, Mom! And I haven’t toked in decades. (My mother, Julia Stratton, died in 2004.)

Julia Stratton, 1967, age 47.

 
It was cold in her apartment. But did she have to call the city on me? It was September and the heat was hard to regulate. (Fall is the hardest season because the outdoor temperature fluctuates so much.) She hadn’t paid her rent, either. It was the 20th of the month. Also, she bad-mouthed my building manager and ripped down curtains in the hallway.

Bad stuff. But I could handle it, except her calling the city on me. She was way-late with the rent, yet she felt she could drop a dime on me?

I first rented to her 10 years ago, at another building. I didn’t remember her other than I had marked “late payer” on some notes I kept.

. . . I’ll wait her out and not renew her lease. Just five months to go. Or better yet, she doesn’t cough up the rent this month, and I evict her.

Now she’s texting my onsite manager: “You’re too old! I don’t like your tone! And the way my rent gets paid is none of your business!”

Now she says she’s moving. Yes.

Nope. We go to court.

She tells the magistrate she has medical problems, and she tells me she has been laid off from her schoolteacher job for hitting a kid. “It isn’t true,” she says. “But it’s in court, so I can’t get another job.” The magistrate gives her five days to move out. Her son is up from Florida, and he guarantees she’ll be out.

“I’ve never been late,” she says to me.

“You’ve never been on time,” I say. (I keep my cool. I’ve been listening to Sam Harris’ meditation app.)

She’s still here. Five days later. She says, “My son has arthur-itis and is in pain, and it’s raining. I’ll be out by noon tomorrow.”

“We go to court at 11:30 am tomorrow if you’re not out by 10 am,” I say.

She says, “I was telling the kids to put away the toys in class and I tapped one with a toy, and then this boy, Armani, started crying and said he got hit on the head, and he went to the office. I got escorted out of the building. It has ruined my life.”

She has a record; the City of Cleveland criminal docket has all the particulars. I don’t usually look at Cleveland, because most of my action is in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas and the city of Lakewood. She has evictions, traffic violations and the school-related assault case.

“I’ll be out by 10 am. I’m a good person,” she says.

Today. 10 am. There’s a U-Haul truck in the alley. I’ll wait her out. No court.

5:03 pm.

She’s gone.

Note to self: Don’t rent to her a third time.

Down and out in Lakewood, Ohio

—

Yiddishe Cup plays a free concert 2-3 pm Sunday (May 11). Mother’s Day. Beachwood, Ohio, library. Corner of Richmond Road and Shaker Blvd.

 
I went to the Cleveland Clinic for tendinitis, caused by playing clarinet too much. The pain started in my right thumb and then went all over. The doc told me to bring my clarinet to the appointment. He was a violinist and regular attendee of the Marlboro Music Festival. He was a neurologist with a side hustle — music-related injuries.

The doc quickly shipped me off to a PT — the  real fix-it person at hospitals. The PT was good. He said, “You can’t stop playing. You’re a professional.” Right on.

But my thumb was not good (although it did eventually get better in a year and a half). I don’t know why it got better. I even drove down to Cincinnati to see a doc there who specializes in clarinet players. You do extreme things when, say, lifting a coffee cup feels like a bag of potatoes.

Cincinnati didn’t help. Musculoskeletal problems — they’re hard to put a finger on. An older friend said, “Just wait until your internal organs go.”

Waiting  . . .

 
I was on stage at Severance Hall (home of the Cleveland Orchestra) this month. My first time. Then I got kicked off.

I was at an Itzhak Perlman concert, featuring klezmer music. One of Perlman’s sidemen told me to come on stage post-show to chat. He was packing up his tsimbl. Then a security guard shooed me off. No biggie. I’ve played Severance Hall before.

The Severance Hall lobby. For a wedding.

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, has played Carnegie Hall.

The Carnegie Hall Cinema. Alan accompanied Laurel and Hardy shorts at the Carnegie Hall Cinema in 1985. Alan was in the Kleveland Klezmorim at the time.

At Severance Hall, there was a line backstage to talk to Perlman. I was more interested in connecting with Perlman’s sidemen. These sidemen are my heroes. For instance,  Perlman’s klez-music director, Hankus Netsky, has influenced me, for the better, for the past 37 years. I first ran into Hankus at KlezKamp (the late, great, annual Catskills-based klez convention). Hankus was on staff at KlezKamp, and I was a student. KlezKamp was a little “scene” — a veltele. There were nametags, workshops, break-out sessions, dance concerts.

Perlman’s Cleveland concert was sold out. Half the audience, it seemed, was there to see Perlman-the-classical-violinist and didn’t realize the show was going to be hardcore klez. Perlman’s sidemen were Pete Rushefsky, Andy Statman, Ilene Stahl, Judy Bressler, Lorin Sklamberg, Michael Alpert, Frank London, Jim Guttman and Netsky, among others.

I told clarinetist Andy Statman that I occasionally play his evocative “Song of Redemption,” and I told bassist Jim Guttman about a KlezKamp photo he and I are in from 1987. Guttman is in a lot of KlezKamp photos. Doubt he was interested in my pic.

Guttman once told me his favorite gigs are nursing homes because the audiences are so appreciative. Great. (I play my share of nursing homes.)

How do you get to Severance Hall?

The Severance Hall stage.

Go to a klezmer convention. Here’s my badge:

—

Henry Sapoznik and Adrienne Cooper founded KlezKamp, which ran from 1985 to 2015. My family attended about 10 of these gatherings.

Greg Selker started the Kleveland Klezmorim in 1983. My wife, Alice, encouraged me to attend  Greg’s klez workshop at the Cleveland Heights JCC in 1987. Greg had met Hankus Netsky and trumpeter Frank London at the New England Conversatory.

 
I wasn’t always this religious. I used to be more religious. I first started going to shul regularly right after college. I was a paralegal at the time. I thought I was going to go to law school. I worked at this firm called O’Connor, Joseph and Welch. I got my birthday off (St. Patrick’s Day) because of O’Connor, and Mr. Joseph didn’t mind I wanted two days off for Passover. One night, in the office after-hours, I decided to answer an incoming call, trying to be helpful. I said, “O’Connor, Joseph.”

The phone caller said, “Do you know who I am? I’m Welch and I hate it when people answer the phone ‘O’Connor, Joseph’!”

I said, “Do you know who I am?”

“No.”

“Good.” I hung up and quit. Screw lawyers and their big egos. I enrolled in a non-denominational rabbinical school in Boston. I learned Hebrew; I studied Talmud; I spent a year in Israel; and all that time I was playing clarinet and saxophone. People started calling me “the jazz rabbi.” Fact: there’s an actual “jazz rabbi,” Greg Wall, who lives in Connecticut and is 10-times better than me on horns. Make that 100-times.

I eventually got a job at a Jewish nursing-home complex in Cleveland. I led services, played some jazz standards and “Hava Nagila,” and did some grief counseling. But the job wasn’t that satisfying. I wanted to engage in deeper “shrink”-style counseling. I wanted to meet up with Jews-on-the-go behind closed doors and hear all their secrets. I wanted to discuss high-stress moments: birth, life, marriage, divorce, death, tennis. (I play tennis with a rabbi. The guy kicks my ass.)

I never did become a pulpit rabbi. I applied for six synagogue jobs and got one half-baked offer — not a real pulpit. The Hillel in Norman, Oklahoma. I didn’t want to hang out with kids.

I got no decent job offers because I had too much hate in me, and that, no doubt, came across in my job interviews. For one thing, I was obsessed with Nazis at the time and wanted to stomp them. (I was about 35 years too late.) My hero was Abba Kovner, the Vilna ghetto fighter. I even attended — almost daily — the Demjanjuk trial in Cleveland, and that guy wasn’t even a Nazi, just an adjunct.

I went into real estate. That, as it turned out, was a perfect fit.

—

fiction

[illustration by Ralph Solonitz]

 
My latest essay in the Cleveland Plain Dealer . . .

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — I want to be more than just another number with the folks at the Internal Revenue Service. I write “landlord/bandleader” in the “occupation” blank on my taxes. Maybe the word “bandleader” piques somebody’s interest at the Cincinnati IRS processing center. Maybe “bandleader” conjures up Benny Goodman or Jon Batiste and makes an IRS worker’s day more interesting. Or maybe nobody looks at my returns in Cincinnati.

In the 1980s, I had an in-person audit. I went to the downtown Cleveland federal building solo, without a lawyer or accountant. I knew about taxes. My father had taught me. He didn’t teach me how to fix cars, but he did teach me how to fix taxes. My dad used to keep two sets of books — one in pencil and one in pen. He gave the government the pen version (with creative math), and he kept the pencil version (with the real numbers). My dad had grown up on Kinsman Road during the Depression and was a self-made man.

The auditor didn’t find anything wrong with my taxes. That’s how the second generation often rolls: legit numbers. The auditor gave me an $80 credit for some “supplies” I had forgotten to claim.

I think about taxes. Not just in April. Taxes are interesting.

Here are some tax pointers for this season:

Schedule C/Business income: The government looks closely at sole proprietors’ expenses. As a bandleader, how should I list the candy bars I buy for my sleep-deprived, van-driving keyboard player? For instance, are his Milky Ways a “meal”? Or are they just “maintenance”? What if my drummer wears a bright-red suit on stage? Can he deduct the suit — and the dry-cleaning costs — as a business expense? Yes. But if he wears the suit offstage, as well — in real life — then, no deduction. It’s just a suit.

Qualified Dividends: Every year, I try to remember what qualified dividends qualify for. (They qualify for lower capital-gains tax rates.)

Schedule D/Capital gains and losses: In 1977, my wife-to-be, Alice, bought a couple shares of a Vanguard mutual fund. Did anyone other than Alice and Vanguard’s founder, John Bogle, own mutual funds in 1977? A smart business move — me marrying Alice.

Supplemental income and loss: Income from royalties and rental property are reported on the same Schedule E form. Why are such different sources of income on the same form? Are there many more “landlord/bandleaders” out there than I know about? I know an accordion player from Parma who owns a shopping-strip center on the West Side. I don’t know any other musicians collecting rent on the side. The most my band ever received in royalties was $45.56. That’s why I own rental property.

Depreciation/Form 4562: Buildings have different life expectancies than, say, people. Apartment buildings fully depreciate in 27½ years. Commercial buildings (like shopping strips) last 39 years. You don’t need to know that, unless you’re me.

Self-employment tax/Schedule SE: The tax on Social Security and Medicare is effectively 15.3% for a self-employed person. A salaried person pays only half that — 7.65%. That’s worth pondering about, if you’re a self-employed, small-business owner.

Maybe I’ll make somebody’s day in Cincinnati this month. I try to make my tax returns interesting. Just not too interesting.

—

(Illustration by Ralph Solonitz)

 
Waste Management wants $2035.24 for taking away my old dumpsters. I rent the dumpsters for trash removal at my apartment buildings. I’m on a lease. (Landlords can be tenants!)

I’ve used WM for 13 years. Do they still love me? No, they regularly overcharge me, assessing extra charges (“overages”) because my dumpsters are too full.

I think I’ll take my dumpster needs and talents to Rumpke. Ever heard of them? Fun name. Rumpke is a regional company, out of Cincinnati. Rumpke say they won’t charge me overage fees or removal fees when my lease is up.

But what to do about the $2035.24 the gonifs in Chicago (WM’s HQ) want? Two grand to take away my 11 dumpsters? Should I ignore Chi? Maybe WM will forget about me. WM is huge; there are even WM dumpsters in Japan; I’ve seen it in the movies.

Garbage haulers and coin-op laundry guys . . . they’re  all originally Mob-related, started decades ago. I remember a coin-op laundry operator from Chicago trying to turn me into an indentured servant. It was almost impossible to get out of the contract with them. (“Coin-op” refers to rental washers and dryers in my buildings.)

I’m not thrilled about sending $2035.24 to Carol Stream, Illinois. Is that a real town or just a Mob post office in the middle of nowhere?

—

Update: WM didn’t forget about me, and I paid half, $1017.62. Matter settled.