Real Music & Real Estate . . .

I liked to provoke my mother-in-law. She would say, “They’re wearing their hair high in the 1940s look.” And I would say, “Who’s they?” Or she would say, “I don’t have any shoes to wear tonight to the party.” And I would say, “You going barefoot?”

I shouldn’t have been such a smart aleck. I hung around Harvey Pekar, who was inspirational — very bitter. “I’m hateful,” he said.  “I’d like to have a cool way to slip my George Ade article to Lark [Pekar’s second ex-wife, an academic]. She’s small-minded. Who wants to dig through Ade’s school grades? So what. I want to do something more creative.”

This was in 1981.

Now I’m twice as old as my son Ted. Exactly twice as old. He’s 31. Pekar was at Teddy’s bris. Pekar considered writing a comic about the mohel raising his hands like a prize fighter and saying, “Golden hands!”

Ted has been a newspaper reporter and taught English in Korea. He has a law degree. He was on Jeopardy. He has worked temporary crap jobs, too. He has done a lot, but he’s still only half my age!

Here’s what I’ve learned in the past 31 years:

1. Guard against bitterness
2. Make your job interesting
3. Do something beneficial for others
4. Zekhor  (Remember)
5. Get married and have kids
6. “Don’t just view it, do it”  (Shari Lewis)
7. Old people are dumb! (joke)
8. Don’t judge people by bumper stickers, neighborhoods, or their tastes in music.

I hope to list 10 items by the end of the decade.  (Make it to the end of the decade, then worry about the list, dude.)

***

When my youngest child, Jack, moved to California last year, I held a mini-shiva; I walked through the music room in the basement and threw out old mic cables, cassette tapes and tons of drumsticks.

Eli “Paperboy” Reed (L) and Jack Stratton down the basement, 2011

Jack took his drums and an electric bass out west.  I called him when he was driving through Nebraska, and said, “Did you open the letter I wrote you?”

“Yeah,” he said, “my friends thought it was funny that on the envelope you wrote, ‘Don’t open till Nebraska.’ They thought it contained hallucinogenics.”

I’m anti-drugs!  I was dispensing wisdom-in-a-can (in an envelope) to my youngest child. If  he could combine my old guy’s experience with his 24-year-old’s enthusiasm and creativity, he would do fine. [Story about the letter is here.]

I filled up four contractors garbage bags in the basement.

I hauled the stuff to the tree lawn on garbage day.  An hour later, three bags were gone, but the fourth remained. A junk man had picked up three bags.  And I had put some paperwork in those bags, as well as Jack’s garbage.

Mac — the  junk guy  — pulled up the next week in a pickup truck. He said he liked my trash, particularly the ersatz medieval knight’s helmet from my son’s high school days.

I said, “What about the paperwork?”

He said he had pitched that. Good. I didn’t want my identity stolen that day. He handed me his card.

Age 24 is when you have the least amount of possessions. Now Jack has even less –- four bags less.

And Mac has some good stuff, like the helmet.

—
Yiddishe Cup is at the College of Wooster (Ohio) 9:30 p.m. Sat. (Nov. 17).  More info here.

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Yiddishe Cup has played in 19 states and Ontario.

Our most recent state is Massachusetts.

I didn’t tell anybody about our Massachusetts gig, except Ari Davidow, the dictator of Klezmershack, a Boston-based website.

I didn’t shout, “We’re playing Boston!”  Wouldn’t be right.   I didn’t want to drive the Mass. bands crazy. There are so many good Jewish wedding bands in Massachusetts.

How did Yiddishe Cup get the Massachusetts gig?   Connections.  My cousin Margie.  She hired us for a wedding.

Mass. football huddle

The band stayed at the Marriott near the Natick mall.  The food court at the mall had take-out Indian food; you don’t see that very often in Cleveland.

Yid Map

Notice, we haven’t played Kentucky.  That irks me!

Daniel Ducoff — Yiddishe Cup’s Sir Dance-a-lot — collects refrigerator magnets of states Yiddishe Cup has played.   Twelve years ago, I gave Daniel magnet-investment advice.  I told him to buy “Kentucky.”

Kentucky is ridiculously, abuttingly close to Ohio.

What’s with Texas?  We’ve played Texas three times.  Once at Temple Emanu El in Dallas, and twice at the Chamizal National Memorial park in El Paso.

Some people think Yiddishe Cup plays only in Cleveland.  I hope this map straightens them out.

Buckeyes and fellow travelers, here are the Ohio towns we have played. (Obama and Romney have nothing on Yiddishe Cup.):

Elyria, Akron, Lorain, Warren, Youngstown, Oberlin, Wooster, Lakeside, Toledo, Springfield, Alliance . . .

Kent, Canton, Granville, Gambier, Lancaster, Findlay, Columbus, Delaware, Hiram, Cincinnati, Dayton, Oxford, Celina, Urbana.

You can find good Arabic food in Toledo.

Gambier is not a real town.  It has a post office, bookstore, pizza parlor and Kenyon College.   Mount Vernon — an authentic town –- is just a few miles from Kenyon.   Hey, we played a wedding in Mount Vernon.  Please add “Mount Vernon” to the list.

Yiddishe Cup probably won’t play on the West Coast unless one of my sons marries a West Coaster and the wedding is out there.  That’s our best hope.  Boychicks, you can use a DJ for the breaks.  No problem.

Yiddishe Cup’s number-two hang-out state is Michigan . . . Ann Arbor, Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, Calumet, East Lansing, Evert and Grand Rapids.

Calumet is in the Upper Peninsula.  We  flew there via Minneapolis.  We should have played for change in the Minnie airport so we could color in Minnesota on the map.

Michigan has so few cities.  What percentage of Michiganders live in Metro Detroit?  My guess is 33 percent.  [42 percent –- Google.]

Mappin’ . . . Have you looked at a map today?  (Electoral College maps don’t count.)

—-
My op-ed “It’s Campaign Season; Ohio is Swingin‘ was in the Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer.  (Similar to post below.)

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(A version of this post appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer 11/4/12.)

When will it end?

Superstorm Sandy or the election?

Either.

Definitely by Tuesday.

Ohio returns to flyover status Tuesday, and I’m back to looking for celebs at Ohio Turnpike rest stops — bands and gangsters traveling from New York to Chicago.

Bill Clinton, Bruce Springsteen and Condoleezza Rice: history.

My friend Jane posted on Facebook: “Can’t wait until this election season is over so I can be sane again.”

A friend from Rhode Island asked me, “How is it living in a swing state?”

“It’s swinging,” I said.  It’s sweet. We’re loved.

When I’m not loved, I’m a landlord. I receive calls from political operatives who want to rent stores for “staging areas.”

I haven’t rented to a politician in years, because politicians tend to trash stores and not pay enough rent. The campaign workers are gone the day after the election, but the pizza boxes aren’t. And where are the keys?

I’m supposed to give the store away cheap, as a political gesture. My gesture: Pay and I’ll rent to you.

“I’m Brian,” said the young man on the phone.

“Where are you from?” I asked. He didn’t sound local.

“I’m in Cleveland right now.”

“I see.”

“I need the store for a few days.”

“How many people will be in the store?”

“Twenty to 30 people. They’ll go out canvassing. Teams are sent out.”

Twenty to 30 people is a lot of foot traffic for a 1,000 square-foot store, and a lot of pizza boxes.

Plain or pepperoni.

I’ll never know.  My price was too high, I guess.

—

SIDE B

From the history channel . . .

PLAYING POLITICS

When a relative ran for school board and lost, my father said, “Don’t run again.  You don’t want to get a loser’s reputation.”

My relative didn’t run again.

I, too, play by my dad’s rules.

I might run.  When?  Not saying.

First, a little background: I was a Kennedy man.  (Who wasn’t?  A lot of people.)

Bert Stratton w/ Kennedy buttons, Ohio Stadium, 1960

I started my own country (on paper) in sixth grade and elected presidents and representatives.  My country was a solace, because  in the real world I couldn’t run for president because a) I wasn’t 35 and b) I was Jewish.

My mother said I could run and win.  She duped me!  My man, Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut, couldn’t even run.  Newsweek  said the country wasn’t ready for the Ribman for prez or even veep.

Now presumably a Jew could win the nomination for the top job.

Let me be clear: I won’t start out at school-board level or even vice president.

My Little League teammate Joel Hyatt (Cleveland Heights High ’68) ran for U.S. Senate and got clobbered.  He hadn’t paid his dues; he hadn’t run for lesser offices.

Lee Fisher wins state senate seat, 1982

Lee Fisher (Shaker Heights High ’69) paid dues.  I saw him at civic club meetings in Collinwood in 1982:  six neighbors, me and Lee.  Fisher eventually climbed to lieutenant governor. Then he got clobbered for the U.S. Senate.  He paid  dues.  Give him that.

I’m willing to pay dues.  About $10.

My American history teacher in high school said Stratton is a good political name.  (My teacher was Americo Betori.  He should have run for mayor of Cleveland in 1950.  He would have won.)

Stratton.  Remember that name.

***

A few weeks ago at Simchat Torah, the rabbi said, “We will now read the last verse of the Book of Deuteronomy.”  A Yiddishe Cup musician — not paying close attention — said, “Did he just say, ‘We will now read from the Book of Mitt Romney’?”

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1. THE BUG MAN

Drain flies aren’t bad.  Roaches aren’t bad. Mice are nothing.

Two-hundred dead flies in an apartment — that’s bad. I saw 20 in the bathtub alone.  The building manager said, “I killed them with spray.”

I said, “Where are you hiding the body?”  I meant the dead body.

Swarma

Another 50 dead flies were by the window in the living room. The apartment was vacant.

I called
the pro exterminator. The bug man’s secretary said, “Are they metallic – the flies?”

“What do you mean by metallic?”

“Blue or green?”

“They’re big flies,” I said “You see them all the time, like on horses.”

“Oh, excuse the expression — they’re shit flies.”

“Yes. My manager says he has 500 dead ones in his vacuum cleaner. I need you over here.”

The flies were officially called blow flies, and are attracted to carrion and excrement.  The bug man found a nook above the drop ceiling in the bathroom that we had missed.  He hit it.

The flies are gone now.  I wonder what was up there.  I didn’t look.

2. THE SCRAPPER

I was looking for a scrapper to take a dilapidated, nonfunctioning boiler out of an apartment-building basement. The boiler was sitting in the basement, minding its own business, but the city inspector said it had to go.

I called a heating company, which suggested I hire them and an asbestos-removal company to remove the old unit.

Instead, I contacted Charles the scrapper and said,  “What are the chances of you doing this job and just taking the good stuff — the metal — and leaving behind a mess?”

“I don’t do it that way.  I’ve been doing this all day — all my life – and I do it right,” he said.

The boiler consisted of eight cast-iron sections, each about 200 pounds.  And it was down a flight of steps.  The boiler was the size of a VW bus.

“That’s what I do,” Charles said.  “Get rid of it.”

But I didn’t use Charles.  I used Daryl, another freelance scrapper. Daryl got to the job site long before Charles and gave me a good price: free. “I’m here and I’m ready,” Daryl said.  That counted for something.

—
I wrote this one,  “The Nostalgia Vortex,” for today’s CoolCleveland.com.  I was raised by a village — Norge Village.

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Yiddishe Cup played a wedding in a backyard in Connecticut where the floor partially collapsed.  The ground became soggy underneath the tent, which was built into the side of a hill.  The tent grid work — which supported the plywood floor — sunk.  About 50 semi-drunken partygoers did athletic hora steps and pogo-ing, and the floor buckled.

The groom’s mom told me to stop the music.

I  didn’t. You can’t stop the hora at a wedding; it’s bad luck for the marriage.  I said, “Two more minutes.”  She said no, and jumped onto the bandstand and yanked the saxophone from my mouth. Luckily, I wasn’t playing clarinet (different embouchure, more likely to damage my teeth). I said, “Don’t ever do that again!”  She was oblivious to me.   She frantically dialed her phone for a repairman.

The tent-repair crew arrived shortly, and during a break the crew crawled under the tent and put in extra supports.  The mom had the band playing only background music. We sounded like a string quartet at a funeral.  We didn’t want anybody to dance, because the floor would collapse even more.   We had traveled 500 miles to play tepid tunes like “Jerusalem of Gold” and “Tumbalalaika,” and have my ax yanked.  What a letdown.

The dancing picked up after the repair crew fixed the support grid work.  Lots of ruach (spirit), and no more assaults on my teeth.

***

SIDE B

Watch out,  literature here . . .

THIRTEEN JEWS
IN CONNECTICUT

I.

13 Jews are in line
for omelets

II.

A woman says
“Do I want the mushroom omelet?”
Is she talking to me?
No
To herself

III.

The beauty of the East Coast
Red maples in Connecticut
We’ve come a long way

IV.

Why do I imagine everybody at this wedding
is thin and wearing black?
Because everybody is thin and wearing black

VI.

“You’re from somewhere near Hungary,” I say
“Finland,” the woman says
“Don’t they share a language bond?”
“Distantly”
I’m on a losing streak with accents

IX.

Where is the euphony?
This band is loud
This band is Yiddishe Cup
Turn it down, guys!

XIII.

We are in the Berkshires
The leaves are falling
So are we

The tent and Yiddishe Cup, Lakeville, Conn., 2010

—

I wrote this op-ed, “Main Street’s Landlord,” for the New York Times, 9/30/12. (Illustration by
Rebecca Mock.)

—
Yiddishe Cup plays for Simchat Torah 7 p.m. Sun., Oct. 7, Fairmount Temple, and 7:15 p.m. Mon., Oct. 8, Park Synagogue. Cleveland.

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Re: my op-ed in today’s NYT (9/30/12)

Welcome, NY Times readers.

I know you’re busy. You have other things to do.
Like benching the Sunday Times.

Guys, give me a New York minute!

Are you looking for top-quality real-estate lit?  You just found it!  (To subscribe, enter your email in the space on the left and click “submit.”)

I’ve been on the NYT op-ed page three times in the past year and a half. I’ve written a million — make that 72 — blog posts about real estate.  Check them out here.

Must read amusing posts about real estate now.  Yes, you must.

I do a music/prose show, “Dear Landlord.”   I’m doing my “Dear Landlord” (aka “Klezmer Guy”) show at The Ark, Ann Arbor, Michigan,  on Sat. Feb. 9.

My band, Yiddishe Cup, plays all over the country. When my buildings turn to dust, this song will remain.

Meshugeneh Mambo (Crazy Mambo) by Yiddishe Cup

I post up every Wednesday morning.  Subscribe and you’ll get a weekly post.  I won’t sell or give away your email address.

I’ll gladly write a book about real estate if a publisher offers me a contract. (TV series would be OK, too!)   Title:  How to Jam with Your Tenants.  The mock-up for the book is here  — an article I wrote for City Journal. The article is my best essay.

Thanks for your time and interest.

–Bert Stratton

—
Vid time. Here’s a clip from the “Dear Landlord” show.

—
One more vid, “Should I Rent to a Stripper?”   For landlords only!

—
No, one more!  Michael Brecker, on electronic wind instrument, jams with economist Milty Friedman.  This vid was on my blog last week, too.  By  Jack Stratton.

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I’m not Orthodox, but I can walk the walk. Walking is a major part of my religion.

Last week my wife, Alice, and I walked home from Rosh Hashanah services. We were at Altamont and Compton roads, in a mostly black section of Cleveland Heights — close to a mostly Orthodox neighborhood.

Three black boys pulled up on bikes. The boys were out of school because Cleveland Heights closes on Rosh Hashanah.

I had on a yarmulke. I like to wear a yarmulke in public once in a while, just to “out” myself.

D’Shawn, leaning on his handlebars, said, “You Jewish?”

“Yes,” I said.

He turned to Alice. “You Jewish?”

“Yes.”

“Total Jewish?” he asked.

“Yes,” my wife said, smiling. She knew D’Shawn. Alice teaches gym in the local public school and knows a lot of kids. “Being Jewish is a good thing. The food is good . . .”

“You go to that building [synagogue] up on Taylor?” D’Shawn asked.

“No, we go to the big temple — the one with the dome — over there,” Alice said, pointing toward Euclid Heights Boulevard.

Alice wears slacks. She doesn’t wear a wig. She doesn’t look Orthodox. (She isn’t — not by a long shot.)

“You breaking Armish?” D’Shawn said.

I said, “Breaking Armish? Did you say ‘breaking Armish’? What’s that mean? You mean ‘breaking Amish’?” Either way, it made no sense to me.

"Breaking Amish"

Breaking Amish is a reality TV show about Amish kids breaking loose in New York. The first episode was on last week. (I Googled this info when I got home.)

D’Shawn apparently thought Alice was “breaking Armish” because she doesn’t look like a member of the local black-hat Orthodox crowd.
—

Side B — “Beer and Coconut Bars,” a classic blog post — is below this video.

This clip may be the most innovative vid on earth. By Jack Stratton. Michael Brecker (on electronic wind instrument) jams with Uncle Milty Friedman.

—
SIDE B

A version of this post ran on CoolCleveland.com last year (12/6/11).  This version has more illustrations and pics!

BEER AND COCONUT BARS

My dad admired bankers. In my dad’s pantheon of great Cleveland Jewish families, the number one clan was the Bilsky family, who made bagels, then went into medicine (son #1), bowling alleys (son #2), and started a bank (son #3).  My grandmother used to say “The Bilskys make big bagels out of little bagels.”

Scott Bilsky, 37, called to book Yiddishe Cup for a Fairmount Temple event.  He said 12 Bilskys would be at the temple party.

Dr. Harold Bilsky, son #1, had liked Yiddishe Cup.  Harold had grown up with my dad on Kinsman Road.  Harold wouldn’t be at the gig.   He died in 2007.  Leo, son #2, wouldn’t be there either. He died in 1998.  I asked Scott, “What about the banker?”

“That’s my grandfather Marvin,” Scott said.  “He’ll be there.”  Marvin is 90.

At the gig, I talked to Marvin during our breaks. He told me, “Everything I ever did began with a B — baker, banker and builder. Plus brewer.”

That “brewer” part was news to me — Bilsky a brewski?

Marvin Bilsky, 2011

“My father bought Cleveland-Sandusky Brewing in 1955,” Marvin said. “There were very few Jews involved in the brewing business then. In the 1960s, Israel came to us for brewing tips and equipment.”

Marvin said there were only four other Cleveland breweries in the 1950s: Carling’s from Canada (“very nice people”); Standard Brewing; Erin Brew, Irish; Leisy’s, German; and Pilsener’s P.O.C., Czech.  Bilsky’s brewery bottled Gold Bond beer and Olde Timers Ale.

“We all used to meet on Mondays.  I didn’t have any trouble with anybody,” Marvin said.

The last local brewery in town was Carling, which closed in 1984. National breweries killed off the locals.

My father never taught me about brewskis. He rarely drank; it would have interfered with his worrying. (Old Jewish joke.) I knew about Carling’s from old Cleveland Indians’ radio ads. “Hey, Mabel, Black Label . . . Carling Black Label beer.”

Bilsky’s brewery was just a blip in the Bilsky biz history.  The Bilsky business was Bilsky’s Bakery, which had started on Kinsman and moved to Cedar Center in 1948.

Who invented the Cleveland coconut bar?

That was the question I should have asked Marvin.   My dad had loved coconut bars (and halvah).  I should have asked.

Marvin was in the phone book . . . .

“Marvin, this is Bert Stratton from Yiddishe Cup, the klezmer band.”

“Thank you for the concert yesterday. You did as well as you could,” he said.  “No, seriously, we enjoyed it!  To answer your question, I’ve always said my father invited the coconut bar, but — and I have to tell you this — I went to Sydney, Australia, and I went down into the subway there.  They have a small subway system.  They had coconut bars down there!  They didn’t call them coconut bars. [Australians call them lamingtons, says Google.]  Where did they get them?   Maybe from England.   Australia used to be part of England.”

“Marvin, I have a friend, my age — his grandfather was Kritzer’s Bakery on Kinsman —  my friend says his grandfather invented the coconut bar.”

“It was my father!” Marvin said, laughing.  “Who knows.”

I called my cousin George Becker, whose father had owned Heights Baking on Coventry.  George said his father didn’t invented the coconut bar.

Yippee, one less Coconut Bar King to contend with.

Former Clevelander Scott Raab wrote in Esquire (July 2002): “Ask for coconut bars in any Jewish bakery from New Jersey to Los Angeles and you’ll get some version of this: ‘So, you’re from Cleveland . . . We don’t have ’em.’”

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1.

My dad, Toby, and I hired Charles Tuncle for kitchen-floor lino jobs.  Tunkl means dark in Yiddish, which my dad never failed to point out.  Tuncle — the man — was black. Also, he was a killer. He shot a man in a bar.

Armstrong no-wax. Tuncle, 1984. (2010 photo)

When Tuncle was sent to prison, my dad wrote the parole board about Tuncle’s quality vinyl-floor work, and Tuncle got out early.  My father never told the tenants — or our building managers — about Tuncle’s record.  My dad never said:  “You see that guy over there with the utility knife?  He’s a killer.”

***

My dad called our business Reliable Management Co.

We should have hauled garbage with a name like that.

When I started an offshoot company, Acorn Management Co., my dad said, “What the hell does ‘Acorn’ have to do with anything?”

“Dad, I live on Oak Road.  That’s why.”  It was 1976.  Environmentalism was the next big thing.

“Nobody is going to understand ‘Acorn,’” he said.

I sometimes call my company “Reliable + Acorn Management companies” now.  That makes me feel like a Danish architecture firm.

***

I hired Standard Roofing for a roof tear-off.  Standard Roofing went under.  Too standard?

My electrician is Jack Kuhl, pronounced “Jack Cool.”

I knew Emin Lyutfalibekov, a handyman.  I told him to shorten his name, and he said no way; he was offended.  He said he was royalty back in Azerbaijan.

Napoli Construction is a bricklaying firm. Art Gallo, chief mason.

I use Donnelly Heating once in a while.  Dan Donnelly.  There are four Donnelly heating companies on the West Side: Dan, Tom, William and Original.  They must have large Seders.

Lawrence Christopher Construction — that was Larry Vesely.   He filled a hole for me for $9,000 — a coal bin that had collapsed beneath a parking lot.  The city wouldn’t allow me to fill the hole with plain gravel. The city wanted a reconstructed coal bin that could practically double as a bomb shelter, complete with beams and concrete.  Larry said the job would cost $3,000 and take several weeks.

The final bill was $9,000 and the job took nine months.  One delay and complication after another.

I could not charge higher rents just because I had a nice coal bin.  No tenant cared I had a bomb shelter.

I paid Larry back in nine monthly installments, just to get slightly back at him.

***

Tuncle the floor guy — I miss him.  He died at 84 in 2008.  A nice guy, except for that night in the bar.  He didn’t have any other criminal record.

2.

I was at a gathering of Jewish landed gentry — a landlords’ shabbat — in Pepper Pike.

Landlord A — to my right — owned a 17-suiter which her late father had bought in 1955.

Landlord B owned a building his father bought in 1936.

Buy and hold, chaverim.  Shabbat shalom.

I owned (with my sister) a building my dad bought in 1965.

In real estate — as in many fields — it’s good to pick the right father.

In college Donald Trump bought his first building, using his father’s money: a 1,200-unit apartment complex in Cincinnati.   Trump’s dad owned property in  New York’s outer boroughs.  Trump’s net worth upon graduating college in 1965 was $1.4 million, in today’s dollars.  [Trump, The Art of the Deal.]

Suites, a local real estate mag, did a profile on Marty Cohen, a Cleveland  landlord.  The article said Marty “couldn’t shake his interest in property management.”  Marty worked at a bank for a while, but that wasn’t a good fit.  His family owned a 150-unit Parma apartment complex.  Maybe that had something to do with Marty finding a good fit in real estate.

Buy and hold, brothers and sisters. Pass the strudel.

3.

Griffith, the state boiler inspector,  called.

I said to him, “You’ve been around as long as me!”

“Yes, sir,” he said.  “I was around even when your dad was still around!   You know, your father was a kinda guy.  A good dude.  I miss your dad.  He was hoping you’d take over the business.  And you did!”  (My father died in 1986.)

“How long you been around, Griffith?”

“Since 1972.  You were just a kid.  You were in high school.” (I was in college, Griffith!)    “Your dad was a little worried about you, I’ll be honest with you. I hope you don’t take this personally, he thought you didn’t have the fire.  You know, he had went through some things that weren’t easy, and he wanted to leave the buildings to somebody who would appreciate them.”

“I gave my father some things to think about, I guess.”

“I’m proud of you.  You come around.  If he was around, I’d tell him how good you’re doing.”

I didn’t run the family biz totally into the ground.

My epitaph — if I’m lucky: I’m in the Ground But My Business Ain’t.

—

Next week’s post will be on Thursday, not Wednesday, due to Yom Kippur.
—
Here’s an op-ed I wrote for the Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer  (9/16/12). “High Holidays beckon twice-a-year worshipers.”

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On the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, I’m on the Shaker Lakes bridge, hanging out with the Reconstructionist crowd. The Reconstructionist Jews are here for the Tashlikh ceremony.  (Tashlikh is Hebrew for “casting off” —  the symbolic casting-away-of-sins ceremony. Participants toss crumbs into a river or lake.)

I’m not a Reconstructionist, but I know a lot of the shul members.

I see others too.  The guy who comes every day with his dachshunds, and the paraplegic guy, Brian.  I run into a Swedish-American who is a convert.  He says, “The Swedes taught the Jews about herring when the Swedes conquered Poland.” Good info.

The Recons leave, and a chavurah (small worship group) from a large Conservative synagogue comes through.  A member tells me about a bar mitzvah in Minnesota that was too loud.  Tell me about it.

The Recons at 3:30, the chavurah at 4:30.

I could go to Park Synagogue at 4:45 p.m., but that would be too much tash-likhing.

The Park Synagogue rabbi, at the morning service, had said, “It’s easy to do the right thing when you’re in shul, but the big test is the day after Rosh Hashanah — the days after the holidays. The routine days.  The days when your wife shrinks your favorite sweatshirt, or you run a stop sign.”

Question, rabbi: Am I allowed to be bad on Rosh Hashanah — before I start to be good?

I get a phone message from a new tenant Rosh Hashanah afternoon.  He has yet to move in.  He needs to talk to me.

I tell my wife, “The guy doesn’t want to move in.  I can smell it.”

I can’t resist calling him back.  It’s late Rosh Hashanah.  Around 6 p.m.  I can do business at 6 p.m.

The guy is going to catch a break. I am not going to be vainly ambitious, grossly envious, insanely selfish, or indifferent to him.

“My mother is very sick,” he says.  “I can’t move in.” He is 25.  His mother is very sick like my mother is very sick; my mother is dead.  The guy is lying.  Not many 25 year olds have very sick mothers.  I could ask him what exactly his mother has.  I could ask him for a letter from the doctor.  Instead, I say, “I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” and I tell him he won’t get his security back because he kept the apartment off the market for five weeks.

He says, “How about half back?”

I say no.

I have heard too many young people talk about their very sick mothers.

“My God, the soul you have given me is pure.”  That’s in the Tashlikh prayer.

My soul is about 49-percent pure.  That’s as good as it gets in the real estate biz.  The kid found a cheaper place down the street, or moved in with his girl friend.  That’s my guess.

—

Footnote: This was Rosh Hashanah, 2010.

—

SIDE B

ROSH HASHANAH PRAYER

There are risks that go along with being active.

Don’t be static.  You’ll have plenty time for that when you’re gone.

The devil (yetzer hora) is always working.  He don’t take no vacation.

Adapt.

Adapt to a colostomy, mastectomy, prostate surgery, the inability to walk, depression.

Don’t focus on what you’ve lost.

Focus on what’s good and what’s right in front of you: your children, your parents, the memories of your parents, your relatives, your friends,  your community.

Life is not for the weak-hearted.  Display some willpower!  Do not take the short view. Seasons come and go.  Get used to it.

This year we will not get wrapped up in things evil, harmful, or petty.

The health of our body is not just our singular “body,” but it’s our “bodies” — the people we work with, the people we love, the people we hang out with, the people we pray with.

Social isolation is not good.  We’re all connected, particularly on days like Rosh Hashanah.

This is a day of aspiration and hope.

It’s our only hope.

Do not dwell on the bad. That is too easy.

Aspire to change.  Focus.

Praise God.

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The Jazz Temple was a music club in a former Packard showroom at Mayfield Road and Euclid Avenue.   Coltrane played there.  Dinah Washington too.  Everybody played there.  The Jazz Temple was in business from 1960 to 1963.

I passed the Jazz Temple weekly on my way to Sunday school at The Temple, a Reform synagogue in University Circle, Cleveland.

Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver was the head rabbi at The Temple.  Rabbi Silver was  very prominent; he spoke at the United Nations, advocating for the establishment of the state of Israel.  Rabbi Silver’s son, Danny, was the assistant rabbi.  He played football at Harvard and blocked hard for his dad.

The Sunday school kids at The Temple were mostly from Shaker Heights.  One kid got a ride in a limo to shul.  The driver wore a chauffeur’s cap.

I couldn’t grasp how temple — the word — fit into a non-Jewish setting, like in “Jazz Temple.”  Was Jazz a religion too?  (Give me a break. I was 10.)

Years later, I met a couple ex-beatniks who had been old enough to go to the Jazz Temple in the early 1960s.  They had heard Trane and Ella.

The Jazz Temple was blown up in 1963.  Somebody didn’t like the club, or the owner, Winston Willis, a controversial black businessman.

At The Temple, the religious-school kids would attend the last part of the service and hear the sermon.  Rabbi Silver looked like God and talked like Him.

Today, at The Temple East in Beachwood, there is an Abba Hillel Silver memorial study.  The rabbi’s desk is laid out like he just stepped out for lunch. He died in 1963.

Rabbi Silver: Live at the Jazz Temple.  Interesting.

John Coltrane: Live at The Temple.  Another possibility.

A love supreme . . .

A love supreme . . .

—

SIDE B

PRECIOUS

In the arts, if you’re precious, you’re bad. Precious is the worst thing. Precious means you’re dainty and overly refined.

A friend (a former music critic) called all college a cappella music precious.

Harvey Pekar called Willio and Phillio — the Cleveland music-comedy duo — precious. (Willio and Phillio was around in the 1980s.) Willio and Phillio was precious — their stage name for sure. Willio (Will Ryan) went out to Los Angeles to work for Disney, and Phillio (Phil Baron) became a cantor in L.A. They were good, and probably still are.

Yiddishe Cup is precious occasionally. The musicians say “oy vey” too much on stage. I’ve tried to get my guys to stop. I can’t.

Peter Laughner, a Cleveland rocker, died from drug abuse and alcoholism at 24. He killed himself, basically. (This was in 1977.) He was not precious. He was dead — and funny — about art. He was in the Pere Ubu underground before Pere Ubu was famous.

Suicide doesn’t appeal to me for two reasons: 1) My wife would kill me if I tried it. 2) I want to attend my kids’ weddings and eventually meet my grandkids-to-be.

“Precious” is OK for grandkids. (“Grandkids” is precious.)

—

SIDE C

New construction — Side C — for Michiganders. . .

THE LODGE

Chester Ave., Cleveland, 2011

I drove to Rochester, Michigan, which is not as cool as Rochester, New York, but it does have a small-town charm.

I’ve seen Father Coughlin’s former church in Royal Oak, Michigan.

I’ve been to Detroit many times.

My wife, Alice, said, “Detroit has very long roads.”

She probably meant Woodward, Gratiot and Telegraph.

Detroit also has the Lodge. Elmore Leonard mentions the Lodge in his books, like, “The gambling casino, Mutt, you can’t fucking miss it, over by the Lodge freeway.”

A couple Cleveland freeways and bridges have names, like the Bob Hope Memorial Bridge, but nobody ever uses the names.

I stayed at a hotel near the Silverdome, which looked like a big pillow. (The stadium did.) A Detroiter told me the Silverdome sold for about $200,000. A stadium for the price of a California carport.

Who was John C. Lodge? Probably a labor leader. [No, the mayor of Detroit in the 1920s.]

Detroit is like Cleveland. Detroit has the Eastern Market; Cleveland has the West Side Market. Detroit has downtown casinos. Now Cleveland has a downtown casino.

Metro Detroit has a few more Jews than Cleveland. And probably more Arabs, Poles and Ukrainians. And more blacks.

People who wear Tiger caps are cool, as are Indians cap wearers.

What about Berkley, Michigan? Is that worth a visit?

Elmore Leonard eats at the Beverly Hills Café. I wonder if that’s part of the Beverly Hills Café chain, or an independent restaurant in Beverly Hills, Michigan.

I wonder if Elmore Leonard spends his winters in Detroit. I bet he doesn’t. He writes a lot about Florida.

I have some Elmore Leonard junk mail.

City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. That’s worth reading.

Maple means 15 Mile. Big Beaver is 16 Mile.

What about Oakland University? Does the university have Bobby Seale barbecue sauce in the cafeteria?

I live only three and a half hours from Berkley, Beverly Hills and Oakland.

—

Yiddishe Cup pulls into Motown Sunday. See us at Cong. Beth Shalom, Oak Park, Mich.,
2 p.m., Sept. 9. Open to the public. Concert info here.

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Harold Ticktin, 85, writes a weekly column for the Cleveland Jewish News on Yiddish.   For instance, he writes about what balabuste means, or balegole.  (Female boss and wagon-driver.)

Harold Ticktin, Shaker Heights, 2012

Also, Harold occasionally reflects on early-20th century leftist politics for magazines such as Jewish Currents.

I asked Harold for a couple Yiddish translations. I was in his backyard in Shaker Heights.  I wanted to know Yiddish permutations on “How’s it going in?” — everything from “How are you?” to “What’s happnin’, man?”  Ticktin gave me some options, none perfect, and concluded, “Translation is treason.”

He continued, “Listen, there was this pharmacist who did a big business in trusses – you know what a truss is?”

“Yes.”

“The pharmacist’s slogan was Ayer kile iz undzer gedile — your hernia is our pleasure. I told the pharmacist that was a horrible translation.  He told me to come up with a better one.  I said, ‘Your rupture is our rapture.’  Wouldn’t that make a great bumper sticker for an abdominal surgeon?”

“Did you make that up — your rupture is our rapture?” I said.

“That’s a true story.  It’s an absolutely true story.”

Ticktin is a retired workers’ comp lawyer.  He can speak decent Italian, French and Spanish, as well as Yiddish.   One of his favorites translations is All Screwed Up, he said, for the Lina Wertmuller film Tutto a posto e niente in ordine, which literally means “everything ready, nothing works.”  “You don’t translate, you render,” Ticktin said.

Ticktin continued, “James Thurber ran into a woman in Germany who said,  ‘I love your work in German.’  Thurber said, ‘Yes, it’s true, my work loses something in the original.’”

Ticktin lives three miles from his old stomping grounds — the Kinsman neighborhood.  Harold grew up on E. 154^th Street, Cleveland,  hard by the Shaker Heights-Cleveland line.   He said Shaker had been “hakodesh hakadashim [the Holy of Holies] — the other.”   Shaker had been nearly unapproachable, like the inner sanctum at the Temple in Jerusalem.   “I didn’t know anybody in Shaker.  Maybe one person.”

Kinsman Road was Ticktin’s main artery.  He said, “I walked [down Kinsman] from 154th to E. 140th to observe the class struggle. My father was a Yankee. He came over here when he was two. He liked baseball.  What did he know about politics? He knew this: Roosevelt was great and Hitler was bad.”

At E. 146 Street, Harold met Peter “The Brain” Ostrovsky.  “I was converted to communism by Ostrovsky on the train to the Philly Navy Yard in 1946.  I was converted just west of Pittsburgh.”

The upshot:  “I saw the God who was to fail, though I still have a warm spot for Marx, for his Lincoln correspondence,” Harold said.  “I’m a member of the extreme center now.”

I wanted Ticktin to give me a tour of  Kinsman — the  proste, working-class Kinsman of his youth.  “How about it?” I said.  “Now?”   Ticktin agreed. We got in my Lolly the Trolley — my Mercury Sable.

***

Stop 1.  Woodhill Park at  E.116^th.   Ticktin:  “I remember when I was 10 years old [1937] at Woodhill.  It was a tremendous swimming pool.  Everybody got out of the water.  Why?  Because Frieda Katz, a geferlikher (dyed-in-the-wool) communist took a swim with a black kid.  The place cleared out.  This was  Frieda Katz from Katz’s Deli at E. 147^th and Kinsman.”

Formerly Seiger's

2. Seiger’s deli  at 118^th. “I knew Hymie Seiger  best. He went off to yeshiva in junior high.  He just left. I didn’t even know what a yeshiva was.”

3. E. 121. “This was where I attended my one Seder as a child.  On that street.  Very important.”  Ticktin eventually became president of his shul.

Council Educational Alliance building, now a Masonic hall

4. 13512 Kinsman, the Council Education Alliance. “The apex and GHQ [general headquarters] of my youth.  The Communist Club met there.” It was a settlement house.

Cleveland Public Library - Mt. Pleasant branch

“In the 1936 election, the Communist Club painted ‘Vote Communist’ in blue on the library at E. 140^th.  The library  had been a bank before.  Some members of the club got mad because the graffiti was blue.  They said, ‘We need to paint it red.’  Ostrovsky went back to re-paint it  and got caught. He was defended by Yetta Land, who handled all the communists. I don’t think Ostrovsky was punished too severely; he was a juvenile.”

Formerly Spumoni's (middle store)

5. E 142 and Kinsman. “We called this place Spumoni’s.  The real name was Giaimo’s — an ice cream place.  The communists met across the street above the Woolworth’s, which is long gone.

“On Saturday nights all the single Jewish guys would hang out here at Spumoni’s and greet each other Marty-style, like, ‘Whadaya want to do, Marty?’  This went on up through the 1940s and 1950s.”

“What’s Marty-style.”

“Like Marty, the movie with Ernest Borgnine.  You don’t remember it?”

“No.”

“Single Jews guys — and married Italians — hung out, to go out on the town.  I always envisioned a cowering Italian wife in the kitchen back home saying, ‘Tony, when you gonna be home?’”

6. E. 154^th / the Shaker Heights line.   “Hakodesh — the other,” Ticktin said. “I was in New York once and stopped in at YIVO [Jewish Research Institute] for a list of places European Jews had vacationed before the war.  I needed this for a speech in Yiddish. They asked me, ‘You mean intellectuals? Peasants?  We’ll get back to you.’  They didn’t get back to me.  A couple weeks later, I’m at a gathering of Jews and Poles in Cleveland, an American Jewish Committee meeting, and I meet the speaker, a prominent Polish Jew, Lucjan Dobroszycki, the editor of the Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto.  I ask him about vacation spots before the war.  He looks at me and says, ‘This is the second time in two weeks somebody has asked me this question.’  End of the line, Lucjan Dobroszycki — don’t ask me how to spell that.”

7. I drive Harold Ticktin into Shaker Heights.  Another end of the line.

—

The photos, above, are from 2012, except the former Seiger’s deli pic,  which is from 2010.   Seiger’s — later  New World Restaurant — is now boarded up.

—

Yiddishe Cup plays a concert in Metro  Detroit.  

2 p.m. Sun.  SEPT 9

Congregation Beth Shalom

Oak Park, Michigan

Concert  info

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“58% of commuters have experienced road rage while driving to work, and 9% have gotten into a fight with another driver.”
— Wall Street Journal, 8/15/12

Fifty-eight percent seems kind of low.

I was doing the speed limit, 35 mph, on North Park Boulevard at North Woodland in Cleveland Heights.  A guy in a red sports car tailgated me.

Not only did I give the guy the finger, I jumped out of my car at the light and yelled, “Thirty-five!  The speed limit is thirty-five!”

I’m not sure the guy in the car was a guy; it was somebody with tinted windows and vanity plates 1KAP, and the driver was aggressively tailgating me.

Whoever it was, was nice, aside from being a bad driver.  The person didn’t jump out of the red car and come after me.

Maybe I looked threatening.  I had on shades!

I hesitated telling my wife about the incident.  I knew she would get mad.  She would call me hostile.  Correct.

I had never jumped out of my car before and yelled at a driver.  Do I have any explanation for my behavior?

My best explanation is I was on my way to visit Michelle, my number-one employee, who was dying of cancer at 40. She couldn’t talk, and she was on all kinds of tubes.

I’m not sure who I was mad at.

—

SIDE B

MICHELLE

My top building manager was Michelle Orozco.  I’d visit her first. She was always upbeat and set the mood for the day. She had problems — a lot of physical ailments, but she didn’t complain much.  She was my assistant.  That was an official title.  She got paid a little extra. She had grown up in Los Angeles and dropped out of high school.

Michelle Orozco

She was a School of Hard Knocks honor student. When the city said I needed to cough up the names of all my tenants and their move-in dates for my annual housing license, I thought, “What’s that about? Big Brother?” That’s what I thought.  Michelle said, “They want the names for RITA.”  The Regional Income Tax Agency.

I paid Michelle to supervise my newer custodians.  She showed them how to do evictions notices, how Tarnite was better than Brasso.

Michelle moved back to California and left me. She wanted to try her hometown again, the Golden State and all that.

She came back, because California was too expensive. She moved into one of my buildings as a tenant.  I said, “I’m not promising you a job.  And whatever you do, don’t undermine the custodians in here now.” (I’ve had ex-custodians who stuck around and pestered the new custodians.  The ex-custodian would call me and say, “The new guy isn’t cleaning.  He’s drunk.  He’s swearing at the tenants.”)

Michelle — and her husband, Manuel — kept to themselves.  They waited and eventually got their job back.

She was my spy. I wondered if  other custodians checked their boilers regularly in the winter.  Did they “blow down” the valves?  I asked Michelle, “How do we know they’re doing it regularly.”

She said, “They’ll do it because it’s more of a hassle to have the boiler go out than blow it down.”

I hired Michelle when she was 25.  Her mother worked for me. I hired Michelle’s niece, also from California.  I hired Michelle’s sister.

Michelle didn’t steal or lie.  She was a good cleaner.  She could rent apartments.  Sounds basic, but it’s not.

She called just-looking apartment seekers “looky-loos.” I never did understand that.   I heard it as “Lucky Lous.” She called air fresheners “smellies.”

Michelle knew the ways of Home Depot rental trucks, and how to access the junk yard with proper ID.  More basics, but again, somewhat tricky. And which apartment buildings I allowed satellite dishes, and which I didn’t.

She was an optimist. She had a bright personality. She kept things on the sunny side — no small feat in the real estate biz.

Michelle Orozco, 1971-2012.

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My friend Brad eats out a lot and knows many maîtres d’ and chefs.

Brad is finicky around food.  If his fries aren’t crispy enough, he sends them back. If there is the wrong kind of cheese on the tagliatelle (ribbon pasta), Brad sends the dish back. Brad doesn’t do sharp cheese.  If there’s a “short pour” on the glass of wine, watch out.

Brad works the room whenever we go out. We mostly go to places where his buddies are. When we were at Club Isabella, Brad pointed out the doctors and dentists in the room.  “That’s the guy who does the dental implants.  He runs the full-page ad in the Plain Dealer,” Brad said.

I said, “You’ve got to do better than that when I visit you in California [where Brad spends part of the year]. You’ve got to do better than docs who do dental implants.”

Brad said he would take me to L.A. restaurants where I would have a greater than 50-50 chance of spotting celebrities. I said, “I want to see Dean Martin and Don Rickles.”

“Dean Martin is dead, and we’ll have to wheel out Don Rickles,” Brad said.

Brad likes loud rooms.  That’s best for schmoozing. He likes to nearly scream “goyim,” just to see if he’ll get a rise out of nearby diners. (Nobody hears him.  Nobody cares.  He gets away with it.)

I wanted to eat on the patio at Club Isabella.  It was quiet out there, but Brad said it was too hot for dining al fresco, so we ate in the echo-chamber dining room.  Nearly every Jew in Cleveland was there.   Brad worked the room . . .  “How was Aspen, Sandy? . . . “How’s your tennis elbow, Jeff?” That kind of thing.

I need a quieter restaurant next time.  Indian and Chinese restaurants are the best — the quietest.  I don’t want to suck cough drops and sip tea for weeks after my night out with Brad.
—
“Brad” is a pseudonym.

—

SIDE B

MADE IN HOLLAND

My old Norelco razor tore my face off. But I kept using the razor just to see if it would stop tearing my face off.

It wouldn’t.

Finally, I bought a new Norelco. The new razor said “Made in Holland,” just like my 1984 model.

The day I bought my new Norelco, I met a boy named Anno. Anno is a Dutch name. I had a Dutch day — which isn’t easy in Cleveland.

I wonder what Norelco means. Northern Electric Company?

Google it . . . North American Philips Electric Company. In the 1940s, Philco  stopped Philips from using the name “Philips” in the U.S.; Philco and Philips sounded too similar. Philips chose the name Norelco for America.

Buzz.

The recharger on my new Norelco doesn’t work. The package is marked down and stamped “Discontinued.” Maybe that’s why.

“Made in Holland,” you don’t see that every day.

I’ll keep it.

I wonder if my electric toothbrush — a Philips Sonicare — is made in Holland.

. . . No, it isn’t.

In Cleveland, it is customary to have at least one Dutch-made product in your house. I follow that custom.

What’s your Dutch product?

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When my parents spent winters in Florida, I occasionally represented them at their friends’ funerals in Cleveland.

I didn’t like the work. My mother would call from Boca Raton and say, “Edith was such a good friends of ours. Please go, son.”

Screw Edith.

But I went. The hardest part was walking from my car to the shiva house.  I pictured a bereaved relative opening the door and saying, “Who are you? Have you no decency?  We don’t want any!”

That never happened.  I mingled with  mourners.  I was often the youngest non-relative there.  Occasionally the rabbi would recognize me . . . “You have such a Stratton punim.” I looked like my mom or dad.  Take your pick.

I eavesdropped.  That was the action. An old woman said, “When I feel sick, I want to die. Then I get better and want to live.”

“Let me tell you something, deary,” another woman said. “They don’t ask when you want to die.”

My Cleveland Heights friends didn’t talk like that. They talked about marathons, 10Ks and Tommy’s milk shakes.   A rabbi talked to me about the Cleveland Browns. Rabbis are into sports now, but a generation ago it wasn’t that common.

A food broker said, “I sell Heinen’s.”

Heinen’s didn’t interest me — not until at least fifteen years later.

I spent about twenty minutes per shiva call.  The mourners were always appreciative.

My parents made me do it.

I’m glad.

—

Footnote:
While shiva repping, I met a California man who  produced Joel Grey’s shows for 27 years.  I said, “I’ll send you my band’s CD and you can show it to Joel.  No, on second thought, I won’t send it, because Joel might sue me for ripping off Mickey Katz tunes.”

“Don’t worry,” the producer said.  “Lebedeff’s people tried to hit Joel up for royalties on ‘Romania, Romania’ for years.  No luck.”

—

Yiddishe Cup plays 7 p.m. tomorrow (Thurs. Aug. 9) at Cain Park, Alma Theater,  Cleveland Hts.  We’re doing a tribute to Mickey Katz.

A documentary filmmaker from D.C.  plans to be there.  You might wind up in the movie. 

Tickets are $20-22 in advance and $23-25 manana.  Discounts for seniors and students.  www.cainpark.com and 216-371-3000.

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I see Hankus Netsky, the leader of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, every couple years.

He never remembers my name.

I don’t hold that against him.  His best greeting is “How is your Mickey Katz project coming?”  (Yiddishe Cup is at times a Mickey Katz cover band.)

I’m flattered.  Hankus remembers something about me.

How many musicians does Netsky see in a week?  A lot.  He teaches at the New England Conservatory, leads a well-known klezmer band, does music projects at the Yiddish Book Center, and plays in a world music group.

I’m Netsky to some people.  I don’t know these people but they know me. For example, Oberlin and Cleveland State students attend Yiddishe Cup gigs, looking for term-paper material, and I don’t remember who they are when they call me three months later.

Hankus Netsky

I wonder who says to Netsky:  “Sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

Nobody says that to Netsky.  Obama doesn’t, Romney doesn’t, Perlman doesn’t.  Sapoznik doesn’t.

Netsky, the Great One . . .

—-

Footnotes:
1. Hankus Netsky’s wife is Clara Netsky.  Say that.  (Don Friedman, Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, concocted this pun.)

2. Ring Lardner Jr. said a well-known person will not remember you unless you’ve been introduced at least five times.  (This Lardner Jr. factoid courtesy of  Mark Schilling.)

3. Hankus Netsky is a great guy.  One of the nicest, smartest, most considerate guys on the klezmer scene.  Seriously.

—
SIDE B

Qué pasa, Harvey Pekar? Vos machst du, Michael Wex? . . .

MÁS ACCLAIM

1.

Harvey Pekar’s reputation took off on December 31, 1979, when he got a rave in the national press — The Village Voice — for the first time. But he wasn’t happy.

He told me in 1980, “Movies, interviews — it all falls through. Maybe I’m bowed — my back is short. I’ve got to become more famous. If you’re not a doctor in this town [Cleveland], you’re stuck. The comic-book thing has picked up some, but it doesn’t mean anything in this town. I’d love a groupie to screw, listen to records with, and leave me alone.”

Harvey’s woe-is-me schtick was no schtick; he was down and out. Even after he became famous — after the movie American Splendor — he kvetched a lot: he had money worries, he said; his family scene was precarious; his health was tenuous; and his toilet handle jiggled. Harvey was the guy with the perpetual toothache who thought happiness was not having a toothache. He never ran out of material.

After American Splendor, the movie, Harvey sat on his porch, and fans from all over the world stopped by. He met interesting people without going out.

I went with a foreign fan to Harvey’s porch. The fan and Harvey BS’d for an hour, mostly about Harvey’s upcoming projects.

2.

Michael Wex was on Fresh Air, Terry Gross’s radio show, one time. Pekar was on Terry Gross twice.

Wex was on the show for his book Born to Kvetch. When Wex’s second book, Just Say Nu, came out, he tried to get on again, but didn’t make the cut.

Wex wrote on his website: “I don’t want a niche, I want an empire!” Funny — and true. In the arts, the more fame the better until you need bodyguards.

3.

I was standing in the prescription pick-up line at CVS with fellow AKs. The man behind me said, “Saul Ludwig, here. You played my daughter’s wedding. Not only that but we also saw you at Chautauqua.”

“I remember you,” I said. “Your daughter is Amy Shulman. I ran into her at a gig in Buffalo.”

“Shuman.”

Give me a break, Saul.  Do you know how many weddings I play? Shuman, Shulman, abi gezunt. I can’t even go to CVS anymore.

—
Joke, Saul, joke.

—

Mickey Katz

I wrote this article, “Mickele: Mickey Katz Lives,” for the Cleveland Jewish News, 7/27/12.  More than you want to know about Mickey Katz, probably.

Yiddshe Cup performs a tribute to Mickey Katz 7 p.m. Thurs., Aug. 9, at Cain Park, Alma Theater, Cleveland Hts.

Tix: www.cainpark.com, 216-371-3000, or 800-745-3000.

$20-22 advance. $23-25 day of show. Discount for seniors and students.

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About half the people I meet in Cleveland are graduates of Shaker Heights or Cleveland Heights High.  (I live in Cleveland Heights.)

The others are often out-of-towners.  (“Out of towner” is anybody who moved to Cleveland within the last 30 years.)

I occasionally run into St. Ignatius and West Side grads too, but that’s not this story.

Cleveland Heights High grads like to reminisce about the Cedar-Lee neighborhood. Their nostalgia nexus is the Cedar Lee Theatre and what used to be around there . . . Mawby’s, Meyer Miller shoe store,  Earth by April.

One Heights guy told me he learned almost everything in life by selling shoes at Meyer Miller as a teenager.

Meyer Miller’s co-owner was Cuppy Cohen.

The pool hall below the Cedar Lee Theatre was Wally’s.

Who cares?  Heights people do.

Sid Abrams, a deceased freelance writer, wrote about Coney Island for the Cleveland Jewish News.  He and the editor grew up near Coney Island.  Two people read the Coney Island stories in the Cleveland Jewish News.  Sid and the editor.

My nostalgia vortex is Mayfield Road, South Euclid.  Mayfield Road was Italians plus a couple Jews, like me.   My elementary school was on Mayfield, as was my high school, Brush.   On my way home from elementary school, I would buy Italian bread at Alesci’s and hollow out the insides.  My mother would say, “Where’s the bread?” as I handed her the crust.

West of Alesci’s was the Cream-O-Freeze; to the east, the Norge Village Laundromat.  It took a village . . . Jay Drugstore, for baseball cards; Lawson’s, for Hostess cupcakes;  Society for Savings, for uncirculated pennies.

Excuse me, I have to check the Sohio Jackpot winners list.

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“Forty years ago, the news media were filled with reports of a generation gap.  Let’s be grateful that we’ve finally solved that problem.” —  Karen  Fingerman and Frank Furstenberg, op-ed, New York Times, 5/31/12.

Beachwood, Ohio, 1973 

I live with my parents at the Mark IV, a high-rise apartment by the freeway.

I’m living with my parents at age 23!  My life is so unexciting it couldn’t get published in a mortuary journal.

Chekhov said, “People do not go to the North Pole and fall off icebergs.  They go to offices, quarrel with their wives and eat cabbage soup.”

I want to go to the North Pole.

My dad almost clobbered me because I didn’t want to save five dollars on traveler’s checks by comparison shopping at banks.  “You aren’t a millionaire yet,” he said, scratching himself.  He was wearing just underwear.

Tonight at a party — a parents’ party — Zoltan Rich, the Hungarian know-it-all, said, “The students protest for entirely selfish reasons.  You know what the chief word is we’re missing — the key to the whole discussion?  It’s obligation.  Parents have abrogated their responsibility.”

It’s time to go.

A guy from Case Western Reserve said he might give me a ride out west tomorrow.

California or Mexico?

I won’t come back here for at least six months.  My mother has a bridge game here tomorrow.  If I’m within 100 feet of that game, I die.

Move along.  Try the Rand McNally approach to self-discovery . . .

It’s 3 a.m. in Utah.  I’m under a lamppost, “sleeping” in a sleeping bag.  I hear deer.  Or is it bears?  I’m afraid of nature!  I hear semis shifting.

I wonder if I like “freak” America.  Deep down I’m straighter than a library science major.  I could wind up back in Cleveland.  You can go home again.

Or maybe I’ll settle out in California.

My dad says, “I’m sure you’ll be a success some day.”

At what?  Whatever it is, I should do a good job of it.  My father never says, “What are your plans? What do you see yourself doing in ten years?”  That would be cruel.

***

My last month in Cleveland was a hell.  But not a bad hell.  My mother lined up dates for me.  The dates were daughters of my mom’s friends.  I took  girls to bars and ordered 7&7s.  That was my booze repertoire: 7&7s.

I got feedback about the dates from my mother through back channels.  She picked up tidbits at bridge games.  Some of the girls liked me, some didn’t.  One girl thought I was “a little weird.”

She was weird.  She had no business dragging me through her dad’s kangaroo court (his living room was plastered with World War II medals) for interrogation. What are my plans?  What do I do?

What’s an apricot sour?  That’s what I want to know.  She ordered that.

I’m sitting on the dock of the bay in Bodega Bay, California.  I’m eating squid.  Or maybe it’s a big snail.  I’m not sure.  I’m at a marine lab.  Wastin’ time?  I don’t know yet.

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Part of this post was on CoolCleveland.com, 10/12/11, called “Mom’s Dating Service.”

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Yiddishe Cup plays a tribute to Mickey Katz  7 p.m. Thurs., Aug. 9, at Cain Park, Alma Theater, Cleveland Heights.  For tickets:  www.cainpark.com or 216-371-3000.

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Pre-kids, my wife, Alice, and I ate out a lot.  We mostly went to dives. That was our hobby.  Dives as low as Krisplee on East 82^nd Street and Euclid Avenue, and Albino’s at West 44^th Street and Lorain Avenue.

At home, Alice cooked a lot of tofu.  That’s why we ate out a lot.

We don’t go out much now.  I can’t stand the long waits, the so-s0 food, the noise.  I’m my dad.

Alice published a restaurant guidebook, Alice’s Restaurants, in 1981.  The book sold particularly well at the airport bookstore.  Alice’s oddest recommendation was the cafeteria at Metro General Hospital.  She liked the beef stroganoff and Viennese tort there.  (Alice was a nursing student.)

I liked Draeger’s, an ice cream place at Van Aken.  I wasn’t into balanced meals.

Here are a couple recommendations from the book:

Alice, 1977

(Still around)  Balaton, Corky & Lenny’s, Flat Iron Cafe, Mad Greek, Mamma Santa’s, Hot Dog Inn.

(Dead)  Zosia’s, Gerome’s, Art’s Seafood, It’s It Deli, Vegetaria, Radu’s, Aurora, Draeger’s, El Charro.

When we had our first child,  our eating out petered out.  Alice wrote a baby book, but never published it.  I can’t remember what the book was about, other than babies.  Oh, it was The Bye, Bye Book — how to  prepare your kid psychologically if you left town for a day or two.

Our kids — now grown — became foodies.  Maybe we left them home too much.  A lot of 20-somethings became foodies.  A baby-boom friend described his grown kids’ religion as Foodism.

Alice in stains

Alice — the original Foodist — sold street food.  She never made a dime, but she made a name for herself.  In the mid-1980s, Alice was the first to sell sushi rolls in Cleveland.  This was at the Coventry Street Fair.  Few locals knew what sushi was.  Alice made vegetable rolls.  She grossed well, but her expenses were high.  She paid a Korean-American friend, Mike, to help.  Mike lent an air of authenticity — not that he knew anything about sushi.

Alice did tabouli at the East 115^th Street Fair.  Tabouli was a loser.  Why?  It wasn’t that good.   And a Cadillac with musicians playing in the trunk  —  next to Alice’s booth — was a lot more entertaining.

Alice sold falafel at the Coventry fair.  She called that operation Queen Alice’s Falafel.  We ate a lot of falafel because she was always tweaking the recipe.  She did falafels for a couple years.

Alice is talking tacos lately.  Our son Teddy is talking pad Thai.

Foodists.

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SIDE B

THE JEW OF HOME DEPOT

Carl Goldstein, a landlord friend of mine, wants to be a docent at Home Depot when he retires. He goes to Home Depot at least twice a day, six days a week. That’s more than 600 Home Depots visits per year. Carl owns and manages double houses on the East Side of Cleveland.

Carl Goldstein, 2011

He said, “Home Depot saved my life. Before they came to town, I used to go out to Builders Square on Wilson Mills. That was the ruination of my life. After Builders Square, I would take the freeway to DIY on Chagrin, and then to Seitz-Agin [hardware] on Lee. And I still wouldn’t have everything I needed!”

Carl worked at a plumbing supply store for seven years; he sold hot water tanks, boilers, Flushmates and plumbers dope. Carl’s father was a plumber in Flint, Michigan. Carl has a collection of Corky toilet flappers and other odds and ends in his truck. He gave me a Niagara water-saving shower head. ($5.13 from Woodhill Supply. Too specialized for Home Depot.)

I bought more Niagaras. I have about fifty now. I switch shower heads when tenants move out. (Bad business to switch shower heads on current tenants.)

Carl wants Home Depot to hold a storewide scavenger hunt. The first contestant through the Home Depot check-out line with all the correct items wins. “I’m a shoo-in,” Carl said. “Second place would be Marc Apple.”

“Marc Apple?”

“He’s a Cleveland Heights contractor,” Carl said.

There are two Jews of Home Depot in Cleveland.

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Read Max Apple’s The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories. (Max Apple is not related to Marc Apple.)

Next: The Jews of Home Depot (Atlanta): Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank.

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I wrote about Alice, hot weather and money at today’s CoolCleveland website.

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Alice and dance leader Daniel Ducoff on the front page of the Cleveland Heights Sun Press, 7/12/12.  (Well-written article about Yiddishe Cup by Ed Wittenberg. Photo by Jim Olexa.)

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I grew up in a gully, according to my friend Max Burstyn.  Max said, “You lived on one of those dead-end streets that had flooding.  You lived in a gully.”

Yes, there was some flooding, Max.   I remember a canoe on my street.

Max Burstyn, 1969

Max lived in the Jewish highlands on the other side of the public  park.  No flooding in the highlands there, and 99-percent yidlach. Max was equal to
1 ½ Jews.  He spoke Yiddish and German.  His dad was a Galitzianer from Krakow.  Max was born in Munich and came to America as a baby in the 1950s.

I played tennis with Max in the park.  That’s where we met.

Max still rants about the gully.  He says, “You lived with the goys — like Stropki.  I played Pony League with him.  There were about eight Stropkis.   What about Bobrowski?  He was a Catholic too.  Went to St. Joe’s.  He played third-string for the Browns.  He was from your street.  There was Mastrobuono.  He had a funny walk.”

True, I lived with Catholics, but I heard Jewish mothers shry gevalt (scream bloody murder) at their kids from across the park.  Those Jewish moms had powerful lungs.

“Max, what about Willie Hendricks?” I said.  “Why was he in your neighborhood?”

“Hendrick’s mother was Jewish,” Max said.  “He could pitch.”  Hendricks was about 6-4.  He was drafted by the majors but never played pro ball.

Max was a self-described mischling ersten grades.  (First-degree mixed race.) That’s a Nazi term, but Max used it — at least around me.  Max’s mother was a German gentile and his dad was a Polish Jew.  They met in Germany after the war.  Max was halachically converted as a baby.

Max, 2012

Max comes to my house for shabbes.  I like his Yiddish.  He knows words that nobody else knows.   He talks about a kudraychik — a swindler.  I can’t find that in the dictionary.  It’s probably Slavic, not Yiddish.  For example, Max says, “There was a kudraychik, a Jewish barber, in the occupied zone after the
war . . .”

Max books rooms for a hotel chain.  He works out of his house.  He occasionally talks German to Europeans who want to book rooms in Florida and play golf.  Max also gets calls from drunken Englishmen who call him “your majesty.”  He has to work 92 percent of the time during business hours.   He can watch baseball and football games on mute. “It’s not a bad job,” Max said.  The occasional call from Germany, no boss and no commute.  Not bad.

Max beat me at tennis.  I hadn’t lost to him in a while. Did I sully the honor of the gully?  I don’t think so.  I’m not Catholic and I’m not gully-proud.

***

The tennis instructors at Bexley Park were mostly college kids who didn’t care about the job.  One year it was Stovsky; the next year, Nagy, the state champ.  These “pros” rarely showed us anything.  Maybe they showed us  grips: the Western, the Eastern, the Continental.

The courts were asphalt with cracks and weeds.  At least the nets were real, not chain-link.

My dad got me about 10 private lessons at the Cleveland Skating Club in Shaker Heights.  The pro there called me Tiger.  I think he called most non-members Tiger.  He was  John Hendrix.  He went on to coach at Ohio State.

Shelly Gordon, 1969

Some of my Bexley Park tennis friends became jealous of me because of my private lessons.  I got better than most of the Bexley players.  One player, Shelly Gordon, still harps about my private lessons, like I violated the South Euclid Tennis Court Oath: Don’t Be a Tennis Snob.  Shelly played at Ohio State and became a teaching pro in Israel.  He’s self-taught.  His strokes are horrible, but he’s good.

A seeming midget, Denny A., ruled Bexley Park, along with a gambler, Twitch, and a tomboy named Annie G.  They bet on everything, like who could hit the most first serves in, who could bounce a ball the longest on his racquet.  Bexley Park was not a genteel place.  Some guys didn’t wear shirts.  Billings –- the court gentile — played so much shirtless tennis he wound up with skin cancer.

Krinsky was the best hitter.  He could have been a regional player, but he preferred baseball, softball and chasing girls.  He was voted the “best dancer” in the senior class.

Max was third singles.  Not that good, not that bad.

Shelly, 2012

Some of the best public court players were from neighboring Cleveland Heights.  A couple Cleveland Heights boys took several private lessons at the Jewish country club, Oakwood.  Garry Levy and Rich Greenberg became the number-one doubles team in Northeast Ohio.

The great public courts players of my day were:

Chuck McKinley, St. Louis
Billie Jean King, Long Beach, California
Pancho Gonzales, Los Angeles
Shelly Gordon, Cleveland

Shelly is remembered by all some in Cleveland, even though he moved to Israel years ago.

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Yiddishe Cup plays 7:30 p.m. Thurs. (July 5) on the lawn at Wiley Middle School, 2181 Miramar Blvd., University Heights, Ohio.  (Indoors if raining.) Free.  It’s “Family Fun Night” with games and free ice cream one-half hour before the show.

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1. DARBY CREEK, south of Columbus, Ohio

My wife, Alice, and I hit a tree stump in Darby Creek, and I flipped our canoe.  I  became entangled in branches and logs.  The current felt like nine bathtubs pouring over me at once.  Alice perched herself on a log in the creek, trying to save her iPod.

Tippecanoe and Bert too

The canoe ride was billed as a languid 12-mile paddle downstream with no white water.  But we canoed right after a major storm and a wet spring (last year).  I was rescued by two kayakers, who found my paddle and extricated my leg.  The canoeing outfitter did not want to talk about my adventure.  He was having a slow season and didn’t want anybody to overhear us.

During my flip, I kept repeating, “Do not panic.”  But I panicked some.

“Life is a very narrow bridge, and the important thing is to not be afraid.”  — Rabbi Nachman.   Be afraid, but not longer than, say, a minute.

Alice’s iPod made it.  My cell phone died.  Mother Nature made it.

2. THE SOUTH

I don’t go to Waffle House that often.  The closest Waffle House is in Medina, Ohio, and that’s the South.

What are grits?  Cream of wheat? What are you supposed to do with grits?  Pour syrup on them?

At Waffle House I order hash browns with onions.  That’s called “scattered and smothered.”

My son Teddy suggested I try Huddle House.  I went to one in South Carolina on vacation.  Pretty much the same as Waffle House.  (I can’t go to Waffle House — or Huddle House — with my band, because two guys in Yiddishe Cup don’t like “Awful House.”  They like baked potatoes at Wendy’s.)

My wife bought a two-pound bag of stone-ground grits at a gift shop in Charleston, South Carolina.   The label read, “Food for the Southern Soul.”

If that’s true, the South is in trouble.

3. SHAKER HEIGHTS, OHIO

The sports teams at Shaker Heights High are called the Red Raiders.  Why aren’t they the Shakers?  It would be class, similar to the University of Pennsylvania Quakers.

There are three real Shakers in Maine. That’s it.  Would these elderly women be offended if Shaker’s teams became the Shakers?  I doubt it.

Red Raiders.  What does that mean?

Shaker — the religion — is the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing.  Shaker central in Cleveland was the intersection of Coventry Road and North Park Boulevard.  The Shakers had a grist mill there.  They had buildings — dairies, farms, woodshops, who knows.

I live nine houses from Shaker, in Cleveland Heights.  I have a friend who lives in Shaker and Cleveland Heights.  Her living room is in Cleveland Heights and her bedroom is in Shaker.  Her house straddles the border.  I wonder how this affects her outlook.  She moved to the Heights from the West Coast and may not yet understand what “Shaker” connotes locally.  Harvey Pekar always played down his Shaker High diploma.  Reduced his street cred.

Go Shakers.  Classy name.  Lower Ivy League cachet.

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Yiddishe Cup plays 7:30 p.m. Thurs., July 5,  on the lawn at Wiley Middle School, 2181 Miramar Blvd., University Heights, Ohio.  (Indoors if raining.) Free.  It’s “Family Fun Night” with games and free ice cream one-half hour before the show.
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Next week’s blog post will go up Tues. July 3 instead of  July 4.

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