Real Music & Real Estate . . .

My father, Toby, was a lot like his mother.  One of Toby’s mother’s favorite expressions was “Geven-zhe nit a yold.”  (Don’t you be a chump.)  Toby’s mother owned a candy store, raised four kids almost singlehandedly, buried a three-year-old daughter, and during her retirement years, owned a four-suite apartment building.  She was nobody’s sucker.

Anna Soltzberg (née Seiger) occasionally called her grandchildren — like me — foyl (lazy).  She lived at our house for a while. I called her Bub — short for bubbe (grandmother).   I wasn’t going to call her Bubby. Too effeminate.

Bub was not into baseball; she was into casino (a card game), the television show Queen for a Day; borscht, boiled chicken and cows’ feet.  She could eat. She had sugar diabetes.   Bub wore bubbe shoes.

Anna Soltzberg (1884-1964). Circa 1951.

I couldn’t figure out where Bub was from.  I couldn’t even find her hometown on a map.

Bub said she was from Galicia, a province in Austria-Hungary. She was from the shtetl (village) of Grodzisko.  She came to America at 20.

In junior high I told my friends, “My grandmother is from Austria.”  That was dead wrong, but it made sense.

In her old age, Bub lived at my aunt’s house before she moved in with us.  At my aunt’s, Bub complained about the level of kashrut (kosher observance).  Bub wanted my aunt to not keep kosher.  Keeping kosher was too expensive.  Bub was an apikoros (non-believer), socialist and cheap.

Bub, circa 1904.

At Bub’s funeral — at the shiva (mourning) meal — the question of kashrut came up again.  My two aunt Lils (Lil from Delaware and Lil from Washington), plus my Uncle Itchy, were at our dining room table.

Uncle Itchy, sitting next to Delaware Lil, asked, “You keep a kosher house?”

“Yes,” said Delaware Lil.

Itchy, slapping his hand down on the table, said, “Then why are you eating this meat?  It’s not kosher!”

Washington Lil, also slapping her hand down, said, “Ain’t that a hypocrite!”

Washington Lil (left), Julia Stratton, Delaware Lil. 1964

“In other words, it’s either everything or nothing?”  said Delaware Lil.

“Yes,” said Washington Lil.

“That’s a very simple philosophy,” said Delaware Lil.

“Yes, it is,” said Washington Lil.

My mother, Julia, interrupted with: “Pass the treyf meat.” (Non-kosher meat.)   Mild laughter.  My mom was the peace-maker.

And the Lils didn’t talk to each other for a long time.  Years.

. . . Grodzisko, Galicia, Austria-Hungary.  I found it about 20 years later, in the mid-1980s, on the Shtetl Finder map. The village’s Yiddish name was Grodzisk (pronounced GRUD-zhisk), about 60 miles west of Przemysl.  The various shtetls (villages) had so many different names.  That was the trick.  And there were several Grodziskos.

Mili Seiger 1939

During my research, I came across a family postcard, postmarked “May 1, 1939, Grodzisko.”  It was from cousin Rachela Seiger.  It was in Polish and said, in brief, “How are you?”  On the flip side was a photo of  Rachela’s  sister Mili.

The Germans invaded Poland four months after the postcard was mailed.

I looked up “Mili Seiger” and “Rachela Seiger” on the Yad Vashem (Israeli Holocaust museum) online archives.  There were so many Seigers, Siegers, Zygers, Zaygers and Zeigers, I couldn’t find Mili or Rachela.

There are three types of Jews.  Not Reform, Conservative and Orthodox.  Try American, Israeli and victims of the Holocaust.  Each about a third.  These are my people.

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This story was cross-posted on  The Forward, online, last month.

Thanks to Yiddishist Lori Cahan-Simon for help on the expression “Geven-zhe nit a yold.”

Footnote . . .  Plotting Grodzisko by Teddy Stratton, 1998:

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A “run-out” is when a band plays out of town and doesn’t stay overnight.  The group drives back the same day.

Cleveland is within 200 miles of Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Columbus and Detroit.  That’s a lot of “run out” possibilities.

Running-out is similar to the regional airline pilot’s life. You sleep in a semi-reclining seat, eat junk food and hope you don’t crash.

My wife, Alice, went on a road trip with Yiddishe Cup to Buffalo, New York.   That was her first one — after what, 20 years?  She had always refused road trips.  (She’s a dance leader.  Daniel Ducoff, our other dance leader, couldn’t make the Buffalo gig.)

The whole undertaking was 13 hours: four hours of playing, seven hours of driving, and two hours of  setting up and tearing down.

Alice aged a year that day, she said.  She had been “hit by a truck,” she said.

Pace yourself, Alice.  Take catnaps.  Drink a lot of fluids.  Eat an apple every day at 4 p.m.; if you do, you will be on Yiddishe Cup’s 2025 gig in Buffalo.

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1. EAST DIVISION

The ping-pong season started several months ago, when violinist Steve Greenman called and said “I want to play ping-pong tonight.” He got tilapia out of it.  Not a bad night for a single guy (soon to be married).  My wife, Alice, cooked.

Ping-pong is predominately a winter sport in Cleveland. The Jewish ping-pong dean here is Valeriy Elnatanov.  He’s a Russian pro who used to teach ping-pong and pilpul at Green Road Synagogue, an Orthodox shul.  [Not sure about pilpul (a Talmudic study method) but he did teach Hebrew to Russians.]

Valeriy moved on to other training facilities.  I saw him at the Shaker Heights community building playing top-notch Asians.

Valeriy said the best way to develop a top-spin forehand is to turn a bicycle upside-down and swat repeatedly at the spinning tire with your paddle.  I never did that, but I thought about it.

When Valeriy practiced, he used dozens of balls.  That’s the way to go.  You bend down less.

My wife, Alice, has a good forehand slam.  Steve Greenman has a steady backhand.  Neither cheats.  Many ping-pong players don’t toss the ball up high enough on the serve.

2. WEST DIVISION

How come documentaries about California musicians — Hal Blaine, the Sherman brothers — have poolside shots, but no outdoor ping-pong shots?

I played ping-pong on a patio in Los Angeles. You don’t forget that if you’re from the Midwest.

In the Cal movies, the musicians are sunbathing poolside.  Are they embarrassed to show their ping-pong moves?  (The Kids Are All Right, set in California, had an outdoor ping-pong table.  No musicians playing, though.)

My father, Toby, had a childhood friend in Los Angeles, Irv Drooyan, who taught school, wrote math textbooks and played outdoor ping-pong.  Toby kept in touch with Irv and one other Clevelander in California, Sol of San Diego.  In the 1950s, California was just an extension of Cleveland.

These friends of my dad occasionally switched their first names — maybe to dodge anti-Semitism.  Irv was Red.  Sol was Al.  Toby was Ted.

My introduction to outdoor ping-pong was on Red Drooyan’s patio in Woodland Hills, California, in 1962.  Unforgettable because a) it was outdoors, and b) I didn’t know my dad had any friends.  In Cleveland, my father had hung around exclusively with my mom’s friends and their husbands.

California was about a) stippled paddles — with a woody sound, and b) my dad with friends.

Good vibrations. Got to get back there.

To 1962 or California?

To the ping-pong table.

Your serve.

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[For goys only.  In Ralph Solonitz‘s ping-pong table illustration,  “milchidike” refers to dairy and “fleishidike” means meat.  The two major divisions in the Kosher League.]

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Please see the post below too.  It’s raunchy and new.
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Yiddishe Cup celebrates Purim this Sat. (March 19), 7:45- 9 p.m., Park Synagogue, Cleveland Heights.  Open to all.  Free.

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Larry Morrow, a retired Cleveland DJ, has a memoir out, This is Larry Morrow . . . My Life On and Off the Air: Stories from Four Decades in Cleveland Radio.

Is there a market for that sort of thing?

If so, I’m typing.  I’ve changed a couple facts but the rest here is true . . .

Every Sunday the Stratton family gathered around the piano and jammed.  They had a seven-piece band.  Neighbors stood on the sidewalk and listened.  The Strattons played klezmer, which wasn’t called klezmer in the 1960s. It was called “playing Jewish.”  Nobody listened for too long, because the neighbors wanted to get in their cars and cruise to Chubby Checker, The Ventures or Paul Anka.

By age 10, Bert was supporting the family, playing clarinet and sax at the Roxy Burlesque, where he saw naked women before he was even bar mitzvah age.  Like Tarzana and Morganna — who, by the way, were at Stratton’s bar mitzvah party at the Shaker House Motel.  Stratton’s buddies crammed into the gals’ motel room like it was the Ringling Brothers’ clown car.  (At Stratton’s twentieth high school reunion, his bar mitzvah was voted the best of all time.)

While working the Roxy, Stratton met mobsters.  He became a regular at the Theatrical Grill, at the table of Shondor Birns.  Shon particularly liked Hungarian Rhapsody #3, which wasn’t that easy to play on clarinet.

As most Cleveland history buffs know, Shon was blown up by a car bomb on the West Side.  Then Danny Greene, another mobster, was blown up by a car bomb at the Cedar-Brainard medical building parking lot.

After those explosions, Stratton became head of The Mob in Cleveland.  That, plus his music gigs, was a living.  Every Friday morning Stratton baked casatta cakes for his Italian friends and challahs for his Jewish buddies.  A mentsh.

The big question:  Are readers in, say, Peoria, Illinois, ready for a book — or film? — about Cleveland mobsters, strippers and klezmers?

Mobsters, yes. (Kill the Irishman, opening tonight.) Strippers, of course.  Klezmers?

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Note: The Roxy Burlesque ad is from the Plain Dealer, Feb. 27, 1966.
Text: “Continuous 11 A.M. to 11 P.M. 2 Shows in 1 — Live Burlesque Plus Adult Movie — Midnite Show Sat. Nite . . . Also Scarlette Dare . . . Minette Darcel . . . Michelle Starr. On Screen . . . Very “Adult” . . . A Drama of Violent Passions.”

And one more illustration by Ralph Solonitz . . .

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When I was home for college vacation, my mother suggested I go to the West Side with my father. (“West Side” meant the apartment biz.)

My mother never went to the West Side.  She didn’t go once!  I listened to my dad talk about boiler additives and sump pumps.  My dad carried an Allen wrench to adjust boiler controls.

I nearly died on the West Side.  I had seen Roland Kirk at the Eastown Motor Hotel, East Cleveland; Sonny Stitt at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, Detroit; Ben Webster at Ronnie Scott’s Club, London.  And now I was on the West Side talking about radiator vents.

I watched the Dick Cavett Show and hung out with old high school buddies, who were also home for vacation.  One bastard was applying to medical school.  Another was studying for the CPA exam.  One was a cub reporter.

In Ann Arbor, my college friends were mostly still listening to the MC5 soundtrack:  “You must choose, brothers and sisters, if you want to be part of the problem or part of the solution!”

I didn’t want to be part of the problem or the solution. My worst hometown scenario: a high school acquaintance was studying nursing home administration.  How did he come up with that one?  He didn’t.  His mother did.

I gave my parents tsuris.  College was nonsense, I said.  And I quit.

I wound up in front of the draft board.  The whole nine yards: bend over, touch your toes, spread your cheeks.  I had a low number (42) in the draft lottery.

At the Selective Service office, I pondered the mechanical aptitude exam, which had drawings of carburetors and brake shoes.  This test pretty much stumped me.  Some of the other test-takers loved it.  The test-takers were from my neighborhood.  (The draft board went by neighborhoods.)  Finally, a test about GTOs!

I handed the draft board doctor a list of my allergy medications and shots, and got out.

My parents didn’t go AWOL on me.  They could have.  My dad was bemused by my work boots and jeans jacket, but he didn’t go Archie Bunker on me.  My dad took his marching orders from columnist Walter Lippmann, who called Vietnam a “quagmire.”

My parents waited.  My mother insisted I was still a good boy.  She had been saying that since I was in kindergarten.

I graduated college in due time. And I eventually went to the West Side — a lot.  You’re a good boy.  I can still hear my mother saying that.
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Please see the next post too.  It’s new.

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1. My father had a game idea Let’s Blow Up the World.  I apportioned the megaton bomb ratings to various countries.  What kind of bomb did Paraguay deserve?  An M-80 firecracker?  Let’s Blow Up the World never made it past “high concept.”

2. Alan Douglass, Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, was a klezmer-revival pioneer.  He could have called klezmer “anchovy pear music” in Cleveland in the 1980s and people would have believed him. Alan let other musicians start the klez bands.  These others musicians got the extra money for being bandleaders.  What can a gentile do?  It wouldn’t have looked right for a goy — Alan — to lead a klez band.

3. Len Gold, a Cleveland ad man, wanted to make a Yiddishe Cup exercise video, Stretch ‘n’ Kvetch, to sell at temple gift shops.  Never happened.

4. Don Friedman, Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, was on What’s My Line in 1966. Don’s line (job) was testing drums for the Rogers Drum Co. in Cleveland.  (He was a drum tester, not a rum tester.)  Don probably could have had several more minutes of fame if he had asked Bennett Cerf to explain his name.

Don Friedman (L) with host John Daly

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5. Yiddishe Cup had a gig lined up for Fuerth, Germany, but the klezmer festival organizers there changed directors, or something, and we got canned.  I heard years later, through the klez grapevine, that Yiddishe Cup will never play Fuerth.  “They don’t like you!”  That’s the word on K Street.

Why don’t they like us? Maybe because I wrote the festival committee: “For three years we think — with good reason — we will be playing a concert in Germany.  Then, boom, it all goes kaput!”  I ended with a string of rage: “unscrupulous,” “shameful” and “dirty.”  I did not play the race card.  I did not call the klez-festival organizers anti-Semites.

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Go to a restaurant — in this case, Corky & Lenny’s in Cleveland. And listen to a klezmer history lecture while eating.

It’s only $45.

We will celebrate the Cleveland klezmer sound.  Legend has it, this sound came together at I-271 and Chagrin Boulevard, to become one of the most combustible klezmer sounds the world has ever seen.  Alice Stratton (née Shustick), author of Alice’s Restaurants (1981), will share her recipes and Cleveland food discoveries. This could be an amazing Cleveland klezmer meal.

March 10.   The Supper-charged Klezmer Dinner

Appetizers:
Don Hermann’s Pickles from Garrettsville, Ohio.
Gefilte fish pâté
Falafel balls from the Falafel Queen, Alice Stratton

Bread:
Challah from the Park Synagogue preschool

Soup:
Precision matzo ball soup.  Cleveland Punch & Die Co.

Entree:
Smokin’ salmon.  Pot Sauce Williams

Sides:
Alice’s farfel (egg barley) and mushrooms

Dessert:
Star of David lollipops from the Chocolate Emporium

Beverages:
Mr. Meltzer’s line of Seltzer Boy! products

–Make reservations now for this fictional March 10 event–

***

Future Klezmer Dinner Project events:

4/16    Klezmer Goy

Alan Douglass — an original member of both the Kleveland Klezmorim and Yiddishe Cup — talks about his life as Klezmer Goy.  He’ll recite the bruchas (blessings) over both the wine and cheese to show he knows some Hebrew (like Italians on the Lower East Side used to know a bisl Yiddish).

The meal: rugelach, mandelbroit, hamentashen, honey cake and Cinnebuns.

5/3  Fear in Loadin’

Irwin Weinberger, Mr. Jewish Music Ohio, talks about eating at gigs.  He shows how a pro musician loads a plate.  Trick number one: Put lettuce on top of everything, so the host thinks you’re eating only salad.

The meal: tschav (cream of sorrel soup), creamed herring on shmura (handmade) matzo, turkey pot pie, and a wedding cake made from real butter, real vanilla extract and real waiter’s eggs.

6/13  Die Kleveland

Greg Selker, founder of the Kleveland Klezmorim, speaks about the early days of the group.  He’ll show 1985 videos from Booksellers, Pavilion Mall, Beachwood, Ohio.

Flyer, circa 1985, designed by Alan Douglass

Booksellers was probably the first suburban mall bookstore in America with a café.

The meal: pickled herring with mustard sauce; Jewish fried chicken; butter beans and gelato.

7/17  Pies

Jack Stratton, 2008. (Photo by Shay Spaniola)

Jack Stratton, Yiddishe Cup’s alternate drummer, demonstrates the Jewish rhythm method.  Think “in the pocket.” In the groove.  Be down with the knish, the Jewish pie. Wear one on shabbes.  Also, be down with the empanada pie (Latin music).  And appreciate the pasty, the miner’s pie from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  It’s all music.

The meal: cold borscht, tsimmes (fruit stew), Mr. Brisket soaked in Coke, albondigas (Sephardic meatballs) and butter kuchen.

8/15  The Happy Bagel

Daniel Ducoff, a.k.a. Sir Dancelot, talks about happy times — how to make money from dancing at bar mitzvah parties and weddings.  Ducoff shows us the Happy Bagel, his latest dance.  And we eat bagels.  Not hole-less, soulless bagels. We’ll munch authentic Chew-ish bagels (crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside) with holes big enough to stick shabbes candles in and light.

The meal: Tractor-size bagels from Russia; chicken liver with gribens (cracklings); and fruit tarts.

9/16  The Crazy Mom

The late Barbara Shlensky, party planner, talks about the “Crazy Mom” phenomenon.  How much Valium is too much for Mom’s cocktail?  What if Mom jumps on the bandstand and screams, “Stop right now!  The floor is collapsing!”  What about Mom’s 45-minute cocktail hour that runs two hours, and the now-drunk guests are accidentally breaking wine glasses and dripping blood onto the white vinyl dance floor?  Finally, has there ever been a $100,000 bar mitzvah party in Cleveland?  Whose?  Barbara answers that.

The meal: Thai kreplach; cauliflower kugel; stuffed cabbage with cranberry sauce; and pistachio macaroons.

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See the next post, too, please.  More food references . . .

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I’m loyal to my clarinet.  A reminder card in the case tells me I have  an orthodontist appointment on Oct. 19, 1964.

Many people in Cleveland are loyal to axes and other old things: sports teams, neighborhoods (East Side or West Side), mustards (Bertman Ball Park or Stadium), delis (Jack’s or Corky & Lenny’s).

The most loyal Clevelanders are often those who have left town.

I tried to leave.  My father kept hocking me to move to California.  I visited California several times.  I hitchhiked to San Francisco and bought a yarmulke at a Judaica store on Gerry Street and went up and down the coast.  I didn’t get any reaction to the yarmulke until I hit the Chabad House at UCLA:  Oy hey!

***

Yiddishe Cup has several lifelong Clevelanders in the band.  Alan Douglass, our keyboard player, is from Mayfield Spillage (Mayfield Village).  Irwin Weinberger, our singer, is from Pukelid (Euclid).  I’m from South Useless (South Euclid).

“We’re Yiddishe Cup from Cleveland! We’ve had a great time being part of this simcha!”  No lie, because  a) we enjoy playing simchas and  b) we’re definitely Clevelanders.*

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*A half truth.  Half the band is from out of town.  Trombonist  Steve Ostrow is from San Diego. Drummer  Don Friedman is from Erie, Pennsylvania.  Daniel Ducoff, our dance leader, is from San Francisco.

P.S. Daniel tried to convince the San Francisco Jewish newspaper that Cleveland is cooler than San Francisco.  (Read that interview here.)

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The most Norman Rockwellian thing I ever did was go to Boy Scout meetings in the basement of the Methodist church in South Euclid, Ohio.

I wonder if Boys’ Life magazine is still around. [Yes, it is.]

I sold seeds for the Lancaster Seed Co., which advertised in Boys’ Life. I sent away for stamps on approval.

Be prepared . . .

Irwin Weinberger and his father, Herman (with cigarette), 1966

For surprises. Like the lead singer in Yiddishe Cup, Irwin Weinberger, is A.B.E. (All But Eagle). He tried to get an Eagle Scout badge as an adult, but the national office wouldn’t give the badge to an old guy. I’ve seen Irwin swim. He can do it now, Headquarters!

If the Scouts would give Irwin the badge, he would donate $1,000, minimum. (My guess.)

Did Irwin ever get the Ner Tamid religious service medal? [Yes.]

The Boy Scouts religious service medals — like the Ner Tamid emblem — were attractive because they were real medals. For the Episcopalians and other Christians, the medals looked like British flags, with lots of crosses. Very cool. The Ner Tamid medal was an eternal light. Not as cool, but cool.

Boys’ Life. I miss that mag. Then again I miss a lot of things, and Boys’ Life is way down the list.

Just above Bosco.
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[Please scroll down for one more photo.]

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Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dec. 3, 1961. My wife identified me on her third try.

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[And here’s one more Ralph Solonitz illustration.]

I'm standing at attention right here till I get my Eagle badge!

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Please see the next post too. It’s new.

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I had a custodian who enjoyed the Weather Channel and thought the end of the world was coming every day, via hurricanes or snowstorms. I don’t think she ever went outside.

Another employee was also fixated on the weather. He did a lot of indoor apartment painting and wanted every day to be 74 degrees like Costa Rica, so he wouldn’t sweat.

A neighbor of mine asked if I had a winter place in Florida.

I was surprised. I’m not there yet — retirement in Florida.

But I know a klezmer musician — a bushy-haired baby-boomer clarinetist — who is moving to Florida and taking up golf.  So anything is possible.

Maybe my friend will play a freylekhs (hora) by the water fountain on the 16^th hole.  (Mickey Katz did that.  His band got paid to surprise a golfer on his birthday.)

Some Clevelanders complain about the cold. Arizona versus Florida.  That is the discussion.

My wife, Alice, and I went to a wedding in Florida last spring, and a guest asked Alice, “Are you still in Cleveland?” Meaning “Are you nuts?  Do you like gray skies, slush and potholes?”

Another Cleveland woman at the wedding said, “The day I hit sixty-two I had to leave.”  She spends the winters in Scottsdale, Ariz.  A third Clevelander, originally from South Africa, preferred Florida over Arizona.  “I like the ocean,” she said.

Last month at a gig in Florida, I ran into a waiter who had lived in Florida and Arizona.  He said summer in Arizona is unbearable. Florida is bearable.

What about Ohio?  Ohio-with-layers in the winter and pleasant the rest of the year.

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Please see the post below too.  It’s new.   And check out this  video, “Albert Stratton Practicing his Comeback.” The clip is  an Ann Arbor song, taped at The Ark this month.

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“Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” by Louis Armstrong is probably the best song title.  It has action, smell and humor.

The worst title is “Rise Up to New Jewish Music.” A couple Jewish bands go for that sort of thing.  They are not playing klezmer — which peaked a while ago.  They are playing “New Jewish Music.”

Anything new is old.

Several newer klezmer bands don’t use klezmer in their names.  Like Shtreiml, Golem and the Kosher Spears.  (That last band is made up.)

“Yiddishe Cup,” the name, gets the job done around town, but doesn’t get us any gigs at Ashkenaz or other mohel’s-edge international music festivals.  “Yiddishe Cup” is bubbe’s procus (grandma’s stuffed cabbage.).

Before Yiddishe Cup released its latest CD, Klezmer Guy, I test-drove several album titles.  One was Jammin’ with the Salmon.

Smokin' salmon

Nobody understood it.  “Nobody” was my wife, Alice.  I didn’t run the title by anybody else.  I didn’t want the aggravation of more artistic input.  I’m not running a democracy.  I settled on Klezmer Guy. It gets the job done.

— Bert Struttin’

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To report an odor of gas, please call the East Ohio Gas Company (EOG).

Question: Has anybody ever donated to EOG?  On the monthly EOG bill, there is a space for voluntary contributions. Who gives to EOG?  EOG has an ego problem.

I give to EOG.  And it hurts.  I don’t give charity; I give dollars for heat.  Not-news  department . . . Cleveland has long cold winters.

Emily, a former tenant, asked if I would pay her $66.24 EOG bill, because she had moved and the gas company was still billing her for stove gas.

I wasn’t going to pay Emily’s bill.  I pay the apartment gas bill but typically not the tenants’ individual stove bills. I volunteered to call EOG for Emily.

EOG wouldn’t talk to me because I wasn’t Emily.  Fine.  I don’t enjoy talking to EOG.   This dispute was between EOG and Emily, EOG said.

Or maybe the dispute was between Emily and my new tenant, Elizabeth, who was possibly using Emily’s stove gas.

I told Emily I would call Elizabeth.

Elizabeth — the new tenant — said to me, “I’m in this apartment only three days a week. I use the toaster-oven and microwave.  I don’t even use the stove!  It’s off.”

Impossible, Emily told me.  And she added, “Somebody incurred a sixty-six dollar bill. It wasn’t me!”

But you can incur a $66.24 gas bill just by glancing at your stove, Emily.  There is something called a “basic monthly charge.”  Right now that charge is $19.63.

Emily wrote me several letters, the last one ending: “See you soon in court.”

I smelled an odor of gas.

I received a 25-page small-claims lawsuit.  Emily wanted her gas money back, plus double her security deposit, for a total of $1,150.71.

The magistrate, plus Emily, Emily’s dad and I, met in a hearing room at city hall.  The dad was OK; he parked next to me and didn’t “key” my car.

I had a letter from EOG, explaining who had service when and in who’s name.  I won because of that letter.  An EOG secretary  had done me a favor.  Her letter was not from the pre-approved letters’ templates, she explained.

Thank you, EOG.  I  pledge $___.  

How much should I give?  Double chai?

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[Goys only: Chai (life) equals 18.  Double chai is 36.]

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Please see the post below too.  It’s fresh.

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Klezmer violinists often don’t get along with klezmer clarinetists. The animosity goes back to the late Chagall era.

In the early 1900s, recording engineers favored the piercing clarinet over the murky violin.  Studios had big acoustic horns the musicians played into.  The clarinet’s sound picked up better than the violin’s.  The clarinet’s ascendancy was quick, and the violin became passé and alter heym (old country).

Violinists are sensitive about this.

Violinists don’t like playing second fiddle.   They ask for “more violin” in the monitor mix and the house mix.  (The “monitor mix” is what the band hears on stage.  The “house mix” is what the audience hears.)

Truce time . . .

Let’s just forget about mikes. You don’t see them at New Orleans parades.  You don’t see them at bluegrass jam sessions.  Ban mikes.  Let lungs rule.

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, likes to get to concerts early to talk about mikes with the sound mixologists.  Alan is Yiddishe Cup’s spokesman to the sound guys; if I would let the other band members chime in, we would spend the entire sound check saying, “more clarinet,” “more violin” and “more vocal.”  Every musician has a focus — himself.

I tell the sound techs, “Can you turn my moish up?”  (I like moish better than mike.  As for mic, that is totally absurd.  Fiction alert.)

Before Yiddishe Cup goes on stage, the sound guys — for no apparent reason — spin all the dreidels on the mixing board, and we sound like soup.

Throw away the mikes, musicians.  If you can’t hear yourself, so what? You shouldn’t have taken up violin.

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I wrote “Berkowitz-Kumin,” a song about the local funeral home:

I went down to Berkowitz-Kumin
To see my baby there
They said I could not view her
No open casket
It’s a Jewish affair.

[Please click on the video to continue.]

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Please see the post below too. It’s probably new to you.
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Yiddishe Cup plays at The Ark, Ann Arbor, Mich. 8 pm Sat., Feb. 4.

CLOSED CAPTION.  Here is what the man in the video is saying, more or less, prior to playing “Berkowitz-Kumin”:

I took up singing. That injured me.  Anybody can sing, but I got a sore throat.  I wanted to perform the song “Berkowitz-Kumin,”  about the local Jewish funeral home.  It was a parody on “St. James Infirmary.”

The song bombed when I sang it at a nursing home.  Worse, I strained my vocal cords.

I could hardly talk for three weeks.  My wife, Alice, thought I was stonewalling her. About the only thing I said was “I don’t want to hose down the garage.”

She insisted I make a doctor’s appointment, which I did and cancelled. I bought mounds of cough drops.

Alice said the cough drops would clog my throat.  They helped. Tea worked too.  The Internet advised me not to talk at all for two full days.

The first day I sat through two family breakfasts. The first breakfast was at an Ann Arbor restaurant with my younger son, an undergrad, and the second was at a pancake house in Toledo with my older son, a law student. My sons didn’t talk.  They never do.  My wife carried the ball. (First down, Alice.  The Ann Arbor restaurant, Benny’s, was near the stadium.)

I went to a party.  I brought a bag of cough drops and a bottle of water.  I said, “What are you up to?”  That’s all I had to say.

And if anybody asked, How’s the band?, I said, “Still Playing. What else are you up to?”

That was my vocal rest.

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A Yiddishe Cup fan said she lived in the house I had grown up in.  I asked her if the basement was still wood veneer paneling.

Yes, she said.

My teenage sister had lobbied for that basement veneer.  It made for better make-out parties. Basements were where the action was.  It was where you got all kinds of work done.

How do people in sunny climates get any work done?

My friend and neighbor John Cermak lived in his basement his entire adult life.  He installed a pool table, gun rack and shower.

When I became a landlord, I often called John for advice on boilers, blown fuses and backhoes.   When he was about 8 years old, he mounted a lawnmower engine on a tricycle.  He was my guru of the physical world.  John was also good at academics; he was interested in everything from English literature to Saab car engines.  He graduated St. Ignatius High and John Carroll University.

John died at 41 from complications of mental illness and alcoholism. He could put away a case of Wiedemann’s in a single weekend.  Or was it in a single day?

I still often think of calling John.  For instance, the electric company called and said, “The voltage at the cap is good.”  It was?  If the voltage was good, why didn’t we have any power in four suites?  The electric guy said, “The inside line, outside, is yours.”

John, you there?

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Rich Greenberg, a former tennis pro, thanked me for the blues harmonica lessons I gave him 32 years ago.  My lessons — in conjunction with pros’ instructional videos on YouTube — had helped him, Rich wrote in an email.

Rich ended with “Do you still play tennis?”

What? Tennis? Tennis was another lifetime ago, Rich.  And what exactly is “tennis”? Hacker tennis, club level, or college caliber?

When Rich and I were in high school, tennis was a tree of life to lay hold fast of.  Rich shoveled the snow off the courts at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights.  Nuts.  He played so well he wound up on the UC-Santa Barbara team.  Maybe the Cali coaches needed a court shoveler.  (Rich has been out west for decades.)

Rich taught me an important life lesson: how to wait.  I waited six months every winter to play tennis.  I wasn’t going to shovel courts.  Think about it: no snow blowers in the 1960s, and the courts had to be perfectly dry.  And right after you shoveled, it would snow again.

Contemplating tennis — and not playing — was like practicing music without an instrument.   It was doable, but not much fun.  I had Bill Tilden’s book on singles and Gardnar Mulloy’s doubles book.  There was no tennis on TV.

I wasn’t in Rich’s league.  (Correction: I was in Rich’s league. Rich went to Cleveland Heights High and I went to Brush High. Heights and Brush were in the Lake Erie League. No question, though, Rich was much better than me.)

Tim Gallwey in The Inner Game of Tennis recommends watching the spin on the ball.  Focus on the rotation of the ball’s seams.  The author of The Inner Game of Music said something similar.  Focus.  I can’t remember on what.  (Not as good a book as Inner Tennis.)

I sometimes focus on a green cot, as a mental image, when I play a concert. The cot is an emergency-shelter Red Cross cot.  Keeps me calm.

When I was a sub on a gig, the bandleader shouted at me: “Listen!”  Meaning “Listen to the music!”  Maybe I was distracted by the hors d’oeuvre.

In my twenties, after college, I thought tennis was just stupid.  Dumb.  Existentially dumb. Two adults hitting a ball over a net.  That was not solving any world problem.

I hung out with Rich at his tennis pro job in Rocky River, Ohio.  Rich said he couldn’t teach the middle-aged women — the 35 year olds — anything new.  He said, “I wish tennis hadn’t boomed.  It would force me to do something else.”  He spent time arranging interclubs between “our girls” and Lorain.

Rich, in his email, asked if I still played harmonica. I said I sometimes play harp in first position on the song “Tsena, Tsena.”

“First position” means playing diatonically (no sharps, no flats).  It is usually simple non-bluesy melodies. First position, initially, is insipid and idiotic, just like tennis.

Then you grow up.

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Please see the next post too.  It’s an original video from Klezmer Guy Studios.

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This insurance agency used to be a witch’s store.  Before that, it was a deli.

Here’s the store’s story, as told by Mr. Landlord. [Please click on the video to continue.]

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My mother went deep-sea fishing off the coast of Miami Beach and caught a sailfish in 1965.  She had the fish mounted, and over the years, the trophy fish moved around like Waldo.  It’s in a garage now at my nephew’s in Arizona.

Cleveland Press

When I was young, my family went to Florida just that once.  I’m not saying we were deprived.  I’m saying I didn’t go to Florida regularly like my wife did!

My wife, Alice, went every single year.  Her family stayed at the Deauville. Even Alice’s mother (a small-town Jew from West Virginia) went to Florida annually in her childhood.   That was in the 1930s, to a kosher hotel in Miami Beach.

I married into money.  Or so I thought.    [See the post “Major Roofer.”]

In the mid-1980s, I took my parents’ car and drove from Boca Raton (where my parents had a condo) to Miami Beach, looking for extremely old Jews.  The Boca Raton Jews weren’t old enough for me; I wanted to see Isaac Bashevis Singer and similar alter kockers in Collins Avenue cafeterias.

Philip Roth’s father had stayed at the Hotel Singapore. So had Meyer Lansky.  Mickey Katz patronized the Delano.  (I didn’t see these men. That would have involved time-traveling.)

The Clevelander Hotel at 10th and Ocean Avenue featured a horrible restaurant, Harpoon Mickey’s.  I saw plenty old Jews on that trip.

A piece fish, plus Toby and Julia Stratton. Florida, 1983

Last winter I returned to Miami Beach and saw very few old Jews.  I saw a lot of jet-setters speaking foreign languages and wearing nearly nothing.

I noticed the Clevelander Hotel was spiffed up; the bedroom floors had a silicon seal to keep the guests’ puke from seeping to the rooms below. The Clevelander was now rocking.  I looked for T-shirts in the hotel gift shop and read about the silicon seal in a local newspaper article.

At the Fontainebleau Hotel, Max Weinberg’s swing band was playing in the lobby.  The horn players — studio musicians from California — were wailing.  What a treat, and it was free.

I phoned the cultural arts director at the Boca Raton JCC.  She was on vacation.  I wondered, Where does a Miamian go for winter vacation?  I left a voice mail: “Yiddishe Cup wants to play in Boca again!”

Success. We landed the Boca fish.   Yiddishe Cup plays the Boca Raton  JCC this Sun. (Jan 23), 3 p.m.

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Please see the post below too.  It’s fresh fish.

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January is the big month for wedding planning.  Yiddishe Cup usually advertises in the Cleveland Jewish News “Weddings” supplement, which comes out next week.

Women ponder dresses, make-up and plastic surgery.  There are also ads for face lifts.  The face lift ads are for mothers of the brides, presumably.

There isn’t much talk about music in the wedding mag supplement.  It’s more about dresses, flowers, rings and gifts for the bridal party.  Destination weddings are another major topic.

The wedding bands in the CJN supplement are usually of a certain type: sexy female lead singer, black male singer, plus a lot of horns and guitars.

Then there’s Yiddishe Cup (we place a small ad): no females, no blacks and a lot of Jews.

A lot of Jews can’t stand a lot of Jews.  The majority of Jews want just a few minutes of “Hava Nagila” at a wedding.  They want half a Nagila.

A prospect asked for a five-minute hora.  I told her a Yiddishe Cup hora has to be at least 10 minutes.

She said, “In that case, I’ll give my DJ a CD for a five-minute hora.”

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I like roofs more than most people.  I even married a roofer’s daughter.

My late father-in-law, Cecil Shustick, had a roofing company in Columbus, Ohio.  He was an orthodontist prior to being a roofer.   Look it up.

Cecil was an orthodontist in the early 1950s.  Meanwhile, Cecil’s father owned a roofing company.  Cecil had a wartime neck injury, so he didn’t relish standing all day at a dental chair.  Furthermore, orthodontia wasn’t yet a big moneymaker in central Ohio.

Cecil did mostly roof estimating.  He eventually ran a 27-man, 9-truck company.

He talked to me about roofs and gutters.  Gutters are interesting: copper, galvanized (the worst) and coated.

Cecil didn’t offer me the biz.  He should have, my father said.  My dad said Cecil should have at least given me the opportunity to say no.

Dad, I wasn’t moving to Cow-lumbus to run a roofing company!

Cecil Shustick (w/ ciggy), 69. (1978)

When Cecil retired, he sold the business to Don The Goy, his right-hand man, who ran the biz into the ground.  Cecil lost a lot of money on that, and so did I, indirectly.

If I had taken over the business, I probably would now be in a nice house in Bexley, Ohio, with a stack of workers’ comp claims in front of me.  (A lot of roofers are overweight drinkers with back problems.)

That wouldn’t be much different than the way I did wind up!

Cecil was a bon vivant.  He kept a quart of piña colada by his bed for dry throat, due to antihistamine overuse, he said.  He liked top-shelf, like Chrysler Imperials and Chivas Regal.  And he didn’t like sweating.  Golf was his game.  Cecil said, “If man was meant for jogging, he’d have hooves.”

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Cecil Shustick, U.S. Army Dental Corps, circa 1942

Cecil worked in roofing, went to war and raised a family.  I didn’t know that “early Cecil.”  I knew the retired Cecil, my father-in-law in the velour warm-up suit with the Marlboros.

Don Whitehead, an A.P. correspondent, filed a dispatch, Dec. 3, 1943, with the Fifth Army south of Rome:

In one large, roomy cave Capt. Cecil Shustick, Columbus, Ohio, and Lt. Samuel Clarkson, Lebanon, Ky., set up a medical detachment station.  On the little ledge, a charcoal fire was burning to take the damp chill from the air . . .

The Italians had used the caves as storage places for vegetables, fruit and grain.  When the Americans came along, they moved into them and used them as command posts, medical stations and billets.

This is a valley of hell – a man-made hell of thunder and lightning . . . The guns never cease their striking.  Whole batteries of them roar in unison with a concussion that shakes the earth.

Cecil Shustick came home a major with a Bronze Star for heroism at the Battle of Monte Cassino, Italy.

Give him the piña colada medal too, posthumously. Cecil kept things light and bright. You’d never know about Italy.

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Please see the post below too.  It’s fresh and it’s football.
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Yiddishe Cup plays the Boca Raton (Fla.) JCC Sun. Jan. 23.  3 p.m.

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