{"id":13924,"date":"2014-02-12T08:00:37","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T13:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=13924"},"modified":"2014-07-30T10:13:11","modified_gmt":"2014-07-30T14:13:11","slug":"american-greetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/12\/american-greetings\/","title":{"rendered":"AMERICAN GREETINGS"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

“Cleveland is<\/span> a hard town.\u00a0 I came near committing suicide when I lived there.” — <\/em>Robert Crumb, American Splendor<\/em> intro, 1986.<\/small><\/p>\n

Crumb worked<\/strong><\/span> for American Greetings. My dad, Toby, worked there too.<\/p>\n

Toby was at American Greetings before Crumb. \u00a0My dad worked with Morry Stone, who eventually became a vice chairman.\u00a0 My dad didn\u2019t like working for anybody, including Morry, so Toby left in 1954.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Toby Stratton, 37, at American Greetings, 1954<\/p><\/div>\n

Everybody in<\/strong><\/span> Cleveland has worked at American Greetings, I think.\u00a0 Or tried to.\u00a0 I applied for a job at American Greetings in 1981.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Plain Dealer, 1981<\/p><\/div>\n

American Greetings had a Creative Building at West 78th<\/sup> Street.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even get called in for an interview.\u00a0 Maybe I wasn’t sick enough to write sick cards.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Robert Crumb again, 1996, Bob & Harv<\/em>‘s Comics<\/em>:\u00a0 “Cleveland is a city that has been ravaged by financiers and industrialists . . . its population abandoned to their fate, left to freeze their ass off, standing in the dirty winter slush, waiting for a bus that is a long time coming.\u00a0 Somehow they go on living.” <\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t<\/strong><\/span> lived anywhere else, so I can’t complain like Crumb.\u00a0 I went to college in Ann Arbor (which doesn\u2019t count) and spent a few months in Bogota, Colombia, in my twenties.<\/p>\n

Bogota was tougher than Cleveland. That, I can testify to.\u00a0 Bogota was rainy, gray, and headache-inducing from the high altitude.\u00a0 Cleveland was simply rainy, gray and slushy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

A<\/strong><\/span> pilot<\/strong><\/span> stood in a grassy field by the Bogota airport and said, \u201cTell your friends to throw their packs in back and we\u2019ll be off.\u201d<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t my<\/em> friends.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t even Americans.<\/p>\n

We climbed into the cargo section of the plane. \u201cIt smells like shit in here,\u201d a Swiss girl said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is<\/strong><\/span> Fish Airlines,\u201d the pilot said.\u00a0 (Aeropesca.)<\/p>\n

We landed in the Amazon a few hours later.<\/p>\n

I ran into a college friend in the Amazon! I knew him from my freshman dorm.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI scamp.\u201d\u00a0 That meant he sold gems, coke, pot or counterfeit bills.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m going to reunite with my creators soon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

What?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going back to my parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adi\u00f3s, amigo<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I tried to catch the ferry to Belem, Brazil. I waited several days in Leticia, Colombia, by the Amazon River dock, but the ferry didn\u2019t arrive. I flew back to Bogota on the guppy\/yuppie flight.\u00a0 (Guppies to Bogota, yuppies to the Amazon.)<\/p>\n

In Bogota,<\/strong><\/span> I froze — even indoors.\u00a0 I wore two sweaters and socks-for-gloves in a small house I shared with a widow and her maid.\u00a0 I taught English at a nearby private junior high.\u00a0 For fun at night I read Cancer Ward<\/em> .\u00a0 I also looked at photos of beauty queens from El Espacio<\/em> and El Bogotano<\/em> — the tabloids. My bedroom had doggy pictures on the wall, a toy cannon on the windowsill, and a crucifix over the bed.<\/p>\n

For mental exercise I tried to reconstruct my high school schedule: first and second periods, PSSC Physics.\u00a0 What was third?\u00a0 What was PSSC?\u00a0 [Physical Science Study Committee.]\u00a0 I didn’t know many people in Bogie.<\/p>\n

I heard Charlie Byrd play \u201cBogota\u201d in Bogota.\u00a0 He was on a government-sponsored tour.\u00a0 Byrd en guitarra, con bajo y bater\u00eda. (<\/em>Byrd on guitar, with bass and drums.)<\/p>\n

I went back to Cleveland after three months.<\/p>\n

American Greetings. I couldn’t<\/span> take Bogie. The major bookstore in Bogota was run by a Nazi, I thought.\u00a0 The owner was German, and I fabricated a fake bio, in my head,\u00a0 about him. I went to the Peace Corps office to borrow more paperbacks.\u00a0 I got Papillon, <\/em>about a prisoner in Latin America.<\/p>\n

I played blues harp for my English class.\u00a0 The kids loved it but the administration didn’t.<\/p>\n

I had to leave. Bogie was un fr\u00edo horrible<\/em> (a freezing cold).<\/p>\n

Crumb should write about Bogota.\u00a0 I want to hear his take on a real<\/em> tough town.<\/p>\n

—
\nFootnotes:<\/em><\/small>
\n1.\u00a0 My\u00a0 Bogota adventure was\u00a0 in 1974.\u00a0<\/em><\/small>
\n 2. I didn’t meet my college friend in the Amazon.\u00a0 I met him in Bogota.\u00a0\u00a0 I remembered the encounter incorrectly. My friend straightened me out\u00a0 in Cleveland in 2013.\u00a0 <\/em>
\n<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Cleveland is a hard town.\u00a0 I came near committing suicide when I lived there.” — Robert Crumb, American Splendor intro, 1986. Crumb worked for American Greetings. My dad, Toby, worked there too. Toby was at American Greetings before Crumb. \u00a0My dad worked with Morry Stone, who eventually became a vice chairman.\u00a0 My dad didn\u2019t like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,11,21,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleveland-full","category-coming-of-age","category-on-the-road","category-toby-stratton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13924"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20903,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13924\/revisions\/20903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}