{"id":30845,"date":"2023-07-26T08:00:31","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=30845"},"modified":"2023-07-24T12:22:26","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T16:22:26","slug":"aggravation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/26\/aggravation\/","title":{"rendered":"AGGRAVATION"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nMy father,<\/strong> <\/span>Toby, was interested in family, money and Ohio State football, in that order. He wanted financial security, and he got it, but not before losing a lot of money on a cosmetics firm, postage-stamp machines, race horses, and a New Mexico real estate gamble. The cosmetics firm was in the basement. Like Mary Kay but not pink. Red.<\/p>\n

Toby\u2019s \u201cday job\u201d was at a key company. Car keys. The plant was right next to the King Musical Instruments factory. I got a student-model alto sax, at a steep discount, out of the proximity. The sax model was \u201cCleveland.\u201d (Cool. Like my ping pong table, which is a \u201cDetroiter.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"\"

Toby Stratton 1984, age 67.<\/p><\/div>\n

When my dad escaped the key company — after 17 years — he became self-employed (in real estate). The only way to go, he claimed, even with all the aggravation. Aggravation was one of my dad\u2019s favorite themes. Like he\u2019d say to me, \u201cYou\u2019re aggravating me. You ever shave anymore? If you dress like a bum, your tenants will treat your building like trash.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took me a while to find the rhythm of property management.<\/p>\n

Property management is not for the fainthearted. It\u2019s city building inspectors trying to nail you with violations; put a lens cover on that fluorescent light in the basement. What\u2019s a lens cover? It\u2019s the plastic thing that shields the fluorescent tube, which is screwed into a metal holder called a troffer.<\/p>\n

Tear down<\/span><\/strong> that 11-car garage. Why? Because the wall is 20 degrees out of plumb (and will last another hundred years). The inspector says tear it down. And get a structural engineer to do some drawings. My father used to give the city building commissioner a fifth of whiskey at Christmas. Those were the days. We thought they\u2019d never end. And they haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Here’s the link to my essay, “Turn off the AC and soak up Cleveland’s summer,”<\/a> in last Sunday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer<\/em>. Luckily for me, Sunday was a cool day, weather-wise.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  My father, Toby, was interested in family, money and Ohio State football, in that order. He wanted financial security, and he got it, but not before losing a lot of money on a cosmetics firm, postage-stamp machines, race horses, and a New Mexico real estate gamble. The cosmetics firm was in the basement. Like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30845","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=30845"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30850,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30845\/revisions\/30850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}