{"id":32529,"date":"2024-11-19T09:03:45","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T14:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=32529"},"modified":"2024-11-21T09:40:38","modified_gmt":"2024-11-21T14:40:38","slug":"ticktin-the-last-of-the-kinsman-cowboys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/19\/ticktin-the-last-of-the-kinsman-cowboys\/","title":{"rendered":"TICKTIN: THE LAST OF
THE KINSMAN COWBOYS"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nHarold Ticktin died on November 12 at 97. He was the last of the Kinsman Cowboys — guys who hung out on Kinsman Road and BS’d (pre-internet and TV). This blog post is a thoroughly “reported” piece on the only-and-only Ticktin. It helps that I wrote it 12 years ago, while Harold was still alive. I was in steady contact with Harold throughout the years. Arrivedarci, Harold.<\/em>
\n—<\/p>\n

2012
\nHarold Ticktin <\/strong><\/span>writes a weekly column for the Cleveland Jewish News<\/em> on Yiddish. For instance, he writes about what balabuste<\/em> means, or balegole<\/em>. (Female boss and wagon-driver.)<\/p>\n

\"\"

Harold Ticktin, Shaker Heights,\u00a0 2012<\/p><\/div>\n

Also, Harold occasionally reflects on early-20th century leftist politics for magazines such as Jewish Currents<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I asked Harold for a couple Yiddish translations. I was in his backyard in Shaker Heights. I wanted to know Yiddish permutations on \u201cHow\u2019s it going?\u201d — everything from \u201cHow are you?\u201d to \u201cWhat\u2019s happnin\u2019, man?\u201d Ticktin gave me some options, none perfect, and concluded, \u201cTranslation is treason.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued,<\/strong><\/span> \u201cListen, there was this pharmacist who did a big business in trusses \u2013 you know what a truss is?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

“The pharmacist\u2019s slogan was Ayer kile iz undzer gedile<\/em> — your hernia is our pleasure. I told the pharmacist that was a horrible translation.\u00a0 He told me to come up with a better one.\u00a0 I said, \u2018Your rupture is our rapture.\u2019 Wouldn’t that make a great bumper sticker for an abdominal surgeon?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you make that up — your rupture is our rapture?” I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a<\/strong><\/span> true story.\u00a0 It\u2019s an absolutely true story.\u201d<\/p>\n

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, <\/em>he said, for the Lina Wertmuller film Tutto a posto e niente in ordine<\/em>, which literally means \u201ceverything ready, nothing works.” “You don\u2019t translate, you render,” Ticktin said.<\/p>\n

Ticktin continued, “James Thurber ran into a woman in Germany who said,\u00a0 ‘I love your work in German.\u2019\u00a0 Thurber said, \u2018Yes, it\u2019s true, my work loses something in the original.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ticktin lives<\/strong><\/span> three miles from his old stomping grounds — the Kinsman neighborhood. Harold grew up on E. 154th<\/sup> Street, Cleveland,\u00a0 hard by the Shaker Heights-Cleveland line.\u00a0 He said Shaker had been \u201chakodesh hakadashim<\/em> [the Holy of Holies] — the other.\u201d\u00a0 Shaker had been nearly unapproachable, like the inner sanctum at the Temple in Jerusalem.\u00a0 \u201cI didn\u2019t know anybody in Shaker. Maybe one person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kinsman Road was Ticktin’s main artery. He said, \u201cI 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.\u00a0 What did he know about politics? He knew this: Roosevelt was great and Hitler was bad.”<\/p>\n

At E. 146 Street,<\/strong><\/span> Harold met Peter \u201cThe Brain\u201d Ostrovsky. \u201cI was converted to communism by Ostrovsky on the train to the Philly Navy Yard in 1946. I was converted just west of Pittsburgh.\u201d<\/p>\n

The upshot: \u201cI saw the God who was to fail, though I still have a warm spot for Marx, for his Lincoln correspondence,” Harold said. \u201cI\u2019m a member of the extreme center now.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wanted Ticktin to give me a tour of\u00a0 Kinsman — the proste<\/em>, working-class Kinsman of his youth. \u201cHow about it?\u201d I said. “Now?” Ticktin agreed. We got in my Lolly the Trolley — my Mercury Sable.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Stop 1.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span> Woodhill Park at \u00a0E.116th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Ticktin:\u00a0 \u201cI 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<\/em> (dyed-in-the-wool) communist took a swim with a black kid. The place cleared out. This was\u00a0 Frieda Katz from Katz\u2019s Deli at E. 147th<\/sup> and Kinsman.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Formerly Seiger’s<\/p><\/div>\n

2. Seiger\u2019s deli\u00a0 at 118th<\/sup>. \u201cI knew Hymie Seiger best. He went off to yeshiva in junior high. He just left. I didn\u2019t even know what a yeshiva was.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. E. 121. \u201cThis was where I attended my one Seder as a child. On that street. Very important.\u201d Ticktin eventually became president of his shul<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Council Educational Alliance building, now a Masonic hall<\/p><\/div>\n

4. 13512 Kinsman,<\/strong><\/span> the Council Education Alliance. \u201cThe apex and GHQ [general headquarters] of my youth. The Communist Club met there.\u201d It was a settlement house.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Cleveland Public Library – Mt. Pleasant branch<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIn the 1936 election, the Communist Club painted \u2018Vote Communist\u2019 in blue on the library at E. 140th<\/sup>.\u00a0 The library had been a bank before. Some members of the club got mad because the graffiti was blue. They said, \u2018We need to paint it red.\u2019 Ostrovsky went back to re-paint it\u00a0 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Formerly Spumoni’s (middle store)<\/p><\/div>\n

5. E 142 and Kinsman. \u201cWe called this place Spumoni\u2019s.\u00a0 The real name was Giaimo\u2019s — an ice cream place. The communists met across the street above the Woolworth\u2019s, which is long gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Saturday<\/strong><\/span> nights all the single Jewish guys would hang out here at Spumoni\u2019s and greet each other Marty-style, like, \u2018Whadaya want to do, Marty?\u2019 This went on up through the 1940s and 1950s.\u201d<\/p>\n

“What\u2019s Marty-style.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Marty<\/em>, the movie with Ernest Borgnine. You don\u2019t remember it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSingle Jews<\/strong><\/span> 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, \u2018Tony, when you gonna be home?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

6. E. 154th<\/sup> \/ the Shaker Heights line.\u00a0 \u201cHakodesh<\/em> — the other,\u201d Ticktin said. \u201cI 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, \u2018You mean intellectuals? Peasants?\u00a0 We\u2019ll get back to you.\u2019 They didn\u2019t get back to me. A couple weeks later, I\u2019m 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<\/em>. I ask him about vacation spots before the war.\u00a0 He looks at me and says, ‘This is the second time in two weeks somebody has asked me this question.’\u00a0 End of the line, Lucjan Dobroszycki — don’t ask me how to spell that.”<\/p>\n

7. I drive Harold Ticktin into Shaker Heights. Another end of the line.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

The photos, above, are from 2012, except the former Seiger’s deli pic, which is from 2010. \u00a0 Seiger’s — later\u00a0New World Restaurant — is boarded up.<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

The Yiddishe Cup Trio (Alan Douglass, Steven Greenman and Bert Stratton) plays a free one-hour concert 4 pm this Sunday (Nov. 24) at <\/span>Beth El – The Heights Synagogue, <\/span>3246 DeSota Ave., Cleveland Heights.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Harold Ticktin died on November 12 at 97. He was the last of the Kinsman Cowboys — guys who hung out on Kinsman Road and BS’d (pre-internet and TV). This blog post is a thoroughly “reported” piece on the only-and-only Ticktin. It helps that I wrote it 12 years ago, while Harold was still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleveland-full"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32529","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=32529"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32562,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32529\/revisions\/32562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}