{"id":33610,"date":"2025-11-18T09:50:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T14:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=33610"},"modified":"2026-03-10T13:28:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T17:28:19","slug":"john-the-guru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/18\/john-the-guru\/","title":{"rendered":"JOHN THE GURU"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nJohn Cermak installed a pool table, gun rack and shower in his parents’ basement. He lived down there his entire adult life. In his twenties, John drove a humpy Saab. Had to be a Saab. He showed me how to do oil changes on my car (a Plymouth Valiant) and helped me build a coffee table from pine 2x4s. We grew up across the street from each other.<\/p>\n

John especially liked motors, fishing and woodworking, but that’s not the whole picture; he went to St. Ignatius High and graduated John Carroll University as an English major.<\/p>\n

When I got into the landlord biz (thanks, Dad), I called John for advice on boilers, blown fuses, leaks and everything else. John was my guru of the physical world.<\/p>\n

When John was in elementary school, he mounted a lawnmower engine on a tricycle. The guy knew everything.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

John died in 1992 at age 41 from complications of mental illness and alcoholism. He could put away a case of Wiedemann\u2019s in a day. Schizophrenia ran in his family.<\/p>\n

A repairman called me and said, \u201cThe voltage at the cap is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

What’s that mean? If the voltage was good, why didn\u2019t we have power in four suites? The man said, \u201cThe inside line, outside, is yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

John, you there?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  John Cermak installed a pool table, gun rack and shower in his parents’ basement. He lived down there his entire adult life. In his twenties, John drove a humpy Saab. Had to be a Saab. He showed me how to do oil changes on my car (a Plymouth Valiant) and helped me build a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age","category-landlord-biz","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33610","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=33610"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33781,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33610\/revisions\/33781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}