After the grandparents\u2019 event, I walked by the Lee Road library and wondered if I should submit an application for the library\u2019s board of trustees. I had already filled out the application but was worried it might have been too flippant, so I hadn\u2019t submitted it. I had used the word \u201clibe.\u201d (Later, I did submit the application and got rejected.)<\/p>\n
Classical music blared outside the Subway at Lee and Meadowbrook Boulevard. Must have been a crowd-control thing.<\/p>\n
At the Lusty Wrench, Sam Bell, the owner and chief mechanic, told me he drove less than 1,000 miles a year. I asked, \u201cWhen did you start hating cars?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sam said he used to like cars; he said he once drove 160 mph from Baltimore to Chicago in college. Apparently Sam liked the idea of cars, but not actual cars.<\/p>\n
Tim Burdick, a woodwind repairman, worked next door to the Lusty Wrench, on the second floor of the Douglas Building. Tim had a $350 mouthpiece lying around. \u201cIt\u2019s Frank\u2019s,\u201d Tim said. \u201cFrank\u201d as in \u201cFranklin Cohen” — the then-principal clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra. I tried the extra mouthpiece and took it home and ran it by the musicians in Yiddishe Cup. They couldn\u2019t hear any difference between Frank\u2019s mouthpiece and my own. Keyboardist Alan Douglass said I didn\u2019t sound in control with Frank\u2019s mouthpiece.<\/p>\n
I planned to meet Carlo Wolff for dinner at Marotta\u2019s. Carlo was a jazz critic who had become a reporter for the Cleveland Jewish News<\/em>. I wondered how Carlo was fitting in at the paper; he\u2019s Jewish but \u201cnot very Jewish,\u201d he told me. At the dinner he reported he was doing fine at the paper.<\/p>\n The epicenter of Lee Road is — you know this — Stone Oven. Yes, I go there; it\u2019s my obligation as a baby boomer. I got in line in back of Ray Lesser, the editor of the Funny Times<\/em>. Ray had recently turned down some of my funny stories. I didn\u2019t bring that up. I took the high road!<\/p>\n Carl Goldstein \u2014 a Cleveland Heights landlord \u2013 went to the Stone Oven every morning. I promised I would start hanging out there with him. But I never did. Every morning? I\u2019m just not that social.<\/p>\n The \u201cLee\u201d in \u201cLee Road\u201d comes from a farmer named Lee. I learned that fact on a local-history walking tour. Other farmers included Silsby, Taylor, and Dille.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a bit of immaterial Lee Road music history: the first time I saw a live professional band was at the Stardust Ballroom, which was in back of the Cedar Lee Theatre. I was in junior high, at a bar mitzvah party, and the bandleader was Morrey Seaman. Maybe he was playing \u201cStardust\u201d at the Stardust.<\/p>\n Have you ever noticed how Cleveland Heights High grads like to reminisce about the Cedar-Lee neighborhood? Even more than I do. That\u2019s their nexus \u2014 the Cedar Lee Theatre and what used to be around there: Mawby\u2019s, Meyer Miller shoe store, Earth by April. A Heights High grad, Jimmy Sollisch, once told me he learned almost everything in life by selling shoes at Meyer Miller as a teenager. Meyer Miller\u2019s co-owner was Cuppy Cohen.<\/p>\n There was a pool hall next to the Cedar Lee Theatre: Wally\u2019s. Who cares about Wally\u2019s? Not me. People who grew up in the Heights care about Wally\u2019s. I grew up in South Euclid and don\u2019t care about Wally\u2019s. Let\u2019s talk about Mayfield Road in South Euclid . . . the Cream-O-Freeze, Warehouse Beverage, Alesci\u2019s. (No, different story.)<\/p>\n If you stand on the glass-enclosed Heights Library walkway over Lee Road, you\u2019ll see a fair amount of life pass by. Nothing too monumental\u2013- no gigantic moving vans or rock-star buses, like you might see at the New York Thruway overpass at Angola, New York. But give Lee Road some leeway. It\u2019s got some life.<\/p>\n \u2014
\nCONCERT INFO:<\/p>\n
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