{"id":34424,"date":"2026-07-08T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=34424"},"modified":"2026-06-28T08:58:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T12:58:44","slug":"silver-spoon-plus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/08\/silver-spoon-plus\/","title":{"rendered":"SILVER SPOON–PLUS"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nI was born with a silver spoon. An employee fine-tuned “silver spoon” to “Stratton, you were born with a silver spoon up your ass.”<\/p>\n

I wasn’t made for real estate, like my old man. I didn’t grow up the hard way. South Euclid was no slum. I got a journalism job after college in the Collinwood neighborhood. I wrote for the\u00a0<\/em>the Sun Scoop Journal<\/em>. Look it up. The paper doesn\u2019t exist anymore. I dealt with all kinds of working-stiff Slovenians, Lithuanians, Italians, and blacks in northeast Cleveland.<\/p>\n

Then I bought a house nearby, right by Lake Erie. Northeast Cleveland was cool, I learned on the job. Then I bought more houses there — with my old man’s money.<\/p>\n

I got up to a four houses, sold them, and bought an apartment building. Scaling up<\/em> is the real estate term. My old man co-signed on the mortgages. My old man — not too subtly —\u00a0 pushed me into real estate. So I quit the newspaper.<\/p>\n

And I became my old man, and my old man was very happy about that. Throughout the rest of his life, he never failed to remind there was zero money in journalism. A numbers guy — my dad. He thought about money nonstop and kept records on everything.<\/p>\n

I don’t like numbers, and I don’t keep records. The only thing I collect is receipts from the wastebaskets outside Home Depot. And every spring I take my shopping bag full of\u00a0 receipts to my accountant. I’ve never balanced my checkbook. If the bank screws me, I don’t know. Fine with me.<\/p>\n

So here I am, in 2026, still annoyed by that building manager saying, in 1984, I had a silver spoon up my ass.\u00a0 He could have simply said “silver spoon.” I wouldn’t have remembered that.<\/p>\n

Silver spoon–plus\u00a0 has staying power. Maybe it’s true.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(This is autobiographical fiction.)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I was born with a silver spoon. An employee fine-tuned “silver spoon” to “Stratton, you were born with a silver spoon up your ass.” I wasn’t made for real estate, like my old man. I didn’t grow up the hard way. South Euclid was no slum. I got a journalism job after college in […]<\/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-34424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34424","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=34424"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34510,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34424\/revisions\/34510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}