My mother <\/em>never went to the West Side.\u00a0 She didn’t go once!\u00a0 I listened to my dad talk about boiler additives and sump pumps.\u00a0 My dad carried an Allen wrench to adjust boiler controls.<\/p>\n I nearly died <\/em>on the West Side.\u00a0 I had seen Roland Kirk at the Eastown Motor Hotel, East Cleveland; Sonny Stitt at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, Detroit; Ben Webster at Ronnie Scott’s Club, London. \u00a0And now I was on the West Side talking about radiator vents.<\/p>\n In Ann Arbor, <\/strong><\/span>my college friends were mostly still listening to the MC5 soundtrack:\u00a0 “You must choose, brothers and sisters, if you want to be part of the problem or part of the solution!”<\/p>\n I didn’t want to be part of the problem or<\/em> the solution. My worst hometown scenario: a high school acquaintance was studying nursing home administration.\u00a0 How did he come up with that one?\u00a0 He didn’t.\u00a0 His mother did.<\/p>\n I gave my parents tsuris<\/em>.\u00a0 College was nonsense, I said.\u00a0 And I quit.<\/p>\n I wound up <\/strong><\/span>in front of the draft board.\u00a0 The whole nine yards: bend over, touch your toes, spread your cheeks.\u00a0 I had a low number (42) in the draft lottery.<\/p>\n At the Selective Service office, I pondered the mechanical aptitude exam, which had drawings of carburetors and brake shoes.\u00a0 This test pretty much stumped me.\u00a0 Some of the other test-takers loved it.\u00a0 The test-takers were from my neighborhood.\u00a0 (The draft board went by neighborhoods.) \u00a0Finally, a test about GTOs!<\/p>\n I handed the draft board doctor a list of my allergy medications and shots, and got out.<\/p>\n My parents didn’t<\/strong><\/span> go AWOL on me. \u00a0They could have.\u00a0 My dad was bemused by my work boots and jeans jacket, but he didn’t go Archie Bunker on me.\u00a0 My dad took his marching orders from columnist Walter Lippmann, who called Vietnam a “quagmire.”<\/p>\n My parents waited.\u00a0 My mother insisted I was still a good boy.\u00a0 She had been saying that since I was in kindergarten.<\/p>\n I graduated college in due time. And I eventually went to the West Side — a lot.\u00a0 You’re a good boy<\/em>.\u00a0 I can still hear my mother saying that. When I was home for college vacation, my mother suggested I go to the West Side with my father. (\u201cWest Side” meant the apartment biz.) My mother never went to the West Side.\u00a0 She didn’t go once!\u00a0 I listened to my dad talk about boiler additives and sump pumps.\u00a0 My dad carried an Allen wrench […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731","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=3731"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14634,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731\/revisions\/14634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"cup-reporter-pad1\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/cup-reporter-pad1-300x255.jpg\" "\\"cup-reporter-pad1\\"")
I watched<\/span> <\/strong>the<\/span><\/span> Dick Cavett Show<\/em> and hung out with old high school buddies, who were also home for vacation.\u00a0 One bastard was applying to medical school.\u00a0 Another was studying for the CPA exam.\u00a0 One was a cub reporter.<\/p>\n![\"brake-assembly\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/brake-assembly-300x159.jpg\" "\\"brake-assembly\\"")
<\/p>\n
\n—<\/span>
\nPlease see the next post too.\u00a0 It’s new.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"