Category — Fake Profiles

I was out of my skull.  I broke into boxcars and unloaded Cutty Sark, golf balls and tires.  On a bad night, tennis shoes.

I had tin snips that cut right through corrugated steel roofs.

This was several years ago.  Now I’m retired and live a fairly quiet life.  I’d rather not say where.

I belong to no clubs and don’t go out.  I watch sports on TV. I have an intense appetite for the Browns, Indians, sausage and hash browns.

I never got married.  I should have. There was this gal in the 1970s — Roz Falk.  She loved me, but I wasn’t ready.  I was 45.  Schmuck!  Me. 

I was in the Marines.  A lot of people don’t know that.  I couldn’t stand it.  I was in for six months. Semper Fidelis was plain bullshit to me.  Latin bullshit.

You ever notice how Italians use that kind of bullshit language?  It’s very big with them.  If you’re Italian, you’re better than the next guy.  You can be the biggest, dumbest fuck on two feet, but if you’re Italian, you’re it.

I have enough spaghetti and wine in my veins to be Italian.  Believe it.  And the goddamn hot peppers, I can eat a whole mason jar full.

Funny, I grew up in a deli — a Jewish deli — on Kinsman in Cleveland.  I remember the pickles best.  The cukes were right in the goddamn basement.  They were delicious.  And the goddamn gherkins . . .

My family disowned me after Marion.  A nice Jewish boy in the joint.  Not exactly kosher.  I did three years in Marion, then eight in Chillicothe.  I haven’t talked to any relatives in, I bet, 30 years.

When I got out — the last  time — I made a clean slate of things.  I sold stained glass to restaurants.  Completely legit. I didn’t like it.

I went back to stealing. The hardest part was carrying the loot.  I was that good.

I never killed nobody. I…did…not.  I was an accomplice, yes that’s true, but I never killed nobody. The chickenshits from Murray Hill, they did.  They didn’t have my abilities.  I did everything that took a brain, and they stood around with their hands in their pockets, except when it came to guns.

It’s all a head game — crime.  Keep your mouth shut and show your intelligence, and you’ll be fine. It has worked for me most of the time.

I’m paranoid.  That has saved me — being paranoid.    Sometimes you know a place is a death trap. It’s all trial and error.

My biggest mistake . . . You know?  Quitting high school.  I thought I knew more than the teachers.  Schmuck! Again. I could have been an engineer.

I hung with the older boys who ran a stolen butter and cigarette ring on Woodland.  An old fat Jew — the Eggman — was in charge.  I rigged him up a walkie-talkie.

I don’t have a dime anymore. I spent everything I ever earned.  I blew it all on cards, broads and racehorses — owning horses.   I couldn’t deal with the thickheaded Italians at the racetrack, so I got out, but not before I was broke.

I eat wieners and Coke.  Love that combo.  I remember when I pinched three cases of sausage from Red Barn.  I didn’t fence it.  I ate it all.

I’m in menopause — male menopause.  I’m 79. The docs talk about that on TV.

I love my TV set.  It don’t talk back to me.  Perfect.

I ain’t got nobody, just my TV.

I do have a record . . .

NAME:  JOSEPH A. MOSKOWITZ
ALIAS/NICKNAME:  JOE MOSCOW
DOB: 12-11-1933
FACIAL ODDIITES:  UNK
FACIAL HAIR:  GOATEE
SPEECH:  POLITE
COMPLEXION: MED
MISSING BODY PARTS:  UNK
GENERAL APPEARANCE:  UNKEMPT
TEETH:  UNK
SCAR/BIRTHMARK/MOLE:  UNK
TATTOO: UNK
WT:  305
HGT:  5-8
ADDRESS: UNK
CONVIC: MANSLAUGHTER, AGGRAV BURGLARY, LARCENY, KIDNAPPING, CRIMINAL TOOLS, GRAND LARCENY

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This is the latest in a series of  fake profiles.  (Cyberspace needs them!)

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Jack Stratton’s latest Kickstarter campaign is up.  Something about a half-Jewish German-American band, Vulfpeck.  The Kickstarter staff — as well as Bandcamp people — picked the project as a fav. Check it out here.

Charlie Chaplin brings me to tears.  Louis Armstrong and Beethoven do too.  T.S. Eliot — yes, I know he didn’t like Jews — but you can’t deny his greatness.  For instance, “Humankind can not bear too much reality.”

Yes, reality blows — as we used to say in junior high. (We said the “blows” part.)

Art?

I escape to the arts.  I escape to this:

Fire escapes have to be painted every year in Cleveland, or they rust.

I used to be shallower, vainer, younger and facetious.  Now I’m all that, and older.

I’m thinking of getting elevator shoes. A couple inches might change my life.

I don’t like ferrets.

Go ahead, indict me.

Indict me on this too: Anglomania, Jewmania and prickliness.

Downton Abbey — the TV show — is terrific.  Everybody is so taciturn and proper.  Nobody runs his or her mouth.

Who’s a Jew?  That’s my second obsession.  I annually debate whether Brubeck was a Jew.  He wasn’t.   Or was Chaplin Jewish?  No,  he wasn’t.

Prickliness, that’s a universal trait.  I cut off a man’s position in the check-out line at Dave’s supermarket. The man said,  “What you doin’?”

“I’m ahead of you.”

“No, you ain’t. You moved!”

I had moved for a second!  I had left my cart in one line and walked to another line to see which was shorter.

I said “you win” to the man, and let him in front. He got out of the store before me!

I’m looking for elevator shoes.

I cry a lot.

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SIDE B

This one is real.  The above post is half real.

FIRING SABINA

It’s easy to fire a drunken building manager, or a thieving one, but it’s hard to fire a manager who is only lousy.

For instance, he doesn’t answer the phone quickly enough, or he doesn’t clean enough.

I thought about firing Sabina; I had hired her husband, not her, and her husband had skipped out on her. She was shoveling snow, cutting grass, and climbing ladders. It wasn’t her strong suit; she had majored in Russian lit at a Russian university.

My tenants reported negative things about her.

That helped — me.

I asked a tenant how the manager was performing, and he said, “I hate her.”

“Do you hate me too?” I said, trying to establish a baseline on his “hate.”

He didn’t hate me. “She doesn’t clean, she has her kids cutting the grass, and she doesn’t tell us anything — when anything is going to get fixed.”

I fired her.

Then I rehired her. She couldn’t get welfare because she had no green card. I let her stay.

Avon calling

She found a boyfriend – a guy in Avon Lake – and moved out.

I owe that guy in Avon Lake.

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“Sabina” is a pseudonym.

Klezmer music was popular for a second in the mid-1990s.  I protected talent — the klez stars.  The klezmer scene had stars back then.   Andy Statman, for instance.  Small stars.

For security, I hired Cleveland toughs.   I didn’t import Israelis from New York.  I had Albanians and Ukrainians from Cleveland’s West Side.  One of my guys — a goy from Lvov — had Yiddish tattoos and played tuba in a klezmer band back home.

I’m still at it — security work.  My office is on Mercantile Road in Beachwood.  No sign.  We’re in back of Pella Windows.

I tore down a Royal Castle hamburger stand and had the tiny orange crown tiles (like on the Ontario license plate) inlaid in my company’s lunchroom floor.  I’m putting in an indoor sliding board.  My place is one of the “Top 10 best places to work in Ohio.”   I chose it.

I do collections — rent collections.  Tenants scream at my Ukie boys: “You can’t put my shit out on the street!”  And my boys scream back: “You break law.  You no pay rent.  Now we break law!”

I’ve got ’tude, but I’m also a nice guy.  I’m involved in the community.  I hire summer interns from the Beachwood High wrestling team, like Sam Gross 112, Alec Jacober 130, Ryan Harris 125.  These guys can squeeze through small openings.

“You Want to be a Jewish Cop?” — that’s the title of my annual lecture at Beachwood High career day.  I say: “Be a cop, kids, but don’t be a wussy cop.  Don’t be like that cop at Heinen’s parking lot with the Harpo Marx Jewfro.”

I still listen to klezmer.   I like the music.  I’m friends with Bratton — Steve Bratton — the leader of Klezmer Cup.

I know every yidl by name in Cleveland.

Call me.  I’m in back of Pella Windows.

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SIDE B

This one, on the other hand, is real.

TICKETS

Scott Raab, a writer and former Clevelander, carries a ticket from the 1964 Browns-Colts championship game in his wallet.

I have a ticket to that game too.

Retrieved from my attic . . .

Raab’s ticket was part of an ESPN.com story about how Cleveland sports teams haven’t won a championship lately. This story — or a version of it — is recycled regularly. Raab put his ticket on the cover of his new book, The Whore of Akron, about LeBron James ditching Cleveland.  (Read the book.)

The Cleveland Browns beat the Colts 27-0 in 1964. My Uncle Al, my dad, and I went to the championship game. Maybe my dad knew Cleveland would never win another championship. He was just a lukewarm Browns fan.

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I have this ticket too, Scott Raab:

The 1964 Davis Cup finals in Cleveland.

Chuck McKinley was short. Roy Emerson was short. I was short. I was at the Davis Cup tournament. My mother bought me the ticket (which was expensive — in today’s dollars $72), and I went by myself.

In Cleveland Heights, a temporary 7,500-seat tennis stadium appeared next to a junior high in 1964. Fred Stolle and Emerson from Australia played America’s Dennis Ralston and McKinley. (Stolle and Ralston weren’t short.)

The Australians won 3-2. The score was beside the point. The 1964 Davis Cup was the best sporting event ever.

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I have  an essay, “And What’s That on Your Head?”, in the current issue of CJ: Voices of Conservative /Masorti Judiasm,  the house mag  of Conservative Judaism.  (A version of the story appeared on this blog 1/5/11, titled “Yid Lids.”)

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Yiddishe Cup plays Parade the Circle this Sat. (June 9), noon, University Circle.  Best arts event in Cleveland ever.  Ride your bike down there, locals.