Category — Miscellaneous

At a nursing home gig, a resident told me she knew my late Aunt Bernice.

Another resident remembered me from my junior high days. Her daughter had played first-chair clarinet, to my second chair, in junior high band.

A third resident said he was the former dentist of Yiddishe Cup’s drummer.  “What’s your drummer’s name again?” the dentist asked. [Don Friedman! The great Donny Friedman!]

I said, “I’ll give you the drummer’s name, but first I’m going to be clairvoyant!” I guessed the dentist’s name, his approximate age (90), and what he had done that morning — three hours prior to the gig.

I got everything right, but the dentist wasn’t impressed. He wanted the drummer’s name.

Yid Yak

I guessed everything right about the dentist because 1. I had seen the dentist playing tennis at a nearby racquet club that morning.  A 90-year-old guy playing tennis is hard to forget.  2. I knew his approximate age because he used to play tennis with my dad.  3.  I knew his name because I had dated his daughter in high school.

The daughter and I had gone to see Cool Hand Luke at the Vogue,  then out for shakes at Manner’s Big Boy, Van Aken.  It was a fix-up by our parents.  It was my one-and- only date in high school.

I asked the dentist, “What’s Barbara doing?”  The daughter.

“She’s a piano teacher in Boston,” he said.

I just Googled her.  She teaches classical and jazz.   She used to be a radio DJ.

Did I make a major mistake not asking her out for a second date?

A college kid told my band’s guitarist he went to Columbia University, and my guy said, “Where’s that?”

That knocked the college boy back a few SAT points.

College quiz question: What college narrowly missed being in the original Ivy League football conference?

Answer: Colgate University.*

Another fact: Yiddishe Cup once shared the bill with the Colgate glee club at a Cleveland wedding.

More: Former MIT folk dancers are a solid market for Yiddishe Cup.  Yiddishe Cup has played several simchas for MIT folk dancers.

Regionally speaking, I was loyal to Ohio State for many years.  My dad took me to Ohio State homecoming games every year.  My father lived in a corner of Ohio Stadium, in the scholarship dorm, the Tower Club, which was actually a barracks with cots. My dad often said some of the gentiles at Ohio State, back in the 1930s, thought Jews had horns.

A New Jersey woman — a potential bar mitzvah customer — called me and said, “I went to Ohio U. in the 1980s.  All the kids from Mentor and Madison [Ohio] thought I had horns.”

The Buckeye marching band had horns.  (Horns and percussion. No clarinets.)

The only time my father yelled at a TV was when Ohio State played Cincinnati for the 1961 basketball championship.  Who won?  [Cincinnati, 70-65.]

I attended a college-rejection shiva. The shiva — at Corky & Lenny’s restaurant in April 1968 — was for a friend who was rejected by every college he applied to. He got in nowhere!  He was ranked fifth, or so, in our high school class, but every college turned him down because the high school guidance counselor didn’t like him and wrote a negative recommendation.  (He was way too political for my school.)

We sat in the corner booth at C&Ls and drank chocolate phosphates, commiserating with our friend.  We were all in somewhere, and he wasn’t.

He eventually got accepted to Ohio State on a late application. Back then, if you had a heartbeat you could get into OSU.  He wound up in an OSU high-rise dorm with 16 guys per suite.  It wasn’t anything like the house system at Harvard.

***

I knew a college counselor at University School, a private boys’ school in Cleveland.  If the counselor put in a good word for you, you were in.  Harvard, Yale, you name it.  Harvey Mudd. Deep Springs.

The counselor didn’t believe his own myth.  Go to a school that was a “good fit,” he  said.  (“Good fit” was the watchword of  college counselors.)  This counselor went to Harvard, a “good fit” for a college counselor.

Here’s a tip for high school kids: on your application, focus on something esoteric.  Write:  “I want to be a klezmer musician because it is the cornerstone of my existence.”  Describe a setback you have faced. “My parents don’t like klezmer music. They are so wrong.  I’ve been thinking about klezmer my whole life.”

No guarantees, but give it a try.

—

*The statement about Colgate narrowly missing out on the Ivy League football conference may be apocryphal.

—

OSU Tower Club residents, 1937.  Click on the photo to make it bigger.  “Tower  Club,” a sign,  is on the stadium entrance to the left of “Toby.”)

I lost my Brooks running hat.  I owned two.  I lost them both.  I bought them at a running store in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I don’t usually lose things, except hats.  (I’m excellent with gloves.)

I went to Dick’s in Cleveland for a replacement hat and bought an Adidas. It constricted my head.  I got minor headaches from the Adidas.  (Granted, I didn’t give my head much time to adjust.)

Amazon, I tried that too.  Nothing appropriate.  I wanted a long-bill white cap with not much writing on it.  eBay had four such “old school” Brooks Infiniti running caps — just like my lost caps.  (Not like the trashy Brooks hats of today, with a lot of writing.)

Thank you, eBay! I bought all four caps. That’s excessive I know.  But only if I die soon. (Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, Don Friedman, has 10 pair of black jeans.  Steve Jobs had at least 50 black turtleneck shirts.)

I went back to eBay a couple days later, just to cruise, to see how the world of caps was holding up.  There were no “old school” Brooks hats left.   I had cornered the market!

My Brooks hats arrived from Mississippi. Then my wife found my lost cap, which was in the kitchen in a basket.  Somebody had put it there.  Not me.

Now I have five “old school” Brooks Infiniti caps.  Even better.

—
Check out Klezmerpalooza here.  Yiddishe Cup plays Sat.  Nov. 16 evening, Cleveland.

Re: my interview on NPR’s The Story today  (9/17/13)

Welcome, National Public Radio (The Story) listeners.

I know you’re busy. You have other things to do.  Like working out  . . .

Guys, give me a minute!

Please enter your email in the space on the RIGHT and click “subscribe.”   You’ll get one email a week, every Wednesday morning.  Just one email a week.  And I won’t sell your email address to anybody.

I’ve written a lot about real estate.  Check out the stories here.

I’ve written a lot about music too.

Byliner chose one of my essays as a top non-fiction magazine article of 2012.  The essay, The Landlord’s Tale, is the best thing I’ve ever written.

See you here every Wednesday, or else!   (Subscribe.)

Here’s a pic of my father:

Toby Stratton, age 50, 1967

I feel bad for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The PD is understaffed and demoralized. But I feel worse for myself. I want my local news, in print, on the breakfast table every morning.  (The paper is now home-delivered only four days a week.)

Yes, I’ve heard of the Internet and iPads.  I’m not going that way with my papes!

When John Gilligan, an ex-Ohio governor, died, I read about it two days late. That’s not right; I should have gotten that news sooner.

I’m signing up for Pony Express.

The Wall Street Journal stopped coming to my house the same day the Plain Dealer died (August 5).  All newspaper home-delivery got screwed up. A neighbor — nine houses away — still received the Wall Street Journal. I took hers. She didn’t need it!  (She has a different delivery guy, apparently.)

My cousin George, a big sports fan, is in a newspaper funk too, because he can’t read the Plain Dealer sports pages daily with his morning coffee.

Everybody over 50, please repeat with me: “Screw Newhouse!” (Newhouse owns the PD.)

My son Ted delivered the Sun Press, a weekly.  I was his sub.  My dad delivered the Cleveland News.  My grandfather delivered the Vilna Bugle (Shofar), maybe. My dad wouldn’t allow me to be a paperboy.  He wanted me to enjoy life more than he did.

I enjoy papes. Where are my papes?

—
SIDE B

This is a fake profile. The complete fake-profiles series is here.

WHATEVER IT TAKES

I’ve played Perchik and Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

Sometimes I get calls from small-town theater troupes to discuss Jewish stuff, like Fiddler. They ask about yarmulkes and the breaking of the glass, and chair lifting.

I make up stuff. I’ve been to enough Jewish weddings to know the rabbis make up stuff too — particularly about the glass breaking. There are many reasons why the glass is broken. All bobe mayses (old wives’ tales).

When I’m not acting, I do a one-man variety show. I play a little guitar, hand drum, even harmonica, and I sing. I know some Yiddish. I use backing tracks.

Here’s a promo pic from my glory days. I use it sparingly, now that I’m 59 . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I should advertise in the back of Hadassah mag like Ruth Kaye and Caryn Bark. Who are they?

Who am I? I hear you.  I live in Jersey and play the nursing home circuit in the tri-state region. And I work Florida in the winters.

I’ve played Tevye three times. I’ve also played the lead in Jesus Christ Superstar at summer stock in Ohio.

Whatever it takes.

L’shanah tova. (Happy New Year.)

I had two hot water tanks go out in the same building on the same day,  a Friday afternoon.

Four guys can carry in a 92-gallon commercial hot water tank .  And I can pay $5,400 for their fun.

No plumbers were around.  They were all preparing their boats for Lake Erie weekend-cruising.

I reached Stack Heating.   Stack said he didn’t do commercial hot-water tanks.  Just boilers. I reached Royal Flush.  They said they couldn’t get it until Tuesday.  Dale at Madison Plumbing could do it Monday.  Pompeii said never. B & B Hot Water Tank said no thanks.

I started flipping through the Yellow Pages.  That is the end of the world.

I braced myself for calls, like “Mr. Landlord,  there is no hot water.  How am I supposed to go to work without showering? ” . . . “I have to stay at my parents’ house and it’s 60 miles from work . . . ”

It’s not pleasant, these scenes.

I  got Bill the plumber.  He came by and blow-torched the old tanks to dry them.  (The tanks had flooded because a sump pump had failed.)   The plumber gave the first tank a 50-50 chance of recovery.  The second tank had 40 percent chance, he said.  I liked his odds.

The first tank went on after six hours of pampering. We were good.

Still, it was no picnic.

 . . . Dear Landlord,  I have  deducted $275 from my rent payment because I  stayed in a hotel for three days due to the lack of hot water.

Didn’t happen!

—
SIDE B

In honor of the mildest summer ever . . .

WICKIN’ COOL

I threw out my dad’s wife-beater T-shirts. About time. My father died 27 years ago. The wife-beaters were balled up in my dresser drawer.

When it’s 90-plus degrees — which it isn’t often this summer — I think “wife-beaters.” I used to wear my dad’s wife-beaters around the house.

My wife bought me a wicking T-shirt with UV protection at Target. Only $11. It was cooler than the wife-beater.

I saved one of my father’s T-shirts for posterity and threw the rest out.

Underwear fashion is generational. My grown sons aren’t interested in my wife-beaters. My dad wore his wife-beaters under dress shirts for work, for his day job at the key company.

I’m going to buy a couple more ultra-light wicking T-shirts.

No doubt, my sons will pitch my ultra-lights when I’m either dead or not looking. By 2025, T-shirts will be spray-on from a can.

Meanwhile, I’m wickin’ cool.

—
A version of  “Wickin’ Cool” was on CoolCleveland.com 7/12/12.

Re: my op-ed in today’s NYT (8/17/13)

Welcome, New York Times readers.

I know you’re busy. You have other things to do.  Like working out  . . .

Guys, give me a New York minute!

Please enter your email in the space on the LEFT and click “submit.”  (TMI: Scroll down on the LEFT to a pink button that says “Yiddishe Cup Home.” You’ll see  “join the mailing list” there.)  You’ll get one email a week, every Wednesday morning.  Just one email a week.  And I won’t sell your email address to anybody.

I’ve written a lot about real estate.  Check out the stories here.

I’ve written a lot about music too.

Byliner chose one of my essays as a top non-fiction magazine article of 2012.

I’ve been in the Times op-ed section four times lately.  Who else can say that?  (Friedman, Brooks, Dowd.  They don’t count! They’re not freelancers.)

Subscribe to this blog.

At minimum, buy this album from my son the musician!  (I’m a stage dad, today only.)  My son has 100,000-plus hits on some of his YouTube videos. His pic was recently in Rolling Stone.

My op-ed today is a lot about family, so you might be interested — you still reading this? — to learn more:

My son Jack’s band, Vulfpeck, will be in New York  on October 4.

My son the lawyer, Ted, is a two-time Jeopardy! champion. The Times left that out!  Ted is a top-notch lawyer.  Ted, sue somebody for me.

Yes, I’m a proud dad.

My daughter, Lucy, and her husband,Tim, didn’t make the op-ed. (Lucy said, “Thank goodness.”) Here’s an equal opportunity addendum: Tim is a first-grade teacher, and Lucy is a corporate event planner in Chicago. Check out Lucy’s  event at the White House.

Shabbat shalom ( for those who celebrate).

See you here every Wednesday, or else!

P.S. I bought the paper — the Times.  The whole freaking Times.  That’s why I’m in it so much.  Bezos and me, we’re partying right now.

Stratton (white cap) surrounded by minority investors in NYT

My friend Jimmy plays basketball at age 55.  But he’s hurting.  Jimmy has plantar fasciitis and is temporarily out of action.

I’m glad Jimmy is hurt.  Some guys  think they’re going to be pain-free forever.  It’s  fun — sick fun — to watch them get zapped by the middle-age hand buzzer.

I ran into a guy who was on Penn”s all-star lacrosse team.  In 1955.  He’s 80.   He said, “You have to know when to quit, but it’s impossible to know.  I never know.”  He has stopped playing lacrosse, squash, basketball and singles tennis.  His advice: “Take up painting.”

I said, “I already do things like that.”  (I play klezmer music.)

Jimmy — my b-ball friend — wants to play basketball at 70.  Jimmy’s “painting” is cooking.  He makes an excellent roasted lamb.

Every decade or so, I throw out my elbow braces, thumb splints and knee braces.  Sometimes I get so emotionally attached to the stuff, it’s hard to throw out.  Like, if you sleep with a molded arm splint for three months, you can’t just pitch it.

I recently threw out my “Clarinet Tendinitis 1991” folder  containing exercise diagrams.

I did biofeedback back then.  I did it just once. I went to a blind masseuse who believed in inducing terrific pain.  His dog should have stopped him.  Deep tissue / deep purple.   He was eventually accused of  rape.  (Different customer.)

I have a new bag of orthotics — mostly knee braces.

I’m supposed to balance on one foot for 30 seconds with my eyes closed.

Try it.  If you succeed, you are well. If  you don’t, you’re  still OK; you’re “worried well.”

You’re well. Be well.

Whatever happened to Sylvia Rimm?  She dispensed child rearing advice on public radio and in the newspapers.

She advised my wife, Alice, and me to subsume our individuality; create a united front to raise our kids. We did that for a few days.

Alice often quoted Sylvia Rimm — whenever Alice wasn’t quoting Freud, Spock, Leach or Brazelton. Alice wanted our kids to gain a “sense of mastery” — skills, basically. For instance, a trip to Disney World was garbage, according to Alice, because the kids wouldn’t learn anything.

Alice was overruled; we went to Disney World anyhow.  The kids loved Figment, a Disney character, and went ape for Miss Piggy. And don’t forget the Ninja Turtles. At Epcot the kids spent time on the floor at the Moroccan restaurant, wrestling.

Good times. Let ’em roll.

Our children took many lessons — ping pong, gymnastics, Hebrew, accordion. We didn’t allow much TV — mostly Mr. Rogers and The Simpsons. (When our kids grew up and moved out, they watched every show from the past 40 years.)

I liked Bettelheim’s book A Good Enough Parent.   I liked the title.

My then-teenage son took my car to the SAT exam.  I needed the car because my band equipment was in the trunk, and I had a gig! I took my wife’s car to the SAT testing site and swore loudly at my son in the parking lot. An adult, overhearing me, said, “Hey, ease up!”

Was I out of line? Ask Bettelheim, the expert.

Where is Sylvia Rimm?  Also, where is Eleanor Weisberger –- another Cleveland child therapist. I think she’s dead.  [Wrong.  She’s 93.]  What about child expert Susan Glaser? [She’s around.] Does every Jewish woman in Cleveland dispense child rearing advice?

I just Googled “Sylvia Rimm” . . .

Dr. Rimm is a psychologist, director of Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio . . . Dr. Rimm draws experience and inspiration from her wonderful husband; her very successful children: 2 daughters and 2 sons, and their spouses; and 9 vivacious grandchildren.

Rimm shot: her very successful children.

We want Bettelheim!  Bruno lied, beat up kids, and had a foul temper. He made the rest of us look good!

—
I wrote “Taxi Driver.” Check the story out, from today’s CoolCleve.

Dr. Lester Adelson, 1960s

Lester Adelson, the former chief deputy coroner of Cuyahoga County, was fun and morbid. He said he wanted to write a book called My Life is Death.  He  said he missed ice picks.  “Nothing against frost-free refrigerators,” he said. “But back when people went at it with sharp objects, they could generally be stitched back together again.”*

He was at the coroner’s office 37 years.

Adelson said to me, “The only violent natural death is lightning, you follow?”

I didn’t.

He said lightning — the electric charge — zaps you immediately.   You die by “lightning.”  If you drown or get hit by a tornado,  you don’t die by “tornado” or “drowning.”  You die of more arcane causes.

Adelson said, “I don’t remember my mother’s labor pains, but you’re born in someone else’s pain — your mother’s — and you die in your own.”

He liked to quote Shakespeare.

Coroner / Shakespeare / bowtie / Harvard grad / Jew.

Interesting.

Dr. Lester Adelson.  He even wrote an article for the New England Journal of Medicine (Feb. 4, 1960) about the various deaths in Hamlet.  Claudius poured poison into the ear of Hamlet’s father.

Adelson wrote: “When one considers the sensitivity of the human ear, including the external auditory canal and the eardrum, it appears difficult to accept the proposition that a drug can be poured into the ear of a sleeper without arousing him, as the Ghost asks one to believe.”

“If the elder Hamlet’s eardrum had been perforated . . . ”

Adelson retired from the coroner’s office in 1987. He died at 91 in 2006.

—–

*from a Plain Dealer editorial, 3/20/06.

—

“No More Greasy Fries,” the vid:

—-

Annette Ezekiel Kogan, Golem bandleader

The Workmen’s Circle annual free Yiddish concert is 7:30 p.m Sunday (June 23) at Cain Park, Cleveland Heights.  Golem performs. No tickets necessary.  Simply show up.

Shul Guys is a Jewish motorcycle club in Cleveland.  What kind of name is Shul Guys?  A wussy, disgraceful name.

There is a Jewish club called Hillel’s Angels.  Better.

My friend Ralph Solonitz  is the leader of the Vilde Chayas (Wild Animals).  I think it’s just him.

Ralph

The mayor of Beachwood, a Jew, belongs to a motorcycle club that hangs out at the Chagrin Falls Popcorn Shop.  Some of the guys in the mayor’s club ride trikes. That’s not motorcycling, that’s day care.

Bertha Solonitz, 2012

Ralph has long hair, a leather jacket and black boots. He’s a 100% kosher hog (and this blog’s illustrator).

Ralph’s mother, Bertha, is a big fan of Yiddishe Cup.  She follows the band around, or vice versa.  I  said hi to her at a Holocaust survivors’ luncheon, and she said, “You know who I am!”

“Yes, your son is a great artist!” I said.  Maybe that’s why she follows the band around.

Mrs. Solonitz is from Lithuania.  Ralph’s father, Julian, was from Lithuania, as well.  Ralph’s father grew up in Vilna, now in Lithuania, though for a long time in Poland.  Mr. Solonitz fought in the Polish army (part of the Soviet army) during World War II.

Julian Solonitz, 1946

Maybe Ralph rides his motorcycle and wears the leather gear because he hasn’t liberated anybody lately, like his dad did.  Ralph’s father was with the army unit that liberated Majdanek concentration camp.

Maybe Ralph has freed somebody and not told me.  Ralph should take his motorcycle out to Vrooman Road and liberate the Slovenians in Lake County.

The Cleveland Jewish News periodically runs stories about Jewish motorcycle clubs. It’s an easy story to write.  Just name-drop: Shalom n’ Chrome from South Carolina, the HawkChais from Iowa.  Harley, Son of David  is a Canadian documentary that used two tracks from a Yiddishe Cup recording.

Consider joining the Vilde Chayas.  Ralph needs company.  And you get this jacket:

Sam and Frank — Cleveland cops — grew up on E. 79^th Street and St. Clair Avenue.

Sam said, “I’m going to have a silver wedding anniversary and invite my three ex-wives.”

Frank said, “If you and the commander — plus your exes — get together, you’ll need the FOP Hall.”

Frank said, “I remember when you were an old man.” (Frank was 37; Sam, 47.)

Sam said, “I’ve got 1139 days left.”

Frank said, “We’ve got to make you a short-timer’s calendar.  I had one in the service with the finger on it.”

Sam and Frank, on a drug sweep, rolled down St. Clair Avenue, Collinwood, in a junker at 1 a.m.

Sam said, “Where did we get this piece-of-shit car?”

Frank said, “Mentor.”

“Where in Mentor?

“At the flea market.”

“Right.”

At Pepper Avenue and 140^th Street, Sam said, “He’s moving. That car is moving.  Let’s catch him dirty while he’s rolling.”

Sam threw the guy up against the car hood.  He was dirty; he had a joint on him.

Frank said, “Let him go. Let’s go to Mandalay [playground] and get some white guys.”

—

SIDE B

Here is the annual “inside baseball” post.  Your name might be in here . . .

BLURTS

We interrupt this blog to tell you this blog is four years old.

First off, thanks to the major comment writers.

In no particular order, thanks to Marc, Jessica, Gerald Ross, Seth, Gerry Kanter, Ted, Adrianne Greenbaum, Bill Jones, Mark Schilling . . .

David, Irwin Weinberger, Jack, Don Friedman, Alice, Ken Goldberg, Steven Greenman . . .

Charlie B, Ben Cohen, David Korn, Jack Valancy, Ari Davidow and B Katz . . .

Special thanks to Ralph Solonitz. I encourage him to draw as many pics as possible.  Works out well.  I met Ralph about 22 years ago when he designed Yiddishe Cup’s logo.  That’s still your best logo, Ralph.

I have an essay, “Renting the American Dream,” in the latest City Journal, which will be online soon. Also, CoolCleveland.com runs Klezmer Guy blurts regularly.  Here’s a blurt (Carma) from today’s CoolCle.  My older son left his car at the Rapid Transit parking lot for two months.  Check the story out.  It’s funny.

Please see the “categories” listing on the right side of this blog.  I recently added a new category, 13 BEST POSTS, as judged by me.

“Categories” is also a good place to read 78 posts in a row about real estate.  Spend a couple weeks reading archived posts!

No doubt I could increase my comments tally by writing “thanks” or “hi” after every comment.   But I have standards.

And they are low. When I stumble upon a new blog, I immediately read the posts with the most comments and feel guilty about that.

The bell rings, round five.

—

I wrote  Carma for today’s CoolClevelandcom e-blast.

My son Ted parked his car at the Brookpark RTA lot and flew to Las Vegas. The RTA lot was cheaper than the airport lot.

My son didn’t come back.  He thought he was going for a vacation, but he got a job in Las Vegas and stayed there.

My son’s 2007 Ford Focus sat in the Brookpark lot for two months, until my wife, Alice, and I loaded our car with jumper cables and a generator-pump and drove to the RTA lot, which is next to Ford Engine Plant #1 and a couple strip bars.

I said to Alice, “Ted’s car is technically in Brook Park, not Cleveland. That’s good. If the car has been towed or stolen, we can deal with Brook Park red tape better than Cleveland red tape.”

The car wasn’t towed or stolen.  It was there. The doors were unlocked. The tires were low. There was a bottle of bourbon in the backseat.

I drove Ted’s car to the Lusty Wrench in Cleveland Heights the next day.  Sam, the mechanic, said, “The car is basically in good shape with 89,000 miles.  The battery will not make it, and as you know the side-view mirror is taped on.   The tape is not a bad solution.  The rear tires are round, black and hold air, but they’re not very good.”

The car was serviceable.  It worked.

I want to know, Is Greater Cleveland really this safe and accommodating? I need more data.  Please leave your car for two months at a Rapid stop and tell me what happens.

I was in the grocery store parking lot, listening to Terry Gross interview poet Donald Hall on the radio.

Gross asked Hall how he liked being old.  Hall couldn’t complain, he said, but then he did for several minutes.  He talked about how he had recently published a story in the New Yorker in which a security guard at the National Gallery had treated 83-year-old Hall like a child; the guard had leaned over to Hall, who was in a wheelchair, and asked, “How was din-din?”  (Hall is poet laureate emeritus of the United States and a recipient of the 2010 National Medal of Arts.)

I could listen to Hall talk about aging all day.   I didn’t really want to get out of my car and shop for prunes, yogurt and salmon.

I used to be younger. Take 50.  In 2000 my then-teenage son attended a New Hampshire summer camp an hour from Hall’s house. I visited the camp on parents’ day.  Should I look up Hall,  my old English professor?  I had studied with Hall 30 years earlier.

Maybe Hall lived way back in the woods.  Maybe he sat on his front porch with a shotgun.  I didn’t know.

Hall’s house was not deep in the woods.  It was about 50 feet from a federal highway and across from a summer camp.  (There are a lot of camps in New Hampshire.)  He could sometimes hear “Reveille.”

Hall was happy to see me, and said quickly, “I’m rich.”  He had made his money mainly from royalties, from a how-to-write college textbook and his award-winning children’s book Ox-Cart Man. Only a poet would ask, “Are you rich?” He added, “How about you?”

“I’m doing OK,” I said.  Look, I had a kid at a New Hampshire summer camp. Enough said.

When I had graduated Ann Arbor in 1973, Hall had discouraged me from returning to Cleveland. He had said, “Why do that — to sell insurance?”

Nevertheless, I returned home and “sold insurance.”  I entered my family’s real estate biz.

Donald Hall and Bert Stratton, 2000

In New Hampshire, Hall took me to a fancy restaurant near his farm.  I said, “I own and manage apartment buildings.  I’m a landlord.  And I play clarinet.” Meaning I can improvise. I’m still in the arts!

My first year at Michigan, Hall had looked like a stock broker.  He went hippie about a year later, I think. In New Hampshire he wore a dye-tied shirt, and I was the guy in the polo shirt.

Donald Hall at his family farm, 2006. (Photo by Ken Williams / Concord Monitor)

Hall quit his tenured job at Michigan in 1975 and moved to his grandfather’s farm near Wilmot, New Hampshire.  Hall did freelance writing.

At the New Hampshire restaurant, Hall said he had traveled to the Amazon River on a private jet with a Michigan grad who had made it big in the movie business.  The student owned a movie company.  Hall said, “His family was in the grocery business in Detroit, until I warped his mind.”

Hall warped many minds. He told me to guard against bitterness.  His late wife, poet Jane Kenyon, had died five years earlier at 47.  I had known her from English classes.

Hall had endured colon cancer, which was supposed to have killed him, but didn’t.  Instead, his wife died from leukemia.  He said, “Every generation thinks they know more than the next generation.  Schopenhauer was writing about this in the 1700s. You don’t know more than the next generation.” Hall wouldn’t even let me pay the tip.

The next day I drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, and flew back to Cleveland to evict people, fix leaky faucets and collect late rents.  It was not poetic.

Eleven years later (2011), I mailed several of my published articles to “Donald Hall, Eagle Pond Farm, New Hampshire.”  (He didn’t use email.)  I wrote: “From your student — your 61-year-old student.”  I dated the cover letter.  Hall was always big on dates.

Don wrote back, “I know you know I know that you feel old and know you are not.”

I bought my prunes, salmon and yogurt at the grocery store, plus a couple beers.   I want to make it to Hall’s age.  On the radio he sounded spry and happy.

—

Attention, Michigan residents.  Please come to the Klezmer Guy show at The Ark, Ann Arbor, Feb. 15.  8 p.m. $20.   Features Bert Stratton on clarinet and prose, Gerald Ross on ukulele and Hawaiian lap steel guitar, and Alan Douglass on piano, sunglasses and vocals.  

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Attention, Clevelanders.  Attend Purim at Park Synagogue, Cleveland Heights, Feb. 23.  Yiddishe Cup becomes Sly and the Family Stein on Purim. We’re going to play Jewish music and soul music.  Free.  Open to the public.  7:30 p.m.

I interviewed for a position on the library board.

I like to read, and I know two people who have been on the board and liked it.

I wondered, “Will the school board ask me what books I’m reading?” (The school board oversees the library board.)

In 1967 at Johns Hopkins’ admissions office, I talked about my Holocaust reading. The Holocaust wasn’t yet the “Holocaust.”  I made a good impression in Baltimore, I think. (I was pre-med.)

Re: the library board interview. I recently read How Music Works by David Byrne and Shit my Dad Says by Justin Halpern. I have also read to page 100 in Malamud’s A New Life, a novel about a college instructor. For the first fifty pages, I was interested in the goings-on of a 1950s college English department. Then less so.

Nevertheless, “I’m reading Malamud” might be the ticket.

The members of the school board sat on a dais at the board of education building, and I took the “witness stand” in the center of the room. Only three school board members — out of five — showed up. One MIA board member was a playwright; the other, a guy from my synagogue. My A-team was absent!

Question 1: How would you make the library better for students?

Students?  They are the species who play computer games and horse around in the teen room? I’ve been in that room, like, never. “I would maintain the library as a first-class multicultural, multimedia center,” I said.

Question 2: What do you do at the library besides take out books?

Not much! “I was at the dedication of the Harvey Pekar statue,” I said.

Question 3: What would you do to help the library’s finances?

“I vote for the levies.” What about Malamud?

Question 4: Are you willing to commit to a seven-year position?

“Yes, but actuarially speaking, who knows.”

A chemist beat me out for the job. In an email, the library director thanked me for applying and encouraged me to apply again.

First I need to walk through the teen room and get a better feel for the young adults’ needs. I’ll do that right after I finish Malamud’s A New Life.

—

Side B

MR. OO

I got a call from Oo (rhymes with “boo”), looking to open an Asian food market.

I said, “How do you spell that?”

“O, O.”

“O, O, 7?”

“Yes.  Hah-hah.”

“Is Oo your first name.”

“No, that’s Kyawswar.”

“You Chinese?”

“No, I’m from Burma.”

“Close enough,” I said.

“Yes, very close.”

“Is this going to be an American mini-market or an Asian market?” I said. “I don’t want 40-ounce malt liquor and cigarettes.”

“Asian market, sir.  Our people like rice, the vegetables, avocados.  Maybe cigarettes. The high school boys from the school [across the street] buy the fruit juices.”

Oo rented the store. He’s  industrious.  He owns two sushi stands at Giant Eagles.  That’s not all . . .

I told my wife, “Oo had a nail salon.”

“Who?” she said.

“Oo.”

—
Footnote: Consider “U Thant,” the former UN secretary general from Burma. Thanks to Ted Stratton for this  U/Oo connection.

—
Byliner chose my essay “The Landlord’s Tale” (City Journal) as one of the top 102 nonfiction journalism pieces  of 2012.  Read the essay here.

Snickers used to be my bar.

It’s everybody’s bar.  It’s the number one seller in the America.

The pic above is John Lokar, the candyman, 1981.  He owned L&M Candy on East 185th Street.  He had everything, including baseball cards and tobacco.

I also had a taste for Nestle Triple Deckers.  Long gone.

My wife had a nostalgic longing for Valomilks.  She recently bought one at a specialty store and didn’t like it. Too sweet.

My dad was a Planter’s Peanut guy, and he also liked Mr. Goodbar.  I used to buy a Mr. Goodbar before I visited his grave.

Kit Kat: not bad.  Kit Kats were from Canada when they were good.

Canada, that’s a great candy-centric vacation.

Chunky . . .

I miss Chunky.  No, I miss the idea of Chunky.  I miss Arnold Stang (who did Chunky commercials).

My grandmother Anna  Soltzberg had a candy store at 15102 Kinsman Road, Cleveland, from 1927 to 1937:

I studied this photo with a magnifying glass.  Here’s the inventory:

Mr. Goodbar, Ivory soap, Sensen breath mints, Boston Wafer, halvah, Ringo, Lux and Lifebuoy soaps, Coca-Cola, peanut bars, chocolate-covered cherries, Maxwell House coffee . . .

Uneeda biscuits, Dentyne, Lifesavers, Tootsie Rolls, Oh Henry, and cigars: White Owl, Dutch Master, Websters, Cinco, Murad, John Ruskin and Charles the Great Pure Havana.

Candy was a low-cost entry point for immigrants.  John Lokar — the man with the gigantic Snickers  — was a Slovenian-American candy wholesaler.  I bought new baseball cards from him in 1981.  Didn’t make any money on it.

When did Snickers come out?

1930.  Frank Mars named the bar after his horse. (Googled.)

Here’s an ad from the December 1980 Candy Marketer.  Lokar gave it to me:

Jaw Breakers.  I haven’t had one of those since the Center-Mayfield stopped their 25-cent Saturday matinees.

Reese . . .

Who was Reese?

—
For relatives only: candy-store photo . . .   Anna Soltzberg, apron; her husband, Louis Soltzberg, behind counter; her sister-in-law Lil Seiger, behind counter; and two unidentified women.
—
Anybody have strong feelings about MilkyWay? I doubt it.

I was in my car in the grocery store parking lot, listening to Terry Gross interview poet Donald Hall, my old English professor.

Gross asked Hall how he liked being old.  Hall couldn’t complain, he said, but then he did for several minutes.  Hall talked about how he had published a story in the New Yorker in which a security guard at the National Gallery had treated 83-year-old Hall like a child; the guard had leaned over to Hall, who was in a wheelchair, and asked, “How was din-din?”

I could listen to Hall talk about aging all day.   I didn’t really want to get out of my car and shop for prunes, yogurt and salmon.

I used to be a lot younger . . .

Fifty, for instance.  In 2000 my then-teenage son attended a New Hampshire summer camp an hour from Hall’s house. I visited the camp on parents’ day.  Should I look up my English teacher?  I had taken courses from Hall 30 years earlier?

Maybe Hall lived way back in the woods.  Maybe he sat on his front porch with a shotgun.  I didn’t know.

Hall’s house was not deep in the woods.  It was about 50 feet from a federal highway and across from a summer camp.  (There are a lot of camps in New Hampshire.)  He could sometimes hear “Reveille.”

Don Hall at family house, New Hampshire, 2006 (Photo by Ken Williams/ Concord Monitor)

Hall was happy to see me, and said pretty quickly, “I’m rich.”  Hall made his money mainly from his award-winning children’s book Ox-Cart Man. Only a poet would ask, “Are you rich?” He added, “How about you?”

“I’m doing OK,” I said.  I had a kid at a New Hampshire summer camp. Enough said.

In 1973, when I had graduated college, Hall discouraged me from returning to Cleveland. He had said, “Why do that — to sell insurance?”

I went home.  I “sold insurance.”  I joined my father’s real estate biz.

Hall took me to a fancy restaurant near his farm.  I said, “I own and manage apartment buildings.  I’m a landlord.  And I play clarinet.” Meaning: I can improvise. I’m still in the arts!

Donald Hall and Bert Stratton New Hampshire, 2000

My first year at Michigan, Hall had looked like a stock broker. He went hippie about a year later, I think. In New Hampshire he wore a hippie shirt, and I was the guy in the polo shirt.

Hall quit his tenured job at Michigan in 1975 and moved to his grandfather’s farm near Wilmot, New Hamphsire.  Hall did exclusively freelance writing.

At the restaurant, Hall said he had traveled to the Amazon River on a private jet with a Michigan grad who had made it big in the movie business.  The student owned a movie company.  Hall said, “His family was in the grocery business in Detroit, until I warped his mind.”

Hall warped many minds. He told me to guard against bitterness.  His late wife, poet Jane Kenyon, had died five years earlier, at 47.  I remembered her from English classes.

Hall had struggled with colon and liver cancer, which was supposed to have killed him, but didn’t. Instead, his wife died from leukemia.  He said, “Every generation thinks they know more than the next generation.  Schopenhauer was writing about this in the 1700s. You don’t know more than the next generation.”

Hall wouldn’t even let me pay the tip.

The next day I drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, and flew back to Cleveland to evict people, fix leaky faucets and collect late rents.  It was not poetic.

Eleven years later I mailed several of my published op-eds to “Donald Hall, Eagle Pond Farm, New Hampshire.”  (He doesn’t use email.)  I wrote: “From your student — your 61-year-old student.”  I dated the letter.  Hall is big on dates.

Don wrote back, “I know you know I know that you feel old and know you are not.”

Get out of the car.  Buy the prunes, salmon and yogurt –- and some beers.

I want to make it to Hall’s age.

—
Donald Hall, 84, is poet emeritus of the United States and a recipient of  the 2010 National Medal of Arts.

Donald Hall and Barack Obama, 2011

—

by Ralph Solonitz :

My cousin David owned a GMC tractor-trailer, which he parked in the May Co. lot in University Heights.  David may have been the only Jewish long-distance trucker in the Heights.  Maybe the only long-distance trucker, period, in the Heights.

In 1975 David borrowed several thousand dollars from my father, Toby, for the truck.  David had a contract with International Truck of Rock, Minnesota.

David moved to Pennsylvania and never repaid my dad.

In high school David had stolen hubcaps.  He had been a Shaker Heights juvenile delinquent.

David even looked like James Dean. My cousin Danny once said, “David’s dad was the most handsome man you ever met.” David’s dad drifted around Cleveland, playing pool.  David’s dad and mother divorced in the 1950s.

When David’s mother heard David hadn’t repaid my dad, she made payments, but she never fully repaid the loan.

My father’s attitude was “win some, lose some.”  Toby believed in lending money to family. My dad had borrowed from his Uncle Itchy to buy his first house.

Last year I called David’s sister. This was a big deal; David and his sister were  out of the cousins’ loop. David is now in his seventies and has had several heart attacks, his sister said.  He is living in a hotel that his son runs in Florida.

No more truckin’.

No more David as family black sheep. Stolen hubcaps and an unpaid loan, is that the worst of it in my family?  I think so.

Now, my wife has an estranged cousin who stole sterling silver . . . Stop.
—
“David” is a pseudonym.

—
SIDE B

FITBIT

I became bionic.  My daughter, Lucy, gave me a pedometer.

I can count my daily steps. I can even monitor my sleep patterns, but that’s too much data — even for a guy like me who likes data.

Brisk walking. If you do it, ipso facto, you’re a dork.

I gave up jogging last year. My right knee wasn’t into it anymore. I miss the “sweat” of jogging.

I walk.

Should I post my step count here? Dieters post their calories online.  Bicyclists post their heart rates.

My step count today is _____. (Will post up at 11:59 p.m for maximum effect.)

Your count?

—

For a couple new illustrations by Ralph Solonitz, please  scroll down to “KlezKamp 2012,” which went up last week.

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Yiddishe Cup plays at First Night Akron on New Year’s Eve.

The place: Brooklyn

The venue: the Barclays Center.

The show: Jay-Z on the mic.

The kingpin: Cousin Brucie Ratner, owner of the Barclays Center.

Brucie isn’t  my cousin, and I don’t know Jay-Z’s music.  But I felt part of the Barclays Center’s grand opening.  I walked around the outside of the arena.

Furthermore, I occasionally play gigs for the Ratner family in Cleveland. The Ratner patriarch — Albert — likes “Oyfn Pripetchik” (At the Hearth).  Albert doesn’t even have to ask.

Bruce Ratner told the New York Times he used to be embarrassed he was a developer. He was an anti–war protestor back in the day, he told the Times.

Brucie is me x 1 billion dollars.

I was at a wedding in Brooklyn.  Beyoncé’s sister was there.  I sat across from Beyoncé’s marketing agent. (Jay-Z is married to Beyoncé.)

The music at the wedding was arena quality. A gospel singer from the Blind Boys of Alabama sang the ceremony. A doo-wop group did the cocktail hour.  An eight-piece New Orleans brass band walked  into the wedding through an industrial garage door and wailed for hours.

Where was I — other than two miles from Jay-Z?  I was in a former brass foundry, close to a toxic site, the Gowanus Canal.

I saw guys in Brooklyn Nets T-shirts.

My band, Yiddishe Cup, once played the Brooklyn Center for the Performing the Arts in Flatbush.  Not too cool, apparently.  (My band or Flatbush?)

I think the wedding venue was in Red Hook, a section of Brooklyn.  Not sure.  Maybe Carroll Gardens (another Brooklyn neighborhood).  I like to know where I am.

Boys, hit ’em with “Oyfn Prip.”  Cousin Brucie might drop by.  Just like back home.  (There is a Brooklyn, Ohio.)   Jay-Z in the house?   Strike up “Money, Cash, Hoes.”

—
SIDE B

TOO SMOOTH

I sat on a bench at Horseshoe Lake and read the Cleveland Jewish News.   I felt like Isaac Bashevis Singer with the Yiddish Forverts.  (Typical Singer opening: “While I was sitting on a park bench I noticed that my left shoelace was untied.”)

I had a letter to the editor in the CJN and wanted to make sure the paper got it right.

The park bench at Horseshoe Lake had a plaque: “In loving memory of Arthur Lipton. He played at Carnegie Hall.” My question: Did Arthur Lipton get paid, or was he in a youth orchestra? Did they — the orchestra — rent Carnegie Hall?

The CJN got my letter right.

The “wombs and tomb” section of the CJN is the crux of the paper: the births, bar mitzvahs, weddings and deaths. Deaths are always a good read. Who owned what business. Who fought in Japan. In the weddings, there is usually a U. of Michigan grad. Does every Jewish family in Cleveland have a Michigan connection? I skip the bar mitzvah and birth announcements; I’m too old for those, or not old enough.

On returning from the park, I saw a dog crapping on my front lawn. I paused at a distance, to see if the owner would clean up. She did.

Great day.

Snack time: I opened a new jar of peanut butter.

It was creamy! I bought creamy by mistake!

Heinen’s should be more distinctive with its labels:

My (future) park-bench epitaph: “Albert Stratton preferred crunchy peanut butter.”

(A version of this post appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer 11/4/12.)

When will it end?

Superstorm Sandy or the election?

Either.

Definitely by Tuesday.

Ohio returns to flyover status Tuesday, and I’m back to looking for celebs at Ohio Turnpike rest stops — bands and gangsters traveling from New York to Chicago.

Bill Clinton, Bruce Springsteen and Condoleezza Rice: history.

My friend Jane posted on Facebook: “Can’t wait until this election season is over so I can be sane again.”

A friend from Rhode Island asked me, “How is it living in a swing state?”

“It’s swinging,” I said.  It’s sweet. We’re loved.

When I’m not loved, I’m a landlord. I receive calls from political operatives who want to rent stores for “staging areas.”

I haven’t rented to a politician in years, because politicians tend to trash stores and not pay enough rent. The campaign workers are gone the day after the election, but the pizza boxes aren’t. And where are the keys?

I’m supposed to give the store away cheap, as a political gesture. My gesture: Pay and I’ll rent to you.

“I’m Brian,” said the young man on the phone.

“Where are you from?” I asked. He didn’t sound local.

“I’m in Cleveland right now.”

“I see.”

“I need the store for a few days.”

“How many people will be in the store?”

“Twenty to 30 people. They’ll go out canvassing. Teams are sent out.”

Twenty to 30 people is a lot of foot traffic for a 1,000 square-foot store, and a lot of pizza boxes.

Plain or pepperoni.

I’ll never know.  My price was too high, I guess.

—

SIDE B

From the history channel . . .

PLAYING POLITICS

When a relative ran for school board and lost, my father said, “Don’t run again.  You don’t want to get a loser’s reputation.”

My relative didn’t run again.

I, too, play by my dad’s rules.

I might run.  When?  Not saying.

First, a little background: I was a Kennedy man.  (Who wasn’t?  A lot of people.)

Bert Stratton w/ Kennedy buttons, Ohio Stadium, 1960

I started my own country (on paper) in sixth grade and elected presidents and representatives.  My country was a solace, because  in the real world I couldn’t run for president because a) I wasn’t 35 and b) I was Jewish.

My mother said I could run and win.  She duped me!  My man, Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut, couldn’t even run.  Newsweek  said the country wasn’t ready for the Ribman for prez or even veep.

Now presumably a Jew could win the nomination for the top job.

Let me be clear: I won’t start out at school-board level or even vice president.

My Little League teammate Joel Hyatt (Cleveland Heights High ’68) ran for U.S. Senate and got clobbered.  He hadn’t paid his dues; he hadn’t run for lesser offices.

Lee Fisher wins state senate seat, 1982

Lee Fisher (Shaker Heights High ’69) paid dues.  I saw him at civic club meetings in Collinwood in 1982:  six neighbors, me and Lee.  Fisher eventually climbed to lieutenant governor. Then he got clobbered for the U.S. Senate.  He paid  dues.  Give him that.

I’m willing to pay dues.  About $10.

My American history teacher in high school said Stratton is a good political name.  (My teacher was Americo Betori.  He should have run for mayor of Cleveland in 1950.  He would have won.)

Stratton.  Remember that name.

***

A few weeks ago at Simchat Torah, the rabbi said, “We will now read the last verse of the Book of Deuteronomy.”  A Yiddishe Cup musician — not paying close attention — said, “Did he just say, ‘We will now read from the Book of Mitt Romney’?”