{"id":25275,"date":"2017-08-30T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=25275"},"modified":"2017-12-10T19:40:41","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T00:40:41","slug":"return-of-the-maggies-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/30\/return-of-the-maggies-2\/","title":{"rendered":"RETURN OF THE MAGGIES"},"content":{"rendered":"


<\/p>\n

Maggies were<\/strong><\/span> linoleum salesmen\/hustlers in Cleveland. \u201cMaggie\u201d is derived from Magnoleum, a flooring brand. Harvey Pekar wrote a comic strip about maggies in 1982. I didn\u2019t hear the word maggies again until recently, when my cousin Danny Seiger expounded: \u201cThe maggies carried thick samples of linoleum that looked like Venetian marble. They sold nine-by-twelve sheets for fifteen dollars. Nobody had fifteen dollars back then, so the maggies took five bucks on installment, and came back with a roll of tissue-paper. They could carry it upstairs real easy. It weighed three pounds. The maggies laid the tissue-paper linoleum on your kitchen floor, collected the five bucks, and never came back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The maggies sold more than linoleum, Danny said. They sold ties at barbershops and socks at saloons. Each maggie had a territory and a product line.<\/p>\n

I Googled \u201cMaggies\u201d after my cousin Danny left. Maggies, an Irish music group, popped up. Then I tried \u201cMaggies + Pekar\u201d . . .<\/p>\n

Michigan State University Libraries,
\nComic Art Collection.
\n\u201cThe Maggies: Oral History\u201d\/story by Harvey Pekar;
\nart by R. Crumb. 2 p. in American Splendor, no. 7 (1982).<\/p>\n

I phoned<\/strong><\/span> Danny Seiger and read the Pekar story to him. I wanted to know if Turk\u2019s deli \u2014 where the maggies hung out in Harvey\u2019s comic \u2014 was the same place as Seiger\u2019s deli. Danny said, \u201cTurk\u2019s was at One-hundred Seventeenth. We were at One-hundred Eighteenth.\u201d<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cThere were two delis right next to each other? How many delis were there in Cleveland?\u201d<\/p>\n

“There were seven on Kinsman, and twenty-eight in Cleveland in the 1930s,\u201d Danny said.<\/p>\n

\"Seiger's,

Seiger’s, 1958, (with fire damage)<\/p><\/div>\n

–<\/p>\n

A version of this first appeared here 8\/4\/10.<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maggies were linoleum salesmen\/hustlers in Cleveland. \u201cMaggie\u201d is derived from Magnoleum, a flooring brand. Harvey Pekar wrote a comic strip about maggies in 1982. I didn\u2019t hear the word maggies again until recently, when my cousin Danny Seiger expounded: \u201cThe maggies carried thick samples of linoleum that looked like Venetian marble. They sold nine-by-twelve sheets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleveland-full","category-pekar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25275"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25279,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25275\/revisions\/25279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}