{"id":25995,"date":"2018-09-12T08:01:39","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T12:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=25995"},"modified":"2018-12-21T13:26:10","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T18:26:10","slug":"my-dad-had-a-good-short-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/12\/my-dad-had-a-good-short-game\/","title":{"rendered":"MY DAD HAD
A GOOD SHORT GAME"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything within<\/strong><\/span> 10 feet of the cup, Toby sank,\u201d said Hy Birnbaum, a friend of my late father. I ran into Hy at the drugstore, where he worked part-time as a pharmacist. He was about 85 at the time. Hy said all his friends were dead. (My dad, Toby, had been dead about 25 years.)<\/p>\n

I ran into John Kelly, who worked with my dad 30-plus years ago at the key company. John said one of the \u201cbig bosses\u201d had slept in the key company office overnight because he had marital problems. This particular “big boss,” Sid, had a slew of problems. His kids were \u201creal hippies,\u201d said John. Sid was a loud-mouth, know-it-all, country-club Jew from Shaker Heights, I remember my dad saying. My dad kvetched about Sid frequently at dinner.<\/p>\n

My dad<\/strong><\/span> disliked most \u201cbig bosses.\u201d But the one \u201cbig boss\u201d my dad liked, luckily, was the key company president, Manny Schor, who was a World Federalist, intelligent and not a show off.<\/p>\n

\"\"Manny came to my gigs occasionally in his later years. (Most of the big bosses at the key company were Jewish. The company was owned by a Jew.) Manny said, \u201cI can still picture your father sitting at his desk.\u201d<\/p>\n

So could I.<\/p>\n

Why were<\/strong><\/span> these old guys still alive and my dad dead? That’s what I\u00a0 wanted to know. My dad’s long game wasn’t so great.<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

Toby Stratton 1917-1986, died just shy of 69; Manny Schor 1918-2009, 91; Sid 1921-2000, 79; Hy Birnbaum 1925-2016, 91; John Kelly 1931-2011, 80.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cAnything within 10 feet of the cup, Toby sank,\u201d said Hy Birnbaum, a friend of my late father. I ran into Hy at the drugstore, where he worked part-time as a pharmacist. He was about 85 at the time. Hy said all his friends were dead. (My dad, Toby, had been dead about 25 years.) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-toby-stratton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25995","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=25995"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25999,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25995\/revisions\/25999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}