{"id":32470,"date":"2025-03-11T17:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T21:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=32470"},"modified":"2025-04-02T16:35:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T20:35:42","slug":"grow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/11\/grow-up\/","title":{"rendered":"GROW UP"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nI put <\/strong><\/span>a latch on my bedroom door to keep my parents out. I was a grown-up — in my early twenties. I was at my parents’ Beachwood apartment, the Mark IV (featured a couple weeks ago in a Klezmer Guy post). The Mark IV was later called The Hamptons and is now The Vantage. I was listening to John Handy\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Stop the Carnival” on my record player. There was talk about real estate and bridge games. I pondered some prospective book titles:<\/p>\n

Suburban Nightmare<\/em><\/p>\n

Rebounding from the Bar Mitzvah Trail<\/em><\/p>\n

Confessions of a Bar Mitzvah Wino<\/em><\/p>\n

He played Clarinet Between his Legs<\/em><\/p>\n

Unstuck Pads<\/em><\/p>\n

The Bar Mitzvah-Goer<\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe I <\/strong>thought about <\/span><\/span>bar mitzvahs because I never had one. I was Confirmed, Reform-style. (In my adulthood, I did leyn<\/em> Torah a couple times.)<\/p>\n

I swam in the Mark IV apartment pool and got in an argument with an old guy — maybe 65. He said, \u201cYou\u2019re going to bump into my grandkids and you’ll be sorry you did!”<\/p>\n

Lay off, man. (I love grandkids — 50 years later.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

My dad considered selling me his beater car, a Plymouth Valiant, so I could drive away from Beachwood. He said, \u201cBut if you get the car, what are you going to do to support it?\u201d<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ll get some money somewhere. I\u2019ll rob a bank.”<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do that and I\u2019ll wipe my hands of you!”<\/p>\n

Simmer down, Dad. I bought the car, but I didn’t drive too far. I went four miles west to Cleveland Heights and rented a room in half-a-house.<\/p>\n

Where else could I have gone? Boston was too collegiate. New York? I had been there and had had my ride towed. New York is a tough town for cars. Go back to Ann Arbor? Too many kids there. California? Too hard to get to.<\/p>\n

Tough times . . .<\/p>\n

My dad<\/strong> <\/span>said, \u201cYou don\u2019t know what a tough is!\u201d<\/p>\n

Change your place, change your life.<\/em> I met a girl via the ride board at Case Western Reserve University. (A lot of my life revolved around that CWRU board.) The girl was Jewish, cute and English. A true trifecta. We hitchhiked to California, and somewhere near Knoxville she told me she was going to meet up with her boyfriend in California. Bummer road!<\/p>\n

Because of the “chick” factor, we even got rides from truckers.<\/p>\n

I ran into the English girl again, in Israel a year later. She said nothing had materialized with the “boyfriend” out west (and nothing much happened with me and her in Eretz Yisrael).
\nCalifornia . . . I said cheerio to the English woman and hitched back east solo.\u00a0 When I walked into my parents’ apartment, my dad said, \u201cIsn\u2019t that<\/span> a pistol.”<\/p>\n

I guess<\/strong><\/span> it was. As Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote, “Life was too good to us. We had to ask for trouble.\u201d I looked for trouble, somewhat unsuccessfully.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Isaac Bashevis Singer<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I put a latch on my bedroom door to keep my parents out. I was a grown-up — in my early twenties. I was at my parents’ Beachwood apartment, the Mark IV (featured a couple weeks ago in a Klezmer Guy post). The Mark IV was later called The Hamptons and is now The […]<\/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-32470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32470","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=32470"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32910,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32470\/revisions\/32910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}