Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

CHIVES AND WWII

by Bert Stratton

The title of Maury Feren’s autobiography is almost book-length: Wheeling & Dealing In My World, Including World War II Memories, by Maury Feren, Cleveland, Ohio’s Produce King.

Maury Feren, 2010. (Photo by Ron Humphrey)

Lettuce and tomatoes aren’t that compelling to me, but World War II is,  so I read the book.

Maury fought the war on two fronts: 1.) Europe and 2.) Europe  — against his fellow American soldiers.

Here are some chapter titles: “Another Bigot,” “I’ll Show You What a Dirty Jew Can Do,” “Anti-Semitism at Home and Abroad” and “More Anti-Semitism.”

An American soldier called Maury a “rag peddler.”  Maury “gave him a lesson in boxing that he might never forget.”

A mess hall server said to Maury, “Vot vould you lick? A piss of this, and a piss of that?”

Maury grabbed him by the throat.  “If you ever talk like that again to me, I’ll close your windpipe so you’ll never be able to talk again.”

Maury Feren (shirtless), 1944, w/ friend

Maury encountered German soldiers and civilians in Essen, Germany.  “I screamed at them in a Yiddish-kind-of-German about how despicable they were . . . ‘You are murders, baby killers, women killers . . . I am a Jew.  Look at me and see whether you want to kill me too.’”

Maybe I’ll read Maury’s chapter on chives.

Probably not.  Is there any ass-kicking in chives?
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Footnote: Maury, 96, is still kickin’.  Biz a hundert un tsvantsik, Maury.  (You should live to 120, Maury.)

—-
Jack Stratton, Yiddishe Cup’s alternate drummer, as Mushy Krongold:

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3 comments

1 marc { 12.07.11 at 1:43 pm }

My father told me about serving in the Pacific. He was in the signal corps. He was on a small island in the Pacific, and there was a group of soldiers doing code breaking. They were composed of mostly Jewish guys from New York.

My father said that the Jewish soldiers doing code breaking were not promoted, only the non-Jewish soldiers in that group.

2 Seth { 12.07.11 at 7:10 pm }

Maury and Mushy…both good. Probably related at one time.

3 Kenny G { 12.08.11 at 8:42 am }

Maury has been coming quite regularly to Park Synagogue Sat. mornings. (actually I don’t know if I’ve seem him the past month or two, though we’ve missed a few services.) For a while he was walking into the bldg. same time as me, and we’d often go to the men’s room by the school wing the same time.

I think he lives in The Victorian (or is it DeVille)?

When Lillian and Rachel had the kidney transplant, a woman I work with ordered two fruit baskets from his place — the kosher version (obviously they had much more than fruit). Very wise on her part!

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