ANTIC SEMITES

by Bert Stratton

My clarinet teacher, Harry Golub, was nicknamed the Bald Eagle.

Harry was hairless.

A student, Zuckerman, gave Mr. Golub that nickname.

Zuckerman, like many junior high clarinetists, dropped out of private lessons around bar mitzvah time. I hung in through eleventh grade. During my high school years, Mr. Golub asked me how the clarinet dropouts were doing.

Mr. Golub was often cranky because, for one thing, he didn’t get along well with the music department at the high school. They wouldn’t buy instruments and sheet music from him. The high school was in cahoots with another music store, the one out in goy land, Lyndhurst, Mr. Golub said.

Mr. Golub’s store was in Little Israel, the Jewish quadrant of South Euclid. (Little Israel was across the park from the Italian neighborhood, where I lived. At least we had finished second floors. The bungalows in Little Israel were custom-built for Jews; nobody over 5-9 could stand up in the dormers.)

I ran into Mr. Golub frequently years later at Yiddishe Cup gigs. He still railed against the school system . . . “those mumzers [bastards], those anti-semits.”

I don’t know . . . I don’t know if the school was truly anti-Semitic. Exhibit A: Steve, a loudmouthed Jewish kid, a NYC-style sasser, and one of the smartest guys in my grade. [Steve isn’t his real name.] Steve and his father, from the East, read the Sunday New York Times. Steve knew about Dylan way before the rest of us.

The high school administration — mostly non-Jewish grads of small Ohio teachers colleges, it seemed — didn’t believe in adjusting to different “learning styles” back then. Steve’s style was to question all authority and study like mad. Also, he wore jeans and got sent home. He talked back to teachers. He got straight A’s.

Steve was turned down by every college he applied to. Our guidance counselor wrote something like “rabble rouser” on Steve’s college applications. (Steve learned this when a classmate, working part-time in the Wesleyan University admissions office, snooped around a couple years later.)

I don’t think the high school administration was purposefully anti-Semitic. They just had no idea what to make of the insanely competitive, antic Semites — children of pawn shop owners, umbrella salesmen and Holocaust survivors. These students would ask: “Will this be on the next test?” “Are we responsible for all of section A? “Can I skip marching band because I have SATs tomorrow?”

You can skip marching band and you’ll be out of the band.

Great!

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[Credit to writer Josh Kun for antic Semites.]
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1 of 2 posts for 5/12/10. Please see the next post too.

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