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.


 
 

BACK WHEN ROOSEVELT WAS GOD

by Bert Stratton

 

Jean Elsner, who died last week at 99, lived in her house on Stilmore Road in South Euclid for 61 years — until 2013, when she moved to a seniors building in Chicago to be near her oldest son. Jean’s father built the Stilmore house in 1951. In 2009, she was the oldest student at Cleveland State. She took courses for the fun of it.

Jean's house, 2011

Jean’s house, 2011

Jean was very nice to my mother. When my mom became a widow, Jean didn’t bail on her like some friends of my mom did. And when my mother got Parkinson’s, Jean didn’t bail either. Jean called the building manager at my mother’s apartment because my mom was on the floor and couldn’t get up.

Jean and my mom went way back — to Kinsman Road. They shared a locker in seventh grade. When my mom moved to Cleveland from Mississippi in 1930, Jean welcomed her.

Jean knew me from day one. Jean said I was a fat baby.

I think I have a picture of Jean’s house with the Franklin Roosevelt picture in the den. In the 1940s she bought the picture for her parents, who “worshipped” Roosevelt, she said. “They thought Roosevelt was God. They had always been Socialist before then — voted for Debs — but they took a chance on Roosevelt in 1932.”

Jean and Roosevelt, 2011

Jean and FDR, 2011

Jean wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt in 1937, asking for help with the Homeowners Loan Corporation, which gave Jean’s dad a loan for a house. Jean had a permanent campaign sign in her front picture window: “Vote Democrat.”

Jean never drove. She took the bus. That was odd, at least for Cleveland. She allowed neighbors to park in her driveway.

Her breakfast was orange juice, hot chocolate and toast. She ate peanut butter and jelly and tea for lunch every day.

That’s some of what you need to know about Jean.

 

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5 comments

1 Ken Goldberg { 12.19.18 at 9:21 am }

Connected with Elsner’s Party Center on Chagrin? I take it her son was David, whom Lillian went to school with.

2 Mike madorsky { 12.19.18 at 9:22 am }

I’d kill to see Ralph’s version of you as a fat baby!

3 Bert Stratton { 12.19.18 at 9:39 am }

Not the Elsners of the party center on Chagrin. Yes, her son David went to school with Lillian.

4 Irwin Weinberger { 12.19.18 at 2:40 pm }

Beautiful tribute to an amazing lady.

5 Arnie Berger { 12.21.18 at 5:32 pm }

There’s a tale of a Bar Mitzvah in the late 1930s where a large portrait of FDR, like the one you show, was carried in the Torah procession, just behind the sacred scrolls. And by the way, “chubby” back then showed that a baby was being well cared for.

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