Category — Kinder, Di

 
My son Ted specializes in extracting parents and relatives from travel crises. He never gets lost. He always knows where he is. Ted has been like that since he was age 9, when he rode the Lee Road bus for the fun of it.

Ted, Alice, and I recently got delayed at LaGuardia Airport. Delayed big-time. Our flight was canceled. It was canceled just as I pointed out to Alice, “This weekend has been seamless.” We had  traveled to a family wedding a couple hours north of NYC. When our LaGuardia flight was canceled, Ted immediately got on Priceline and booked us a hotel at a nearby dump in Queens. But a nice dump.

New York’s outer boroughs — I like them, in theory. But when I go to NYC, I rarely leave Manhattan. How often do I ride the bus in Queens? Just this once. With Ted’s assistance, we caught a city bus outside our hotel and went to Flushing and wound up at a noodle house. I hocked the Chinese-American guy next to me in the restaurant. He said Chinatown in Manhattan is bigger than the Chinatown in Flushing. But Flushing’s Chinatown felt bigger to me. Flushing was like a total-immersion Asian experience. (Manhattan’s Chinatown is more like a neighborhood touristy thing, next to another colorful neighborhood, Little Italy.)

Ted [pink shirt], England, 2016 bike tour.

Koffi, an African clerk at the Delta Airlines counter, said to me, “Your son is in charge now. He has a good demeanor.”

Right. Glad.

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I’m related to very few Strattons. So I got excited when I came across Jon Stratton, the author of Coming Out Jewish. I found him on the internet. Wow, another Stratton writing about Jewish matters.  Maybe I’m Jon, using a pseudonym.

Jon Stratton is a cultural studies professor in Perth, Australia. His mother was Jewish and his father Christian. Jon grew up in England, not knowing anything about Judaism or Yiddishkayt (Jewishness).

I ordered Jon’s book on Amazon. I found out Jon “came out Jewish” in multicultural academic circles, writing about, among other things, “ghetto-thinking” — Jewish anxiety. He said he had been slightly different from his friends in England because his mother had made him “ring home” whenever he went out, while his chums never had to ring home. Jon’s mother was an angst-ridden Jew from the Continent.

My mother, on the other hand, was from the Mississippi Delta and didn’t worry about anything. My mother left me off at freeway exits to hitchhike. One trip I made a left on I-80 and wound up in South America. She was OK with that.

In 1990, at the Cleveland airport, I waited for my mom to arrive on the “snowbird” flight from Florida. I was with my then 9-year-old son, Teddy, who I let run around the airport. But I warned him, “If you wander off too far, you’re going home on the Rapid.”

He wandered off and I left him. A half hour later a Cleveland policeman called me, and I had to go back to the airport — 20 miles one-way. The airport cop gave me a “sir, you are a douche bag” smirk when I entered the airport police office. The cop didn’t understand my son had practically memorized the Rapid Transit timetable and had ridden the complete Lee Road route.

I learned laissez-faire childrearing from my mother. There was nothing continental about her except her airlines. (Cleveland to West Palm Beach direct on Continental.)

If I ever go to Australia, I’ll look up Jon Stratton and maybe we can talk about our mothers.

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My daughter, Lucy, calls. She’s six months pregnant. This is January 2022. She says, “I don’t want to dump on you.” Then she does. She says the most recent ultrasound shows a spot on the baby’s heart. Lucy is on vacation in Mexico, and the midwife knew Lucy was on vacation, but the midwife nevertheless emailed Lucy, informing her to come in for her next ultrasound in six weeks instead of eight. That email dampened Lucy’s vacation mood. My mood (non-vacation) dampened, too. Lucy is in her late 30s. The docs are monitoring the heck out of her.

Me . . .  I had insane back pain in 2017 and got an MRI. The result: a herniated disc at L1-L2. OK, but then the doctor called me a day later and said I might have syringomyelia. What? That’s a cyst on your spinal cord that can mess with your nerves and brain. I scheduled a second MRI right away.

My insurance company called the morning of the second MRI and said the procedure would be $3900, and they weren’t sure they’d pay for it because I had just had an MRI. I said “full speed ahead.” If my brain was frying, I wanted to know now.

The second MRI came back “artifactual” — no sign of a brain problem. False positive. That’s my story, and I told Lucy. So many tests.

But I guess more tests are better than no tests.

[Cecil was born April 18. Doing well. He has a spot in my heart.]

—

I had a humorous op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about fasting on Yom Kippur. (No paywall.)

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My father, Toby, had about 15 pairs of shoes when he died. I didn’t take any of his shoes, even though he and I wore the same size. He had a foot fungus, and my mother told me to pass.

My dad had wingtips, golf shoes and tennis shoes. I never saw him in sandals, work boots or hiking boots. White shoes, definitely.

I’m more sensible about shoes — a habit I picked up from my mom. I like SAS shoes, which my mother told me about. She needed solid shoes when she got Parkinson’s disease. “SAS” stands for San Antonio Shoes. But I’m too lazy to go to the specialty shoestore to replenish. So lately I’m rocking Rockports.

When my then-20-year-old daughter studied abroad in Barcelona, she said I couldn’t visit her if I wore tennis shoes or a fanny pack. My SAS shoes were an excellent substitute for tennis shoes in Europe. I never did figure out a good way around the “no fanny pack” rule.

My dad wore Purcells abroad. He didn’t let his children tell him what to wear.

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The small tough Jews at my high school were wrestlers, except for Reed Klein the gymnast. The school had no gymnastics team. Reed was a one-man team. He went on to the Ohio State gymnastics team. The other small tough Jews were Harry Kramer and Steve Gold. They wrestled in low weight classes, like 93 pounds and 103 pounds.

My wife dated a wrestler in high school. My younger son wrestled in middle school. Jack was small and, at most, semi-tough. The matches were primal — two or three minutes of animal behavior in a stinky windowless wrestling room. The matches were scary and scarring. And I was just watching.

I never wrestled, except in gym. I didn’t like singlets or other guys’ armpits. I didn’t like headlocks either, unless Bobo Brazil was giving one to Lord Layton and it was 1960.

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Joseph Fagen — the father of Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen — used to approach strangers and say, “Would you, by chance, be a Steely Dan fan?” I do that, too, except I ask about Vulfpeck. I query Uber drivers and baristas if they’ve heard of Vulfpeck. Every time I do that, I have to spell out Vulfpeck. I wish Vulfpeck was Hello There. Every fifth barista has heard of Vulfpeck. Uber, longer odds.

At Vulfpeck’s recent Madison Square Garden concert, I spoke Spanish with a Puerto Rican guard at the artists’ entrance and got in through the back door of the Garden. The first performer I ran into back stage was Dave Koz, the smooth-jazz saxophonist. He gave me a “mazel tov.” He said “mazel tov.” Koz told me he remembered how meaningful it was when his parents came to his first mega gig and “they’re dead now.” Right. Show up.

I was backstage looking for backstage passes — about 50 passes. I had relatives coming from all over the country for the show. I was throwing a bar mitzvah party with a really good band.

Here’s the Fagen quote from the Cleveland Jewish News (Feb. 28, 2001). [“Bringing up Steely Dan” by Susan Rezpka]:

“Would you, by chance, be a Steely Dan fan?” Beachwood resident Joseph “Jerry” Fagen inquires wryly. It’s an unlikely question coming from an 80-year-old, but Fagen’s ‘favorite conversation starter’ affords the opening he needs to do what any parent would do in his shoes: kvell a little.

Vulfpeck. That’s V, U, L, F . . .

————

Madison Square Garden video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv4wf7bzfFE

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What happened to Sylvia Rimm? She used to be on public radio, dispensing childrearing advice. Rimm told my wife and me to subsume our individual personalities and create a united front to raise our kids. We didn’t. My wife, Alice, quoted Sylvia Rimm endlessly. Alice also quoted Eleanor Weisberger, Spock, Braselton and every other childrearing guru.

Alice wanted our kids to acquire a “sense of mastery” — of everything. Like going to Disney World was garbage, according to Alice, because our kids wouldn’t learn anything there. Actually, the kids learned a lot there. Teddy single-handedly planned the whole Disney World itinerary.

Our kids had so many lessons. I mean, ping pong lessons, tumbling lessons, Hebrew lessons, accordion lessons . . . Capoeira. What’s that?

My wife now gives lessons in everything.

Our youngest kid, Jack, learned to juggle by age 10. Our daughter, Lucy, became a Division 3 college athlete in diving. We didn’t allow much TV, except Mr. Rogers and once in a while The Simpsons. When our kids grew up, they immediately got TVs and watched every show made in the past 40 years.

I liked Bettelheim’s A Good Enough Parent. I liked the title. I swore at my kids. Was that so horrible? Probably hit my kids. Blocking it. One of my teenage kids took my car to an SAT test, and I needed the car for a gig because my music gear was in the trunk. I went to the SAT site and swore at the kid. An adult said to me, “Hey, ease up.” My outburst cost my child at least 30 points.

I snitched on some delinquent neighborhood kids who were very loud and rowdy. I called the police. The cop said, “Hey buddy, you’ve got a pretty short fuse.”

Are you perfect? Are you “slightly imperfect,” like my underwear? Are you good enough? Or are you a complete failure?

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I like the woman who beat James Holzhauer on Jeopardy! Monday night. I think she’ll go far. (If she lost last night, please ignore this paragrah.)

When my kid Ted — he was 23 at the time — won on Jeopardy!, our family had to keep his wins a secret for a few months. If the news got out, Ted wouldn’t get the money, for one thing. Jeopardy! tapes its shows a couple months in advance. How does Jeopardy! keep the taping results a secret? [Maybe Robert Knecht Schmidt will read this “Klezmer Guy” post and tell us. He’s a former J! contestant and expert.]

Relevant to this — today’s date, June 5. For Ted’s second game, the Final Jeopardy category was Middle Eastern Affairs, and the “answer” was “The Arab-Israeli War that started on June 5, 1967, ended with a cease-fire on this date in Israel.”

Ted knew about the Six-Day War, and so did the two goys who rounded out the panel. I — watching at home — did some easy math; I added 6 to June 5 and got the answer: June 11.

Wrong, Pops. It’s June 10. (Use your fingers to figure out the right answer, and while you’re at it, check out the math concept “fencepost error” on Wikipedia)

Ted answered correctly, and the others got it wrong. I have never been more flabbergasted.

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At a Detroit wedding, the bride came down the aisle to a Barbra Streisand record. She paused several times to read from her childhood diaries. She had 109 journals. Luckily she only paused five times. Eight years later, she emailed me and asked if I remembered her. Yes, I did, and I remembered her bridal dance, too. Also, Billy Wisse was a groomsman at that wedding. I pronounced it Billy Weiss. I explained to him, “There’s a Ruth Wisse, a Yiddishist and professor at Harvard, and I’ve heard her name pronounced that way.”

“That’s my mother,” Billy said.

So I asked Billy if he was a professor as well. He said he wrote questions for Jeopardy. I said, “That’s a job?” And I jotted down his email address, because my son Teddy — a college student then — would love a job at Jeopardy on graduation. Teddy was on Brandeis’ Quiz Bowl team.

Two years later, Brandeis’ Quiz Bowl team played a national championship game in Los Angeles, and Ted and his Brandeis teammates met Billy Wisse for breakfast at Canter’s Deli.

Two more years ago by. We’re at 2004: Ted gets a call from Sony, which owns Jeopardy, offering Ted a slot on Jeopardy. A paragraph in the contract reads something like “Do you know anybody from Sony or Jeopardy? If so, you cannot be on the show.” Teddy did not know anybody on Jeopardy! Teddy and Billy Wisse ate breakfast once, two years ago.

Alex Trebek, the Jeopardy host,  wore a cast on his wrist the day I went to the show. I sat in the peanut gallery. Trebek told the studio audience he had fallen off a ladder cleaning his gutters. Billy Wisse stood by a computer at the edge of the Jeopardy set. This was at Sony Studios in Culver City, a suburb of Los Angeles. I was nervous Billy Wisse was going to disqualify Teddy, but Billy didn’t make a move.

Ted aced the category “Our Lady,” about Catholic shrines. He knew Our Lady of Czestochowa (Poland), Our Lady of Gethsemane (Kentucky) and several others. The Final Jeopardy category was Fictional Children. The answer was “This boy, introduced in a 1902 book, flew away from his mother when he was 7 days old.”

An editor from Boston answered, “Who is Peter Pan?” Right! She went up to $10,900.

Teddy said, “Who is Peter Pan?” He went up to $13,399.

The returning champ, a scientist from Tennessee, said, “Who is the Little Prince?” He went down to $7,900.

Alex Trebek said, “The new champion, Ted Stratton, a reporter from Cleveland Heights, Ohio.”

Look it up.

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Around the time my younger son left for California — about seven years ago — I ran into a 24-year-old San Francisco girl at a shiva in Cleveland and told her to meet up with my son in Cali and show him around. I said, “Find him a job, a house, and marry him. I hope I’m not laying too big a trip on you.”

I was. She avoided me the rest of the shiva.

My daughter (who moved to Chicago about 10 years ago) once told me: “The kids who go out to California never come back.” My son in Cali said he feels guilty about leaving Cleveland, but not that guilty. He is 47-percent homeboy. I — by comparison — am 99.9-percent homeboy. I went to California four times in my twenties and ate a lot of KFC chicken on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley and saw many loose screws on Sproul Plaza, such as a woman who wore a vinyl yellow-and-black Carnaby Street cap all the time. I hitchhiked up to Bolinas and Santa Rosa, and ate a large snail at a marine biology lab in Bodega Bay. My dad told me to move to California. Maybe that’s why I didn’t.

Time Traveler

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For Clevelanders only, don’t forget to click the City Journal link at the end of this post.

When my mother died, we stored her furniture in the basement of one of my apartment buildings on the West Side. The furniture sat there for five years until my older son, Teddy, took the stuff and went off to law school. The furniture was mildewed but usable.

When I visited Teddy at law school and saw my mom’s furniture again, I had full-color flashbacks. Seeing that yellow kitchen table in play again was mildly disturbing. I had eaten at that table for my first 18 years, and now it was in student-housing in Toledo. It was Formica. It was worth something.

In high school I was laconic at that table. I didn’t talk. My dad didn’t talk much either. My whole family didn’t talk much. We didn’t watch TV at dinner, either. We ate a lot of fish. Halibut was cheap then.
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Here’s one I wrote for City Journal about snow. Just came out. “Gettin’ My Snow Belt On.”

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At a Detroit wedding, the bride came down the aisle to Barbra Streisand recordings. She paused several times to read from her childhood diaries. She had 109 journals. She didn’t read from them all. Eight years later, the bride emailed me and asked if I remembered her. Yes, and I remembered the bridal dance, too, and how we were followed by a soul band, and how I announced the bridal party participants by name. One groomsman was Billy Wisse.

I pronounced it correctly, like Billy Weiss. I said to him, “There’s a Ruth Wisse, a Yiddishist and professor at Harvard. I’ve heard the name pronounced before.”

“That’s my mother,” Billy said.

I asked if he was a professor. I knew his uncle, David Roskies, was a prof as well. Billy said he wrote questions for Jeopardy.

“That’s a job?” I said, taking out a pen and jotting down Billy’s email address. My son Teddy –then a college student — would love a job at Jeopardy on graduation. Teddy was on Brandeis’ Quiz Bowl team.

Two years later, Brandeis Quiz Bowl team played in Los Angeles for the national championship, and I handed Billy’s email to Ted. It turned out Ted and his Brandeis teammates met Billy Wisse for breakfast at Canter’s Deli.

Two years after that, 2004, Ted got a call from Sony, which owns Jeopardy. Sony offered Ted a slot on Jeopardy and sent him a contract via FedEx. One paragraph read something like “Do you know anybody from Sony or Jeopardy? If so, you cannot be on the show.” Teddy did not know anybody on Jeopardy. Teddy and Billy Wisse ate breakfast together two years ago.

Alex Trebek, the Jeopardy host, wore a cast on his wrist. I was in the peanut gallery. Trebek told the studio audience he had fallen off a ladder. Billy Wisse stood by a computer at the edge of the Jeopardy set. This was in Culver City, a suburb of Los Angeles.

Ted did particularly well in the category of “Our Lady,” about Catholic shrines. He knew Our Lady of Czestochowa (Poland), Our Lady of Gethsemane (Kentucky) and several others. A Brandeis education! The Final Jeopardy category was Fictional Children, and answer was “This boy, introduced in a 1902 book, flew away from his mother when he was 7 days old.” I felt like I was watching my kid line up a 50-yard field goal at the Ohio State-Michigan game with one second left on the clock. This is the weird part about being a parent — all that collateral joy and pain.

A player, an editor from Boston, answered, “Who is Peter Pan?”

Right. She went up to $10,900.

Teddy said, “Who is Peter Pan?” He went up to $13,399.

The champ, from Tennessee, said, “Who is the Little Prince?” He went down to $7,900.

Alex Trebek said, “The new champion, Ted Stratton, a reporter from Cleveland Heights, Ohio!”

Look it up.

—

Rerun

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My son Ted parked his car at the Brookpark Road Rapid Transit lot and flew to Las Vegas. The Rapid Transit lot was cheaper than the nearby airport lot. My son didn’t come back. I thought he was going on a vacation, but he got a job in Las Vegas and stayed for a long while.

My son’s 2007 Ford Focus sat in the Brookpark lot for two months, until my wife, Alice, and I loaded our car with jumper cables and a generator air pump and drove to the RTA lot, which is next to Ford Engine Plant #1 and a couple strip bars. I said to Alice, “Ted’s car is technically in Brook Park, not Cleveland. That’s good. If the car has been towed or stolen, we can deal with Brook Park red tape better than Cleveland red tape.” But the car wasn’t towed or stolen. It was there. The doors were unlocked, and the tires were low, and there was a bottle of bourbon in the backseat.

I drove Ted’s car to the Lusty Wrench in Cleveland Heights. Sam Bell, the mechanic, said, “The car is basically in good shape with 89,000 miles. The battery will not make it, and as you know the side-view mirror is taped on. But the tape actually is not a bad solution. The rear tires are round, black and hold air. The car is serviceable.”
What I want to know, Is Greater Cleveland really this safe? I need more data. Please park your car for two months at a Rapid stop and tell me.

–

Rerun

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After my mother died, I put her furniture in storage in the basement of one of my apartment buildings on the West Side. The furniture sat there for five years until my son Teddy took the furniture when he went off to law school. The furniture was mildewed, but usable.

When I visited Teddy at law school, I saw my mom’s furniture and got something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. Seeing her yellow kitchen table again was a punch to the solar plexus. I had eaten at that table for 18 years, and now it was in student-housing in Toledo. It was Formica. It was 1950s.

During high school, I was laconic at that table. How’s school? I ain’t talking. My dad didn’t talk much either. My entire family didn’t talk much. And we didn’t watch TV. We ate a lot of fish. Halibut was very cheap, believe it or not. For breakfast, we ate pink grapefruit.

Toledo 2012

A version of this post appeared here 5/9/12.

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My son Ted parked his car at the Brookpark RTA lot and flew to Las Vegas. The RTA lot was cheaper than the airport lot. My son didn’t come back. I thought he was going on a vacation, but he got a job in Las Vegas and stayed for a while.

My son’s Ford Focus, a 2007, sat in the Brookpark lot for two months, until my wife, Alice, and I loaded our car with jumper cables and a generator air pump and drove to the RTA lot, which is next to Ford Engine Plant #1 and a couple strip bars.

I said to Alice, “Ted’s car is technically in Brook Park, not Cleveland. That’s good. If the car has been towed or stolen, we can deal with Brook Park red tape better than Cleveland red tape.”

But the car wasn’t towed or stolen. It was there. The doors were unlocked, and the tires were low, and there was a bottle of bourbon in the backseat.

The next day I drove Ted’s car to the Lusty Wrench in Cleveland Heights. Sam Bell, the repair-shop owner, said, “The car is basically in good shape, with 89,000 miles.  The battery will not make it, and as you know the side-view mirror is taped on.  But the tape actually is not a bad solution. The rear tires are round, black and hold air.” The car was serviceable, he proclaimed.

What I want to know, Is Greater Cleveland really this safe? I need more data. Please park your car for two months at a Rapid stop and tell me.

—
This post first appeared at CoolCleveland.com 5/15/13.

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SIDE B

Here’s something new . . .

RECALCULATING

You dislike yourself for several very good reasons:

• You fist-bump too much. That is so childish. Shake hands!
• You have tiny cracks in your fingers that irritate others. Try fist-bumping.
• You are not 25, so act your age.
• Your sexuality is questionable.
• Cut back on the Facebook postings. Three a day is
  too many.
• Don’t be so jittery.
• Move to a log cabin. Or else go to an airport lounge with your laptop and iPhone, and live there for a week.
• Doodle more.
• Recalculating . . . ignore this.
  

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My younger son, Jack, got a certified letter from the IRS with a hand-written Post-it note on it.  What did the gobierno want?  The government usually sends unsigned computer-generated letters.   Maybe Jack the Drummer Boy owed another $15 from his Michigan Wolverines basketball band income.  (Jack was in college at the time.)

Why didn’t the IRS pick on me, instead? I wanted to be audited. I haven’t been audited since 1982. Thirty-three years of saving bills and income/expense statements and checks — and nobody wants to see it.  Yes, I throw the stuff out periodically, but I replenish.

Jack told the IRS he made money as a camp counselor and playing gigs.  He said his dad paid for college.  Jack later told me, “The auditor was impressed you were footing the out-of-state tuition.”

Thank you.  No penalty.  (Jack got a $68 credit.)

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My son Ted was interested in ice cream.  One summer he worked the night shift at Pierre’s, loading ice cream onto trucks.  One summer he worked at East Coast Custard on Mayfield Road, making shakes.

He owned a shake mixer and concocted date shakes at home, using date crystals from California.  He had a following (his mother).

After his junior year of high school, Ted and I drove through the Upper Midwest, hitting A&Ws and assorted other chazerai shops, while looking at colleges .  (He wound up at Brandeis. Oops.)

We rode the amphibious Ducks in The Dells, Wisconsin, and saw The House on the Rock, which Teddy described as an “affront to Frank Lloyd Wright.”  Ted was good with words, even back in high school.

We visited the mustard museum in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin.  Then we hit the A&W, where Ted asked for a “mama burger, papa burger and a rooty tooty.”  He knew that terminology from a junk-food guide.

That trip to the Upper Midwest was one of my favorites — l0oking for A&Ws and colleges with my son.

Root beer!  (I’m still good for a Diet Hank’s or Diet IBC at Tommy’s in Cleveland.)

—
“Root beer,” to rhyme with “put beer.”  That’s how we say it here.

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I’m related to few Strattons.  So I got a bit excited when I came across Jon Stratton, author of Coming Out Jewish.  I found him on the Internet. Another Stratton writing about Jewish matters?  Maybe I was Jon, using a pseudonym.

Jon Stratton is a cultural studies professor in Perth, Australia. His mother was Jewish and his father Christian. He grew up in England, not knowing anything about Judaism orYiddishkayt (Jewishness).

I ordered Jon’s  book on Amazon. In 2000 he “came out Jewish” in multicultural academic circles, making a mark for himself by writing about “ghetto-thinking” — Jewish anxiety, basically.  He said he had been slightly different from his friends in England because his mother had made him “ring home” whenever he went out, while his chums never had to ring home.  Jon’s mother was an angst-ridden Jew from the Continent, he said.

My mother, on the other hand, was from the Delta (the Mississippi Delta) and didn’t worry much.  My mother left me off at freeway exits to hitchhike.  One trip I made a left on I-80 and wound up in South America.  She was even OK with that.

In 1990, at the Cleveland airport, I waited for my mom to arrive on the “snowbird” flight from Florida, and I let my then 9-year-old son run around the airport.  I told him, “If you wander off too far, you’re going home on the Rapid.”

He wandered off and I left him.

A Cleveland policeman called me a half hour later, and I had to go back to the airport — 20 miles one-way.  The airport cop gave me a “you’re a douche bag” smirk when I entered the airport police office.  The cop didn’t realize my son had practically memorized the Rapid Transit timetable and had ridden the complete Lee Road route.

I learned a lot about laissez-faire child rearing from my mom.  The only thing Continental about her was her airline.

If I ever get to Australia, I’ll buy Jon Stratton a beer, and we’ll talk about our mothers, I hope.  We’re  mishpocha.

—

Footnote: I’m related to  few Strattons because my father changed the family name from Soltzberg to Stratton in 1941.

—

Jack Stratton’s latest project. Also, check out the interactive map at Vulfpeck, which shows you where Vulfpeck’s fan base is.

—

Yiddishe Cup is at Park Synagogue, Cleveland Heights, 7:30 p.m. Saturday  (March 15)  for Purim.  Gonna have Tamar Gray, soul singer extraordinaire, with us.  Free and open to the public.

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My son Jack played his first professional gig with Yiddishe Cup at age 8, when I gave him five dollars to play “Wipe Out.” We were at a temple Chanukah party.  Before that gig, he had done pro bono work, sitting in frequently with the band and stealing the show. The senior citizens loved him.

Jack, age 4, 1992, Beachwood library, tambourines and drumsticks.

Years later, Shirley Guralnik, a fan of the band, would ask me, “How’s the little one?” And I would answer, “The little one is in college now and bigger than me.” Shirley died in 2011. She had followed  Jack’s career from the beginning.

Jack never got nervous.  A case of nerves was hard to develop if, like Groucho Marx, your stage-mom (or dad, in this case) put you on stage practically in diapers.

I told Jack I would pay him $75 — real money — for a real gig after his bar mitzvah.  He would be Yiddishe Cup’s drummer for some gigs. He wouldn’t just sit in.

He did great.

Jack got uptight only once.  It was at his own bar mitzvah — not the music, reading Torah.  The rabbi asked him, “How nervous are you on a scale of 1 to 10.”

“Eight.”

“That’s not bad,” the rabbi said.

Jack said, “I’ve never been an 8 before!”

***

Jack, 13, 2000, at his first "real money" gig

Jack’s $75 gig was at the Barrington Golf Club in Aurora, Ohio.  A country club staffer asked if she should light the Christmas tree for the bar mitzvah luncheon.  I said,  “Not a good idea.”

On the way home, we stopped by my dad’s grave on Aurora Road.   I told Jack to place an old clarinet reed on the grave marker.

My point? 1) I didn’t have any old drumsticks. 2) I was at my father’s grave with my youngest kid, who I had just paid to work, just like my father had paid me (to paint walls, argh). The cracked reed fit into the Jewish star on the grave marker.

My son got the $75.

Jack’s band, Vulfpeck, 2013. Jack on keys.

(Today I am a man)  X 2  =  Age 26, 2013

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At a Detroit wedding, the bride came down the aisle to Barbra Streisand recordings.  She paused several times to read from her childhood diaries. She had 109 journals.  (She read only from a handful.)

Eight years later, the bride emailed me and asked if I remembered her.

Yes.  And I remembered the bridal dance we had played, and how we opened for a soul band (a good band), and how I announced the bridal party individually; one groomsman was Billy Wisse.

I had said Billy Weiss.   He thanked me.  I explained to him, “There’s a Ruth Wisse, a Yiddishist and professor at Harvard.  I’ve heard the name pronounced before.”

“That’s my mother,” Billy said.

“No! Where do you teach?” I said.  The Wisse family is scholarly; David Roskies, Ruth Wisse’s brother, is a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Billy said, “I write questions for Jeopardy.”

“That’s a job?” I said, pulling out a pen and jotting down Billy’s email address. My son Teddy — a college student then — would love a job at Jeopardy upon graduation. Teddy was on Brandeis’ Quiz Bowl team. (Quiz Bowl is Jeopardy minus the money.)

Two years later, Brandeis played in Los Angeles for the national championship. Teddy was on the Brandeis team. I gave Billy’s email to Ted.

Ted and his Brandeis teammates met with Billy Wisse for breakfast at Canter’s Deli.

Two years after that (2004), Ted got a business call at our house.  He had recently graduated college. He wouldn’t pick up the phone. I yelled, “Pick up the phone, Teddy!  It’s for you.”

Sony was on the line.

Sony owns Jeopardy. Sony offered Ted a slot on Jeopardy as a contestant. Sony sent a contract via FedEx. One paragraph read (paraphrased): “Do you know anybody from Sony or Jeopardy? If so, you can not be on the show.”

Teddy did not know Billy Wisse!  Teddy and Billy Wisse ate breakfast two years prior for one-half hour.  Also, there had been other Brandeis players at that breakfast.

At Sony Studios in Culver City, California, Billy Wisse stood by a computer at the edge of the Jeopardy set. Alex Trebek, the show’s host, wore a cast on his wrist. He had fallen off a ladder, he told the studio audience.  He had been cleaning his gutters.  Sounded odd to me. (I was in the peanut gallery.) A Hollywood guy cleans his own gutters?  Maybe. There are low gutters in California.

Alex Trebek and Ted Stratton, 2004. (Show aired in 2005)

Jeopardy tapes five shows a day. The show’s contestants for that day sat in rows isolated from the studio audience.  Whenever an on-deck contestant went to the bathroom, he or she was escorted by a guard from Standards and Practices, which monitored cheating.

The first game was between an Idaho man, a Washington state woman, and the defending champ, “a schoolteacher from Lancaster, Ohio.”

The Jeopardy stagehand said, “Lights, camera.”  But no “action.”  Wisse and other Jeopardy employees huddled at the side of the set.  They looked at computers and talked to each other.  This went on for about a half hour.

Wisse, you do not know my son.  Have rachmones (pity), Wisse.  You see 11 Jeopardy contestants per day; they’re mostly all young white guys who look alike.  You do not know Teddy!

The Jeopardy people couldn’t locate the appropriate random packet of questions for the first game.  That was the hold-up. Everything had to be kosher — up to Standards and Practices.

Teddy didn’t play that morning.

Lunch break was at Quizno’s for the peanut gallery. (The contestants ate in the Sony cafeteria.)  At Quizno’s, the girl friend of one contestant said, “I don’t care if Jonathan wins or loses.  I don’t love him for his game playing.”

Shut up.  I was so nervous I couldn’t eat.

Teddy didn’t play the game after lunch either.  I asked an usher, “What if my son doesn’t play today?”

She shrugged.

Teddy made it onto the final game of the day.  He faced a Boston book editor — the defending champ — and “a graduate student originally from Johnson City, Tennessee.”  That was Jeopardy-speak for “a graduate student now living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, doing a post-doc at MIT.”

Ted did well in the Double Jeopardy category “Our Lady,” about Catholic shrines. The “Our Lady” questions covered Our Lady of Czestochowa (Poland), Our Lady of Gethsemane (Kentucky) and several others.  This is what my son learned at Brandeis.

Heading into Final Jeopardy, the Tennessee grad student was in first place.  Ted was in second, and the defending champ, Boston book editor, was in third.

The Final Jeopardy category was Fictional Children. The answer was: “This boy, introduced in a 1902 book, flew away from his mother when he was 7 days old.”

I felt like I was watching my kid line up a 50-yard field goal at the Ohio State-Michigan game with one second left on the clock.  That is the weird part about being a parent — all that collateral joy and pain. Merv Griffin’s Jeopardy think-music ended.

The Boston editor, in third place, answered, “Who is Peter Pan?”

Right-o.  She went up to $10,900.

Teddy said, “Who is Peter Pan?” Right. He went up to $13,399.

The graduate student from Tennessee said, “Who is the Little Prince?” He went down to $7,900.

Alex Trebek announced, “The new champion, Ted Stratton, a reporter from Cleveland Heights, Ohio!”

—
Footnote:  For $500, “Who is Billy Wisse?”  Answer: a mentsh.

For a blow-by-blow of the game, see Robert KS’ J! Archive.

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