Real Music & Real Estate . . .

 
This acclaimed animation is from the guys over at Challah Barbaric. The vid (below) may seem, at first glance, to be navel-gazing. It’s not. It’s magic. The two main characters — a sleazy guy and a bug-eyed naïf — turn the cutthroat world of real estate into something warm and fuzzy and slightly erotic  — or robotic.

The landlord in the vid is so pompous at first. Then more so. The plot twist: the young lady draws forth the landlord’s humanity and even a Peter, Paul and Mary lyric.

Should I rent to a Stripper? 2:57 minutes. United States . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSzSE1QHnpA&t=1s

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My time is worth $107.98 an hour.

I lost two harmonicas at a gig yesterday. I never lose anything. And I had bragged about finding my wife’s Visa card, which had been missing for a day. Alice considered calling the 800-number and canceling. No, Alice, that’s nightmare city. Alice walked in the snow for four miles looking for the Visa card, which she thought might have fallen out of her pocket while biking.

She didn’t find the card. I found it in the bedroom under a bed. I don’t know how the card got there. I always use a flashlight to search for missing stuff. That’s my trick; the flashlight helps me focus.

My harmonicas were in a gig bag, which I hadn’t fully zipped. I think the harps wound up in the snow in the parking lot at a nursing home, where I had a gig last night. I didn’t “hear” the harps fall in the snow. The last time I lost something was a ski cap — also in the snow.

I think I’ll order two harps on Amazon, $107.98 total. The harmonicas will arrive tomorrow. I don’t feel like driving 16 minutes each way to the nursing home to look for the harps. That’s 12 miles round-trip — a significant haul by Cleveland standards. And then another half hour looking for the harps.

I’ve called the nursing home. So far, nothing.

My two choices: 1) pay $108 for two harps, or 2) drive 32 minutes, plus spend time looking for the harps in the snow. And don’t forget the depreciation on my car.

(“Yesterday” was actually Jan. 16, 2025. I bought the harps.)

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Nobody is tall in my family. I was 5-feet-2 in ninth grade. But I played on the football team! I rode the bench; the coach wouldn’t put me in. He thought I’d get killed. He had me drill with a similar five-foot guy, who also never saw action.

My parents wanted me to play tennis. Figures.

I suited up for the Benedictine game. The head coach wanted “a lot of presence,” as he put it, so he brought the entire 9th-through-12th-grade team to the game– frosh (including me), JV, and varsity. This was 2002, when Benedictine had Ray Williams, who went on to win the “Mr. Football” award for best high school player in Ohio. He signed with West Virginia University.

Ray Williams

Our coach warned us all year about Williams. About 80 of us got on the school bus for Benedictine. We were a presence. And then in the very first play, Williams ran with it and we knew we were toast.

Williams wound up an accessory to a murder, so he never played at West Virginia. He played some at Toledo, but I think he screwed that up, too. And then he played a bit at Shaw University in North Carolina. I wonder what happened to him. There’s a documentary about him, Mr. Football, but it apparently has never played anywhere.

All I know is Ray Williams was an absolute beast at Benedictine. I watched him absolutely crush for 40 carries a night. Everyone knew who was getting the ball, every snap, but no one could stop the kid.

For the record, I’m now 5-feet-9, in my thirties and playing tennis.

(fiction)

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Ted Stratton was on Jeopardy 20 years ago. On January 21, 2005, to be exact. That afternoon I went to Hillcrest cemetery to tell my parents about the impending evening show. Snow covered all the flat-level headstones at Hillcrest. I found “Siegal” but not “Stratton.” However, I think I made successful contact with my parents.

But how about connecting with the president of the United States? What if George W. Bush declares war on some country today and the Jeopardy show doesn’t air tonight?

I emailed everybody about the show. I played tennis. But I couldn’t concentrate on no tennis game!

I knew, in advance, the outcome of Ted’s Jeopardy game; I had been to California for the taping three months before. But I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody the result. The day of the airing (and cemetery visit), a friend said, “Bert, you wouldn’t be throwing a party tonight if Teddy hadn’t won.” Maybe. I didn’t answer her. I planned to host a viewing get-together. I worried some more about W. and war.

Ted faced a Boston book editor and “a graduate student originally from Johnson City, Tennessee,” which is Jeopardy-talk for “This guy from Tennessee is now living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, running a lab at MIT.”

Ted was formidable, don’t ever forget that. For instance, he cleaned up in the category of “Our Lady,” about Catholic shrines, like Our Lady of Czestochowa (Poland) and Our Lady of Gethsemani (Kentucky). Ted — a recent Brandeis graduate — knew his Catholic shrines.

(There’s a play-by-play of all recent Jeopardy games on J! Archive, a site run by Robert Knecht Schmidt, a Clevelander and former Jeopardy contestant.)

Going into Final Jeopardy, Ted was in second place, the Boston editor and defending champ was in third, and the Tennessee grad student was in first. The Final Jeopardy category was “Fictional Children.” The question was “This boy, introduced in a 1902 book, flew away from his mother when he was 7 years old.”

Merv Griffin made a fortune on the Jeopardy think music, which he wrote. And he owned the show, too, which he sold it to Sony.

I felt like I was watching my kid line up a 50-yard field goal at the Ohio State-Michigan game with a second left on the clock. I was helpless to affect the result. That’s the craziest part about being a parent — all the collateral, out-of-your-control joy and pain. (And it never ends until you end.)

The Boston editor answered, “Peter Pan.”

Correct. She went up to $10,900.

Ted said, “Peter Pan.” He went up to $13,399.

The Tennessee student said, “The Little Prince.” He went down to $7,900.

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

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The Challah Fame hosts its annual business seminar next week. (The Challah Fame is in the former Beef Corral at Warrensville and Cedar roads, South Euclid, Ohio.)

Klez Biz.  Biz hundert un tsvantsik.

The program . . .

Lori Lippitz, director of the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, speaks on KIS / Klezmer is Simple. “Never play for free, but if you feel like it, no problem.”

Henry Sapoznik, co-founder of KlezKamp. “No ‘Hava Nagila.’ Ever.”

Stanley McChristyl, retired US Army general. “Hire klez musicians with military backgrounds. How to find them? Check out the cats in the Israel Police Orchestra.”

Michael Winograd, clarinetist. “Learn to play ‘Sid’s #1’ in all 12 keys.”

Hankus Netsky, director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band. “Who’s in charge of this 11-piece klez band? I am — sometimes!”

Alan Douglass, pianist. He has played klezmer for 42 years in Cleveland without annoying any klez musicians. “Except one or two.” Learn Midwestern mores.

Steven Greenman, violin. “Klez Etiquette. Is 15 minutes too long for a doina? Nope!”

Alan Greenspan

This year’s seminar closes with a concert featuring Alan Greenspan, age 98, on saxophone, followed by his speech “The straight emes: how to dance the arts/commerce tango.”

Be there.

—

Greenspan went to Juilliard and played saxophone in big bands.

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My latest Cleveland Plain Dealer essay . . .

A LONG MOVIE, ONE LESS TENANT AND A GUITAR

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — The new Bob Dylan movie, “A Complete Unknown,” is too long and a bit too “unknown” — too much about Dylan-from-nowhere. And it’s two hours and 20 minutes, with 40 songs. I like biopics from somewhere — and shorter. How about Dylan’s year at the Sammy fraternity house at the University of Minnesota, followed by his odyssey to New York’s Greenwich Village? That would have been better.

Maybe I’m not enough of a Dylan aficionado. I’m a fan, but not a fanatic. Irwin Weinberger — who used to play in my klezmer band — is a super-fan. Irwin has been to Duluth and eaten at Zimmy’s Deli in Hibbing, Minnesota. Irwin loved every bit of the movie. When Irwin and the klezmer band played weddings and bar mitzvahs, Irwin would often — by request from listeners — veer from the klezmer music into Dylan, singing “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Tangled Up in the Blue” without a cheat sheet. The trick was getting Irwin to stop after two verses.

A tenant left his guitar behind. (My day job is managing apartment buildings in Lakewood.) The tenant said he was going home to Kentucky, taking only what could fit in his car. He said he wasn’t renting a U-Haul because he didn’t have a valid driver’s license. The manager at the building told me the suite was dead-bolted from the inside. I said, “Well, if the place starts to smell, let me know.” Every so often a tenant dies in a suite.

I tried to open the door with the regular key. That, surprisingly, worked. Locks can be finicky, particularly in old Lakewood buildings; you’re never sure you’re getting in until you’re actually in. The suite was above an Indian restaurant and a butcher shop on Detroit Avenue. I found a wooden chair, the guitar, some heavy-metal CDs, a book of Shakespeare plays and Charles Bukowski’s “Notes of a Dirty Old Man.” The guitar was a Chinese Martin knock-off with a solid-body case. The case, alone, was worth something. I’ll give the guitar back to the tenant if he returns, but I doubt he will. I also got some postage stamps from the apartment. Nobody wants stamps except me, apparently. I pay a lot of my bills by mail. I’m 74.

When I was 26 . . .

Years ago, I learned a few guitar chords, and now I want to try again. How about, “Dear Landlord”? … “Dear landlord, please don’t put a price on my soul.” Life is complicated. I hunched over the guitar, pressed my fingers to the steel strings, and strummed hard. An acoustic guitar is probably the least ergonomically friendly instrument around. I’m not a 20-year-old made out of rubber.

Dylan mostly plays piano these days. I can see why. He’s 83.

Maybe a tenant will leave me a piano. But please, not a rotted-out 400-pound upright with worn-out strings, dampers and hammers. I “inherited” that piano from a tenant in September. It cost me $500 to junk.

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Teddy, then 11, insisted we go to Disney World. He wasn’t abiding his mother’s posturing about how Disney World would deliver no “sense of mastery” to him. Let’s go!

This would be Ted’s second Disney trip. He had been to Orlando five years previously with his grandmother, sister and me.

The repeat trip turned out to be the greatest family trip of all time. Ted and his siblings, Lucy and Jack, went absolutely nuts for Figment, Miss Piggy and the Ninja Turtles. And Epcot was cool. The kids spent some time on the floor there — Lucy on top of Jack in the Moroccan restaurant lobby, putting him in a full-nelson.

Ted had researched the vacation, using Unofficial Guide to Disney World. (This was 1993, pre-Web.) Teddy devised our personalized Disney itinerary. We got on popular rides at odd hours and walked in counter-intuitive directions. This was before priority passes and VIP lines. This was when America was Sweden.

Prior to the Disney trips, I had been a snob about amusement parks. If an amusement park was new-ish, we weren’t going.  It had to be old and rickety. We had gone to Memphis (Avenue) Kiddie Park, Geneva on the Lake, Kennywood in Pittsburgh, and Conneaut Lake Park in Pennsylvania. Conneaut was the best; it had a carnie booth of caged chickens playing tic-tac-toe. You bought corn kernels from  a gumball machine and fed the kernels to the chickens, to motivate them to play tic-tac-toe. The contraption was like out of a B.F. Skinner behavioral-science experiment.

Conneaut closed in 2010. Luna Park closed in 1929. (I didn’t make it to that one.) Euclid Beach Park — the classic Cleveland amusement park — closed in 1969. Geauga Lake, for some reason that was never on my radar.

Disney forever.

—
Teddy’s itinerary . . . This is just the first page (the next two pages are lost to history). 1993. Typed on a Compaq x386. WordPerfect 3.1.

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The Western Reserve Historical Society is the Cleveland-version of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, minus the religion angle. The historical society has extensive genealogy records. When I walked out of the society’s library, I ran into a library-goer from Chicago. She said, “We just found out something really interesting about our grandparents.”

Genealogy . . . ugh. Get away from me.

This library encounter was pre-internet days. In the archives, I found out my parents had lived two doors from pianist Chick Chaiken on Kinsman Road in 1930. I didn’t tell the Chicago woman that, and I didn’t tell her that Chick’s brother, Bill, had been a major investor in The Graduate. But she told me some stuff about Chicago, unfortunately.

I like the concept of genealogy — like if your ancestors were pioneers in the Western Reserve, then learn about the Western Reserve, or if your grandparents were Polish Jews, then read Isaac Bashevis Singer. Look at the big picture. I don’t want to hear about how your grandfather — and everybody else’s grandfather — ducked the czar’s army to come to America.

On the other hand, you’re probably interested in my grandfather . . .

Albert Zalk (1885-1950). Photo probably 1940s.

My mother’s father, Albert Zalk, came over from Europe first-class. He grew up in Eishyshok, near Vilna, Lithuania. He went to Germany to study Torah. In Cleveland he made pomade for blacks during the Depression. He was in Mississippi in the 1920s, residing at first in a rooming house in Duncan, in the Mississippi Delta. Then he started dry-goods stores in Louise and Yazoo City. The Delta: birthplace of the blues. A lot of Jews settled in small towns. My wife’s family comes from Clarksburg, West Virginia. Bob Dylan: Hibbing, Minnesota. All these folks ran “Jew stores” — mom-and-pop hard-goods stores on the main drags.

After Mississippi, Albert returned to Cleveland, mostly fundraising for the Jewish old age home. He, himself, never owned a house.

I’ve donated some Yiddishe Cup memorabilia to the historical society. If you want to know when, and where, Yiddishe Cup’s first gig was, check out the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland Jewish Archives. Or better yet, I’ll tell you here: our first gig was at the Mayfield Road JCC, Cleveland Heights, 1988.

Band genealogy? Don’t get me started.

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When my kids were young, every Chanukah I would take them to the various Jewish bookstores around town to buy decorations and Chanukah books and toys, just so they would get used to these places. At Frank’s Hebrew Bookstore, I thought I was in Poland: tallisim (prayer shawls), spice boxes, yarmulkes. A photo of Koufax on the wall — that would have helped.

Also, I drove my kids to the Christmas lights at General Electric’s Nela Park. That was a family tradition, started by my parents in the 1950s. Why not? Lights is lights.

Yiddishe Cup used to play holiday parties at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. We would stroll table to table. Just about everybody asked for Christmas carols.

Hey, I didn’t start Yiddishe Cup to play “Silent Night.” I said no to all Christmas requests. We would play “Hava Nagila” or tunes from Fiddler on the Roof, if asked. Dick Feagler, a renowned Plain Dealer columnist, gave us the thumbs-up for staying Jewish. Dick apparently liked our Full Cleveland approach. (Full Cleveland meant polka, klez, bandura, tamburitza, salsa. All good.)  No rock for Dick.

After strolling to about 10 tables, I cracked; I couldn’t take any more “What? You don’t do Christmas songs?”  We played Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad.” Christmas in Spanish was OK.

—

My family went to KlezKamp in the Catskills during Christmas week for more than a decade. At first I couldn’t get my wife, Alice, to go. We had young kids and she didn’t want to schlep them. One year I took the two oldest kids and went without her. I spent a lot of time in the hotel game room and swimming pool that year. That chemical vat, a k a pool, was only slightly larger than a half dollar, and you had to coat yourself with 100-proof skin cream or get a rash.

The kids and I went to New York City afterward. My daughter, Lucy, then 5, made me carry her everywhere. We didn’t get too far. We went to Popeye’s on Times Square for dinner.

When we got back to Cleveland, Alice said at the doorway, “The kids look anemic!”

Alice, we had beans and rice and lemonade at Popeye’s! (The kids hadn’t been too crazy about the borscht and herring at KlezKamp.)

Alice has never trusted me with food, or childrearing for that matter.

The following year Alice came with us to Klezkamp. All five of us. Alice was a folk dancer and exercise nut; however, Jews at klezmer conventions are not typically exercise freaks. Alice found a nearby indoor tennis court which was so dusty the balls turned black after one set. It was like playing in a parking garage.  We went skiing on Christmas. I thought the slopes would be empty, but no, a lot of Asians and Jews from New York City were there.

We snuck over to The Pines resort for ice skating. That place looked like a staging area for a Borscht Belt revival movie. We had a good time checking out trivia contests in the lobby. I’ve got nothing against middle-class Jews. I am one.

My family kept going back to KlezKamp every Christmas. Ikh khulem fun a vaysn nitl. (I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.) And every year Alice would complain: “I can’t believe we’re going to KlezKamp again!”

Jack Stratton, Merlin Shepherd (kneeling) and Lucy Stratton. KlezKamp 1993.

Finally, after 12 years, the brainwashing was complete; the kids knew more Yiddish than oy vey and farklempt, and they knew a lot about klezmer music, and Alice could have, by then, taught the dance classes. And I had met all the old klez guys: Max Epstein, Felix Fibich, Danny Rubenstein, Velvel Pasternak. Paul Pincus, Leon Schwartz, Ray Musiker, Ben Bazyler, Sid Beckerman, German Goldenshteyn, Howie Leess, Elaine Hoffman Watts.

They’re probably all dead now.

I paid my dues.

—

“Merry Christmas” is OK with me. Beats “Happy Holidays.” I once went to a West Side house for Christmas and about 12 Ukrainian girls walked in and caroled us. And they were in full regalia. That was my most Christmas-y experience – until this year.

I went to Mass yesterday. Midnight Mass (which was actually at 4 pm for AKs like me and families with young kids). Joint was jumping. St. Ann Church, Cleveland Heights. A field trip. Park Synagogue’s senior rabbi, Joshua Skoff, led the outing.

The priest prayed for the well-being of the pope, Cleveland’s bishop, etcetera, on down to the “millions of Catholics” throughout the world. Millions — that word hit me. We Jews don’t bandy millions around lightly. That’s some big tent those Catholics have.

I miss KlezKamp. I like the small-ball game of Judaism. Only 15.8 million of us, and we all know each other!

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I perused Dental Economics magazine. I owned a medical office building in Solon, Ohio. Did you know it costs about $350/square foot to build-out a dental office. There’s all that extra plumbing involved. Either the landlord pays for the extras or the dentist does. Everything is negotiable.

My building had five dental offices, three doctors’ offices, a chiropractor, a masseuse, and a trucker. The trucker was because it was getting hard to find independent medical practitioners.

I had a lunch date with a dentist-tenant. A young real estate apprentice tagged along with me, to Corky & Lenny’s. He said to the dentist, “A DDS is a license to print money.”

Apprentice, be quiet. We don’t want the dentist to know we know he’s loaded.

The dentist pondered the idea of expanding his office; he had three dental chairs and was thinking about a fourth. And he had some complaints. When I had first met him, he had said, “I’m going to be your biggest pain in the ass.” Correct.

At Corky & Lenny’s, the dentist said the lettering on the medical building’s office-directory sign board in the lobby wasn’t uniform. Some dentists and docs had bigger lettering than he did. “It doesn’t look professional,” the dentist said.

The apprentice had inadvertently bought different-sized lettering. “It was our error,” I said. “The letters are supposed to be the same size.”

The apprentice said, “You know it’s very hard to communicate with sign companies.”

“No, I wouldn’t know about that,” the dentist said.

Onward: the artwork in the lobby. Bad. We had hung pastoral oil paintings by the renowned painter/musician Irwin Weinberger. The Cleveland Clinic had calming artwork; why not my building? The dentist said, “You put up paintings in the lobby, but you can’t afford to paint my walls?”

I sold the medical building two years later. A commercial real estate broker told me, too late: “Docs and dentists all think they’re God.”

An Irwin Weinberger oil painting , 2015.

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The cops had 66% retirement pensions and hung around McDonald’s on Lake Shore Boulevard in North Collinwood. Mostly Slovenians. They were hard-pressed to find a Jew — besides me — to share stories with. These cops had worked with Jews back when Jews lived in the city.

Bill Tofant, a retired cop, said he had worked out every day at the “Yiddishe Meat Cutters Union,” a k a the YMCA. He said, “I can still run a mile at age 73 and can hold my own in fisticuffs, and I can turn my head to see if traffic is coming.”

Tofant said my Great Uncle Itchy Seiger would throw his arms around Bill every time he came into Seiger’s deli on East 118^th Street and Kinsman Road. “I couldn’t even spend a nickel in Seiger’s. I had corned beef, turkey, you name it.”

Tofant and fellow retried policeman Ray Lonchar ignored the sign in McDonald’s dining area: 30 Minute Time Limit While Consuming Food. The manager must enforce these rules. Your cooperation is appreciated. Tofant and Lonchar had known Botnick the pawnbroker — “a good sharp yidl.” Botnick got shot and killed in 1981 at his pawnshop at East 59^th Street and Euclid Avenue. I knew Botnick. My dad used to play tennis with Botnick. Lonchar said, “That was done by a jig. Three colored guys went in back and they stuck the place up, and the cameras were just installed. One guy had a horse pistol, yea-long, it stuck out like a sore thumb. It was a military weapon. They picked him up in Rolla, Missouri.”

There had been another Jewish pawnbroker, at East 79^th Street and Hough Avenue. “He would buy a stove [gun] that was red hot and smile,” Lonchar said.

There was Uncle Ben, too, at Woodland Avenue and East 55th Street. “He was kind of lax with his records, but he was good to our pawn unit,” Lonchar said.

When the cops ran out of Jew-lore, they segued to Italians, or even Lithuanians. Blacks — nope. “Shondor Birns [a Jewish gangster] — he had the colored in line,” Lonchar said. Birns had controlled the city’s numbers racket.

I patronized the Lake Shore Boulevard McD’s in the mid-1980s, during the dying days of white ethnicity. Back when cars had bumper stickers like “Thank God I’m Slovenian,” “Thank God I’m Irish” and “Thank God I’m Polish.”  Funny, I never saw a “Thank God I’m Jewish.”

The Lits (The Lithuanians) . . . They lived near Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church — very close to McDonald’s. Lonchar said, “DPs — I don’t care what nationally they are — they’ll eat nothing but soup for 20 years, three times a day, and save their money, and all of a sudden they buy apartment buildings, invest, and they start rolling. They found out that the streets of America didn’t have gold in them. They had to work for it.”

The Italians . . . with all their “goddamn Italian bullshit.” The Italians lived near Holy Redeemer Church, approximately two miles from McDonald’s. Tofant said, “One thing about Italians, they stick together. If you’re Italian, you’re better than me. You might be the dumbest SOB on two feet, a goddamn dunderhead, but just because you’re Italian, you’re it. The Irish get the way, too, around St. Patrick’s Day.”

The Poles . . . Tofant said, “There was one Polack, Frankie Schant, a safecracker. He bit the cheese and left an imprint. He bit the cheese at the grocery store and they matched his teeth marks. At Pick-N-Pay. And there was this South Side Polack who cut a wire, it was live, and he died.”

Slovenians . . . the best for last, here. Take Charlie Broeckel. (He might not have been Slovenian but the Slovenians claimed him.) Tofant said, “He had class. He went out to Laguna Beach, California, and did a bank heist there. Burned through seven mill worth of shit and negotiable papers. I knew him when he was 10 years old. He was a runner. He always found his way out. And you know what, his mother held a very respectable job. She was beyond reproach, nothing like a stumblebum or anything like that. They lived at 8815 St. Clair.”

Nail a historical plaque to that door!

—

I was doing research — and legwork — for a cop novel back then. (Unpublished novel.) I’ll  briefly quote the manuscript, if I can find it. Found . . .

“Stan Zupancic had a glazed turquoise ashtray contoured in the shape of a .44 magnum. His pencil holder was made from World War II antitank shells, and he used a bowie knife to open his mail. A young man, with a growth of brown curly hair that looked like a dead shrub, sat on the other side of the desk.”

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This essay was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer last week . . .

“Genocide” — what does it mean?

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — Sean Martin, the assistant curator for Jewish history at the Western Reserve Historical Society, once taught an online course called “Comparative Genocide.” The course was offered through Gratz College, in Philadelphia. I said to Sean, “I think Don DeLillo wrote about Hitler Studies in a novel. That was a novel. ‘Comparative Genocide,’ is that a real course?” It was. (This was 13 years ago.) Now it’s called “Genocide in the Modern World.”

“Genocide” – the word – what does it mean?

Pope Francis, in his new book, says that Israel’s retaliation in Gaza should be investigated to determine if it meets the legal definition of genocide. Patricia Heaton — a former Clevelander, Catholic, and TV actor – said the pope should “look up the definition of genocide.”

Heaton also said on “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” that, “Israel is trying to find the hostages, release them, take out the Hamas leaders and end the war.” She said, “It’s time for every American, and in particular Christians, to stand up and make sure our representatives know they have to help Israel.”

(Illustration by Ralph Solonitz)

The word “genocide” was coined by a Polish Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, in 1944. He ingeniously combined the Greek “genos” (tribe) and Latin “cide” (killing). Genocide, he wrote, is the slaughter and attempted elimination of a people, a culture, an ethnicity.

Killing a lot of people – is that genocide? It’s most often war. For instance, America bombed Germany. That was war. Germany sidetracked its military effort specifically to gas Jews-for-being-Jews. That was genocide.

I visited an old college friend, John, in Chicago. His front door had a poster, “Stop the Genocide in Gaza.” We talked about old times. Toward the end of our what’s-up conversation, I said, “What’s with the sign?” He had gotten it from the radical group Jewish Voices for Peace, so the sign was “kosher,” John said. John isn’t Jewish.

One question, John: If the Israelis are committing genocide, why are there some 7 million Palestinians in the Middle East today, including more than 2 million in Gaza alone? There had been about 1.2 million Palestinians in 1947. Israel is doing a lousy job of committing genocide, apparently. I didn’t mention any of this to John because I was timid.

Earlier this month, I finally spoke up — at a Cuyahoga County Council meeting downtown. I spoke during the “public comment” portion. Granted, speaking to 11 somewhat-bored council members was a lot less fraught than telling an old friend where to go. The council members probably would have preferred hearing about countywide childhood mental-health issues or summer youth-employment programs, but a lot of commenters wanted to talk Israel/Gaza. I said to the council, “Some people think there are three kinds of Jews: Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. Wrong. There are these three types: American Jews, Israeli Jews, and victims of the Holocaust. Six million to 7 million each. We don’t want the Jews of Israel to be wiped out.”

The county has invested $16 million in Israel Bonds. (The bonds aren’t a gift. The county gets the money back plus interest.) Some anti-Israel speakers used the word “genocide.” A woman talked about local issues – and even used the word “genocide.” She said, “Think about the genocide here in Cleveland with the homelessness.”

Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have repeatedly said – and acted on – their desire to eliminate Israel — the one Jewish state, home to half the Jews in the world.

That’s genocide. Update your dictionary.

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The mother of the bride thought Thanksgiving Day would be a great time for a wedding because nobody would come. The groom’s side was from New York. Flights to Cleveland would be expensive. And many Cleveland guests would skip the wedding to eat Thanksgiving dinner at home with their kids. The cost-conscious mom was cutting serious corners.

Yiddishe Cup musicians rescheduled their personal Thanksgiving dinners to play the gig. Not an easy task, but doable. Then the mom called me again and said the bride wanted a different band. What? Who? I usually ask who the other band is, but I was so mad — mostly at myself because I had forgotten rule #1 in the wedding-band biz: it’s all about the bride. The bride, not the mom, picks the band.

I got a call from a bat mitzvah mom. She was a talker, just like the very frugal wedding mom. The bat mitzvah gig was going to be for TG weekend but not on TG itself. I didn’t pitch the mom too hard. I wasn’t crazy about playing on TG weekend. I said, “Yiddishe Cup has been around for decades. You’ve seen us. Everybody has seen us.”

She hired us. Then she canned us. She said her husband was sick. So what? Yiddishe Cup has played for sick people — even dead people; we once played a luncheon where the mom of the bat mitzvah had died the day before. We played in the family room instead of at the party center.

The bat mitzvah mom — the one who wanted us for TG weekend — said her husband had become depressed. The husband, a doctor, had lost a patient that week. Doctors lose patients all the time, right? The mom wanted to change the bat mitzvah date and the number of musicians.

Forget it.

What else can I say?

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Harold Ticktin died on November 12 at 97. He was the last of the Kinsman Cowboys — guys who hung out on Kinsman Road and BS’d (pre-internet and TV). This blog post is a thoroughly “reported” piece on the only-and-only Ticktin. It helps that I wrote it 12 years ago, while Harold was still alive. I was in steady contact with Harold throughout the years. Arrivedarci, Harold.
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2012
Harold Ticktin writes a weekly column for the Cleveland Jewish News on Yiddish. For instance, he writes about what balabuste means, or balegole. (Female boss and wagon-driver.)

Harold Ticktin, Shaker Heights,  2012

Also, Harold occasionally reflects on early-20th century leftist politics for magazines such as Jewish Currents.

I asked Harold for a couple Yiddish translations. I was in his backyard in Shaker Heights. I wanted to know Yiddish permutations on “How’s it going?” — everything from “How are you?” to “What’s happnin’, man?” Ticktin gave me some options, none perfect, and concluded, “Translation is treason.”

He continued, “Listen, there was this pharmacist who did a big business in trusses – you know what a truss is?”

“Yes.”

“The pharmacist’s slogan was Ayer kile iz undzer gedile — your hernia is our pleasure. I told the pharmacist that was a horrible translation.  He told me to come up with a better one.  I said, ‘Your rupture is our rapture.’ Wouldn’t that make a great bumper sticker for an abdominal surgeon?”

“Did you make that up — your rupture is our rapture?” I said.

“That’s a true story.  It’s an absolutely true story.”

Ticktin is a retired workers’ comp lawyer. He can speak decent Italian, French and Spanish, as well as Yiddish. One of his favorites translations is All Screwed Up, he said, for the Lina Wertmuller film Tutto a posto e niente in ordine, which literally means “everything ready, nothing works.” “You don’t translate, you render,” Ticktin said.

Ticktin continued, “James Thurber ran into a woman in Germany who said,  ‘I love your work in German.’  Thurber said, ‘Yes, it’s true, my work loses something in the original.’”

Ticktin lives three miles from his old stomping grounds — the Kinsman neighborhood. Harold grew up on E. 154^th Street, Cleveland,  hard by the Shaker Heights-Cleveland line.  He said Shaker had been “hakodesh hakadashim [the Holy of Holies] — the other.”  Shaker had been nearly unapproachable, like the inner sanctum at the Temple in Jerusalem.  “I didn’t know anybody in Shaker. Maybe one person.”

Kinsman Road was Ticktin’s main artery. He said, “I walked [down Kinsman] from 154th to E. 140th to observe the class struggle. My father was a Yankee. He came over here when he was two. He liked baseball.  What did he know about politics? He knew this: Roosevelt was great and Hitler was bad.”

At E. 146 Street, Harold met Peter “The Brain” Ostrovsky. “I was converted to communism by Ostrovsky on the train to the Philly Navy Yard in 1946. I was converted just west of Pittsburgh.”

The upshot: “I saw the God who was to fail, though I still have a warm spot for Marx, for his Lincoln correspondence,” Harold said. “I’m a member of the extreme center now.”

I wanted Ticktin to give me a tour of  Kinsman — the proste, working-class Kinsman of his youth. “How about it?” I said. “Now?” Ticktin agreed. We got in my Lolly the Trolley — my Mercury Sable.

***

Stop 1.  Woodhill Park at  E.116^th.  Ticktin:  “I remember when I was 10 years old [1937] at Woodhill. It was a tremendous swimming pool. Everybody got out of the water. Why? Because Frieda Katz, a geferlikher (dyed-in-the-wool) communist took a swim with a black kid. The place cleared out. This was  Frieda Katz from Katz’s Deli at E. 147^th and Kinsman.”

Formerly Seiger’s

2. Seiger’s deli  at 118^th. “I knew Hymie Seiger best. He went off to yeshiva in junior high. He just left. I didn’t even know what a yeshiva was.”

3. E. 121. “This was where I attended my one Seder as a child. On that street. Very important.” Ticktin eventually became president of his shul.

Council Educational Alliance building, now a Masonic hall

4. 13512 Kinsman, the Council Education Alliance. “The apex and GHQ [general headquarters] of my youth. The Communist Club met there.” It was a settlement house.

Cleveland Public Library – Mt. Pleasant branch

“In the 1936 election, the Communist Club painted ‘Vote Communist’ in blue on the library at E. 140^th.  The library had been a bank before. Some members of the club got mad because the graffiti was blue. They said, ‘We need to paint it red.’ Ostrovsky went back to re-paint it  and got caught. He was defended by Yetta Land, who handled all the communists. I don’t think Ostrovsky was punished too severely; he was a juvenile.”

Formerly Spumoni’s (middle store)

5. E 142 and Kinsman. “We called this place Spumoni’s.  The real name was Giaimo’s — an ice cream place. The communists met across the street above the Woolworth’s, which is long gone.

“On Saturday nights all the single Jewish guys would hang out here at Spumoni’s and greet each other Marty-style, like, ‘Whadaya want to do, Marty?’ This went on up through the 1940s and 1950s.”

“What’s Marty-style.”

“Like Marty, the movie with Ernest Borgnine. You don’t remember it?”

“No.”

“Single Jews guys — and married Italians — hung out, to go out on the town. I always envisioned a cowering Italian wife in the kitchen back home saying, ‘Tony, when you gonna be home?’”

6. E. 154^th / the Shaker Heights line.  “Hakodesh — the other,” Ticktin said. “I was in New York once and stopped in at YIVO [Jewish Research Institute] for a list of places European Jews had vacationed before the war. I needed this for a speech in Yiddish. They asked me, ‘You mean intellectuals? Peasants?  We’ll get back to you.’ They didn’t get back to me. A couple weeks later, I’m at a gathering of Jews and Poles in Cleveland, an American Jewish Committee meeting, and I meet the speaker, a prominent Polish Jew, Lucjan Dobroszycki, the editor of the Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto. I ask him about vacation spots before the war.  He looks at me and says, ‘This is the second time in two weeks somebody has asked me this question.’  End of the line, Lucjan Dobroszycki — don’t ask me how to spell that.”

7. I drive Harold Ticktin into Shaker Heights. Another end of the line.

—

The photos, above, are from 2012, except the former Seiger’s deli pic, which is from 2010.   Seiger’s — later New World Restaurant — is boarded up.

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The Yiddishe Cup Trio (Alan Douglass, Steven Greenman and Bert Stratton) plays a free one-hour concert 4 pm this Sunday (Nov. 24) at Beth El – The Heights Synagogue, 3246 DeSota Ave., Cleveland Heights.

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“Side Project”: A musician breaks away from his band and does his own thing. Almost all musicians do it, at least on occasion. But because my axe is clarinet, I can’t break away easily. Nobody wants to hear solo clarinet. I’m chained to my farkakte bandmates!

Not true. Last month I was hired at the last minute — a day prior to the gig — for a Holocaust survivors’ luncheon. My accompanist, pianist Alan Douglass, couldn’t make it. But Alan had fortuitously produced some backing tracks for me a while back, just in case.

And this was the case: Alberto Solo. I played “Besame Mucho,” “Di Grine Kusine” and “Moscow Nights.” I even blew shofar, clarinet-style. This was during the High Holidays.

Nineteen people, total. I reached all 19, I think. I sat with them; I ate with them; and played clarinet while seated at various tables. There was some sort of chicken roll, courtesy of the kosher caterer. “You Are My Sunshine,” “Misty,” klezmer instrumentals, and “Tumbalalaika,” of course.

I talked to a Romanian woman about her granddaughter, who plays drums in Broadway shows. A Polish woman jokingly said she has a German brother and an Italian brother. Her brothers were born in DP camps.

Former bandmate Irwin Weinberger, and his father, Herman, 1966. Herman was a Holocaust survivor from Poland.

I got paid by the Jewish Family Service Association and Germany, via an understanding called the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany — a worldwide Holocaust-reparations cultural-enrichment program.

I’ve previously played this gig with Alan. Two years ago I wrote about it: “Holocaust Remembrance at Cafe Europa. Everybody in the audience had an astonishing story.” (link, no paywall: Wall Street Journal.)

I needed Alan two years ago. Who needs him now?

Alan Douglass, 2011. He’s one of the best musicians in Cleveland. Ask anyone.

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You are precious. You suck.

You are overrefined and inauthentic.

A cappella music is precious. All of it. A friend once told me that. Harvey Pekar called Willio & Phillio precious. (Willio & Phillio were a talented 1980s-era Cleveland comedy/music group.) Maybe Harvey called Willio & Phillio precious because they were not anti-social like he was.

Willio & Phillio — the name  — was certainly precious, and they should have changed it. Eventually Will Ryan (Willio) went out to Los Angeles to work for Disney, and Phil Barren (Phillio) became a cantor in Los Angeles.

2004

Yiddishe Cup — hate to say it — is precious. But only occasionally, like when we say “oy vey” followed by “olé.” Maybe we should disband.

Peter Laughner, the Cleveland guitarist, died from drug and alcohol abuse at 24. He was not precious. (He was part of the Pere Ubu underground scene.)

One last thing: You’re precious!

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This essay was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer last week.

The Cost of Living

LAKEWOOD, Ohio — Some older folks like to regale young people with stories about how matinee movies cost 25 cents, circa 1960. These old folks rarely mention 25 cents in 1960 equals $2.66 in today’s money. And Coca-Cola was a dime. Give me a break; I always try to reference the Consumer Price Index (CPI) whenever I do historical flashbacks.

The CPI is a big part of my life and job. I’m a landlord. I don’t go ballistic with annual rent raises, but enough to stay in the game. An efficiency apartment in Lakewood goes for about $700/month. That’s a bare-bones, 1920s-era apartment — no dishwasher, no air conditioning, no elevator. Academics call these apartments “workforce housing.” Tenants get a kitchen, bathroom, and a living room that doubles as a bedroom. About 350 square feet. You don’t throw big parties. If you lay out your efficiency tastefully, you can call it a studio. I’ve seen studios that look like sleek Pullman cars, with everything in just the right place. I’ve seen expensive folding bikes hanging on racks along walls. An efficiency can be a work of art, or just a huge mound of dirty clothes in the center of the room. Depends on the tenant.

Bill rented an efficiency in Lakewood. His apartment was clean, small and cheap, period. Nothing fancy. Bill told me his rent check had been stolen. He had never been late with his rent before. I went to the Lakewood police station with him. A police officer asked his name. Bill said, “Bill.”

“William?” the policeman said.

“Bill . . . Bill R. Hunter.” Bill had moved to Cleveland from Kentucky decades ago and was a retired factory worker. He smoked a lot, and his right hand had no fingers. We repainted Bill’s apartment walls nearly every year because the government wanted the walls to not look like the color of Bill’s lungs. Bill’s rent was partially subsidized by the government.

Eventually Bill was reimbursed for the stolen rent payment by a money-order company. A crook had knocked Bill down on Detroit Avenue and cashed the money order. The cops nabbed the robber several weeks later. Lakewood police are good.

Detroit Avenue, Lakewood, Ohio

But then Bill missed two rent payments in a row. I found out he was in a nursing home. I wondered, “How creepy would it be for me to try to collect the rent at a nursing home?” Bill’s distant relatives didn’t answer my calls, and the government stopped paying its portion of the rent. I went to the nursing home, which was right across from Bill’s apartment. Bill — with oxygen tubes in his nose — muttered to me, “You’ll get paid.” Flat on his back, he balanced a wallet on his chest. He counted out the rent. “Here you go, buddy.” He called a lot of people buddy.

Then Bill’s wallet vanished, and so did Bill. He wasn’t at the nursing home, and he wasn’t in the hospital. And he wasn’t in the obits. And he owed rent. The housing agency eventually gave me a “case closed” green light to enter Bill’s apartment. We pitched Bill’s belongings into the dumpster, except for his TV, which another tenant took.

Bill’s wooden floors hadn’t been re-sanded in19 years. That’s how long he had lived in the efficiency. The cost of re-sanding floors was up 94%. Inflation was up 53%. Bill’s rent was up 64% in those 19 years.

I called the Ohio Bureau of Vital Statistics. A clerk said she had many dead Bill Hunters on file. I said “Bill R. Hunter. Lakewood.” She said he had died shortly after leaving the nursing home.

I doubt Bill ever checked the cost of living. He didn’t need to. He lived it. He used to write “rant” in the subject line on his checks.

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I was an adjunct professor at the local community college, teaching creative writing, creative non-fiction, and “I’m Creative!” (a course I made up). Whatever worked. I might do teaching again, maybe in retirement. The money was horrible but I enjoyed the kids.

I was in the family landlord biz, too.

Chris Kraus

Years ago I was interviewed in a mag, Rust Belt / Waist 40, about my landlord shtick. There are approximately two landlord-writers in America. There’s an avant-garde landlord in Los Angeles who wrote a book called I Like Dick. She’s Chris Kraus. She liked a guy named Dick. Her books have been reviewed in the New York Times and all over. She bought four buildings in Albuquerque in 2005. She doesn’t mention that often, but she doesn’t hide the fact, either. She said in an interview, “I spend a couple of hours each day dealing with leaking roofs and plumbers and laminate floors.”

Me too. And don’t forget late-payers, and tenants with eight cats, and tenants who break toilet tanks because they’re super-fat and drunk. I Like Drunks. I should write that.

—
This post is 50% fiction, but Chris Kraus is real.

—
Yiddishe Cup plays 7:15 pm tomorrow (Thurs. Oct. 24)  at Park Synagogue, Pepper Pipes, Ohio. Simchat Torah. Free and open to the public.

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There was a “suspicious death.” Apartment 31. At least three gunshots.

I’m hoping it’s suicide. I’m told there are gunshot holes in the bedroom ceiling and wall. I haven’t been in the apartment. There is a coroner’s seal on the door.

Samantha Kovach — the dead tenant — was a secretary. She was 30. She had multicolored hair and was into emo music. I learned all this on Facebook. I’m told Ms. Kovach was a “scene kid.” That’s a certain style. My building manager said Ms. Kovach had guys over a lot and dressed kind of “ghetto” and “whorish.”

Ms. Kovach paid her rent on time and was quiet. I didn’t know her.

I’m putting this letter in the entranceway of the building:

As you no doubt know, Samantha Kovach, a tenant here, died on Sunday. Gunshots were heard coming from the suite. I have been talking to Lakewood police every day. Right now the death is classified as a “suspicious death.” The coroner’s report is not back yet.

What this means: the police are working on the case and haven’t concluded anything, at least publicly. The lead detective told me, though, “The tenants there have nothing to worry about.”

But if you have any questions or concerns, or information, feel free to call Detective __________ at 216-_______

Lakewood is one of the safest places around, and the police are quite good.

Sincerely,

Albert Stratton

Gadson, a neighboring tenant, is freaking out and wants to move. I told him, “You’re being irrational. Lakewood has a murder every two years. Maybe this is a suicide.”

We had towed a male visitor’s car from Ms. Kovach’s parking spot a month ago. Maybe that’s a lead. I’ll tell the police.

A random internet photo of a scene girl. Not Ms. Kovach

I’m not sure what kind of life Ms. Kovach lived. I hope to learn more from the family, or the papers, or from the detective.

. . . Nothing. All kinds of stuff online and in the papers about burglaries and stolen cars but nothing about a possible homicide. Nothing from the parents. The detective said to me, “You don’t know half of what I know.” True. “The people she hung around with generally don’t call the police.”

The coroner’s report isn’t back.

. . . Back now:  The cops  called and said it was a suicide. She shot herself and apparently missed a couple times. The cop said he has the gun and wants to let the family in the apartment after all the blood is cleaned up. “We don’t want to traumatize anybody,” he said.

The maintenance man reports: “The apartment is not bad, really, dude, and she was good-looking, judging from the pictures, but that don’t matter.”

“Not too much coagulation,” another maintenance man said. (He had worked in law enforcement.) “Just blood. No bugs.”

And a cat. “A big fat gray one under the bed. I gave him some tuna fish.”

I need to post a note in the lobby that says Ms. Kovach killed herself so the other tenants will cool down. Done . . .

The funeral for Samantha Kovach, who lived here, is Saturday. Details are available online. Yesterday the coroner ruled her death a suicide. The investigation is now closed. May she rest in peace.

—

“Samantha Kovach” is a pseudonym. This happened 10 years ago.

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“I’ve read every word of your blog,” a musician told me.

Hooray for him. I wrote every word.

At shul, a reader told me, “You found your subject. Toby.”

No, you did. I’ve had Toby (my father) on the brain for decades.

Toby Stratton, 1938. OSU graduation.

A woman told me, “I look forward to your Wednesday-morning posts. I don’t do comments.”

My comment: 95% of readers don’t do comments. They’re above that.

Several readers claim they’ve read every word of this blog. OK, prove it:

1. What was the name of Yiddishe Cup before it was Yiddishe Cup? A. Wild Horses  B. Funk a Deli  C. Kosher Spears.

2. Who invented klezmer? A. The Jews  B. The Klezmorim (Berkeley)  C. Henry Sapoznik.

3. What was Toby Stratton’s legal first name? A. Toby  B. Theodore  C. Wayne.

4. What did Toby want buried with him in his coffin? A. Chlortrimeton allergy pills  B. An Indian-head nickel  C. The Wall Street Journal.

5. How do Yiddishe Cup musicians refer to their bandleader? A. Ding-a-ling  B. Pissant  C. Sir.

6. Yiddishe Cup has played: A. Brooklyn, N.Y.  B. Brooklyn, Ohio  C. Neither.

7. A landlord’s biggest problem is: A. water leaks  B. bugs  C. tenants.

8. Toby’s favorite sport was: A. tennis  B. counting Jews in Chinese restaurants  C. depositing rent checks.

9. Most often a working musician’s main interest is: A. music  B. the food situation.

10. Does Jack Stratton play with Yiddishe Cup? A. Depends on what decade you’re talking about.

11. Which group can you make fun of in Cleveland?: A. Slovenians  B. Blacks  C. Orthodox Jews  D. Slovenians.

12. Which is the hardest to find? A. A plumber  B. roofer  C.  electrician  D. door-buzzer guy.

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