Real Music & Real Estate . . .

I was in the grocery store parking lot, listening to Terry Gross interview poet Donald Hall on the radio.

Gross asked Hall how he liked being old.  Hall couldn’t complain, he said, but then he did for several minutes.  He talked about how he had recently published a story in the New Yorker in which a security guard at the National Gallery had treated 83-year-old Hall like a child; the guard had leaned over to Hall, who was in a wheelchair, and asked, “How was din-din?”  (Hall is poet laureate emeritus of the United States and a recipient of the 2010 National Medal of Arts.)

I could listen to Hall talk about aging all day.   I didn’t really want to get out of my car and shop for prunes, yogurt and salmon.

I used to be younger. Take 50.  In 2000 my then-teenage son attended a New Hampshire summer camp an hour from Hall’s house. I visited the camp on parents’ day.  Should I look up Hall,  my old English professor?  I had studied with Hall 30 years earlier.

Maybe Hall lived way back in the woods.  Maybe he sat on his front porch with a shotgun.  I didn’t know.

Hall’s house was not deep in the woods.  It was about 50 feet from a federal highway and across from a summer camp.  (There are a lot of camps in New Hampshire.)  He could sometimes hear “Reveille.”

Hall was happy to see me, and said quickly, “I’m rich.”  He had made his money mainly from royalties, from a how-to-write college textbook and his award-winning children’s book Ox-Cart Man. Only a poet would ask, “Are you rich?” He added, “How about you?”

“I’m doing OK,” I said.  Look, I had a kid at a New Hampshire summer camp. Enough said.

When I had graduated Ann Arbor in 1973, Hall had discouraged me from returning to Cleveland. He had said, “Why do that — to sell insurance?”

Nevertheless, I returned home and “sold insurance.”  I entered my family’s real estate biz.

Donald Hall and Bert Stratton, 2000

In New Hampshire, Hall took me to a fancy restaurant near his farm.  I said, “I own and manage apartment buildings.  I’m a landlord.  And I play clarinet.” Meaning I can improvise. I’m still in the arts!

My first year at Michigan, Hall had looked like a stock broker.  He went hippie about a year later, I think. In New Hampshire he wore a dye-tied shirt, and I was the guy in the polo shirt.

Donald Hall at his family farm, 2006. (Photo by Ken Williams / Concord Monitor)

Hall quit his tenured job at Michigan in 1975 and moved to his grandfather’s farm near Wilmot, New Hampshire.  Hall did freelance writing.

At the New Hampshire restaurant, Hall said he had traveled to the Amazon River on a private jet with a Michigan grad who had made it big in the movie business.  The student owned a movie company.  Hall said, “His family was in the grocery business in Detroit, until I warped his mind.”

Hall warped many minds. He told me to guard against bitterness.  His late wife, poet Jane Kenyon, had died five years earlier at 47.  I had known her from English classes.

Hall had endured colon cancer, which was supposed to have killed him, but didn’t.  Instead, his wife died from leukemia.  He said, “Every generation thinks they know more than the next generation.  Schopenhauer was writing about this in the 1700s. You don’t know more than the next generation.” Hall wouldn’t even let me pay the tip.

The next day I drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, and flew back to Cleveland to evict people, fix leaky faucets and collect late rents.  It was not poetic.

Eleven years later (2011), I mailed several of my published articles to “Donald Hall, Eagle Pond Farm, New Hampshire.”  (He didn’t use email.)  I wrote: “From your student — your 61-year-old student.”  I dated the cover letter.  Hall was always big on dates.

Don wrote back, “I know you know I know that you feel old and know you are not.”

I bought my prunes, salmon and yogurt at the grocery store, plus a couple beers.   I want to make it to Hall’s age.  On the radio he sounded spry and happy.

—

Attention, Michigan residents.  Please come to the Klezmer Guy show at The Ark, Ann Arbor, Feb. 15.  8 p.m. $20.   Features Bert Stratton on clarinet and prose, Gerald Ross on ukulele and Hawaiian lap steel guitar, and Alan Douglass on piano, sunglasses and vocals.  

—

Attention, Clevelanders.  Attend Purim at Park Synagogue, Cleveland Heights, Feb. 23.  Yiddishe Cup becomes Sly and the Family Stein on Purim. We’re going to play Jewish music and soul music.  Free.  Open to the public.  7:30 p.m.

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I look for musical yikhes (lineage/pedigree) wherever I can find it.  My grandmother played piano at a white Baptist church in Yazoo City, Mississippi.  Not bad.

This Mississippi bubbe — Ida Kassoff Zalk — had a brother, Earl Kassoff, in Cleveland.  Earl was a drummer, xylophonist and house painter.  He went by the stage name Earl Castle, and led bands in the 1930s and 1940s.

Xylopainter

In the 1990s — when I first began looking for musical yikhes — I couldn’t find much info on Earl.  I talked to a couple relatives.  Earl didn’t leave behind sheet music or tune books.  He died in 1969.

At a Yiddishe Cup gig, an elderly musician schmoozed with me.  I asked him if he knew Earl Kassoff.  Yes, he  remembered Earl.  The schmoozer was Harold Finger, age 77.  He had made a living playing clarinet and sax during the 1930s and 1940s.

I took my tape recorder to Harold’s apartment and interviewed him. He said there were “four or five bands that got the Jewish work.”

I asked, “What bands?”  He didn’t remember the names.  “What were the most popular Jewish tunes?” I said.

He said, “The songs from the Kammen Book. That was the big thing.”

The Kammen International Dance Folio, published in 1924, is still around.  The Kammen book is to Jewish music what a sex manual is to sex. (Pianist Pete Sokolow makes this statement at most KlezKamp conventions.)

Kammensutra

My Uncle Earl’s band did mostly “dance work” — American music, Harold said. Earl worked the downtown theaters, as well as the Golden Pheasant — a Chinese restaurant where Artie Shaw started.

Harold said he didn’t stick to the melody all the time. He did some “faking” (improvising).  Now he played clarinet with a community orchestra.  “I don’t do much jobbing anymore,” he said.  (Jobbing is gigging.)

Harold died three years after the interview.  I thought his kids might enjoy the  interview tape, from 1992, so I called a Finger relative and left a message in the mid-1990s.

I didn’t hear back.

The relative should have called!  Harold’s wife was on the tape, teasing Harold about how he loved his saxophone more than her.  Harold said, “What? I quit playing music for you!”
—

Michiganders, come to the Klezmer Guy show at The Ark, Ann Arbor, Feb. 15. 8 p.m. $20.  Bert Stratton on clarinet and prose, Alan Douglass on piano and vocals, Gerald Ross on ukulele and Hawaiian lap steel guitar. Prose pieces will contain words such as “Ann Arbor,” “Michigan”  and “Rudy Tomjanovich.”

—
More on Mississippi Ida — my bubbe — later.  Maybe not.
—
Yikhes update.  Check out the latest from Jack Stratton’s band, Vulfpeck.

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I interviewed for a position on the library board.

I like to read, and I know two people who have been on the board and liked it.

I wondered, “Will the school board ask me what books I’m reading?” (The school board oversees the library board.)

In 1967 at Johns Hopkins’ admissions office, I talked about my Holocaust reading. The Holocaust wasn’t yet the “Holocaust.”  I made a good impression in Baltimore, I think. (I was pre-med.)

Re: the library board interview. I recently read How Music Works by David Byrne and Shit my Dad Says by Justin Halpern. I have also read to page 100 in Malamud’s A New Life, a novel about a college instructor. For the first fifty pages, I was interested in the goings-on of a 1950s college English department. Then less so.

Nevertheless, “I’m reading Malamud” might be the ticket.

The members of the school board sat on a dais at the board of education building, and I took the “witness stand” in the center of the room. Only three school board members — out of five — showed up. One MIA board member was a playwright; the other, a guy from my synagogue. My A-team was absent!

Question 1: How would you make the library better for students?

Students?  They are the species who play computer games and horse around in the teen room? I’ve been in that room, like, never. “I would maintain the library as a first-class multicultural, multimedia center,” I said.

Question 2: What do you do at the library besides take out books?

Not much! “I was at the dedication of the Harvey Pekar statue,” I said.

Question 3: What would you do to help the library’s finances?

“I vote for the levies.” What about Malamud?

Question 4: Are you willing to commit to a seven-year position?

“Yes, but actuarially speaking, who knows.”

A chemist beat me out for the job. In an email, the library director thanked me for applying and encouraged me to apply again.

First I need to walk through the teen room and get a better feel for the young adults’ needs. I’ll do that right after I finish Malamud’s A New Life.

—

Side B

MR. OO

I got a call from Oo (rhymes with “boo”), looking to open an Asian food market.

I said, “How do you spell that?”

“O, O.”

“O, O, 7?”

“Yes.  Hah-hah.”

“Is Oo your first name.”

“No, that’s Kyawswar.”

“You Chinese?”

“No, I’m from Burma.”

“Close enough,” I said.

“Yes, very close.”

“Is this going to be an American mini-market or an Asian market?” I said. “I don’t want 40-ounce malt liquor and cigarettes.”

“Asian market, sir.  Our people like rice, the vegetables, avocados.  Maybe cigarettes. The high school boys from the school [across the street] buy the fruit juices.”

Oo rented the store. He’s  industrious.  He owns two sushi stands at Giant Eagles.  That’s not all . . .

I told my wife, “Oo had a nail salon.”

“Who?” she said.

“Oo.”

—
Footnote: Consider “U Thant,” the former UN secretary general from Burma. Thanks to Ted Stratton for this  U/Oo connection.

—
Byliner chose my essay “The Landlord’s Tale” (City Journal) as one of the top 102 nonfiction journalism pieces  of 2012.  Read the essay here.

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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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Snickers used to be my bar.

It’s everybody’s bar.  It’s the number one seller in the America.

The pic above is John Lokar, the candyman, 1981.  He owned L&M Candy on East 185th Street.  He had everything, including baseball cards and tobacco.

I also had a taste for Nestle Triple Deckers.  Long gone.

My wife had a nostalgic longing for Valomilks.  She recently bought one at a specialty store and didn’t like it. Too sweet.

My dad was a Planter’s Peanut guy, and he also liked Mr. Goodbar.  I used to buy a Mr. Goodbar before I visited his grave.

Kit Kat: not bad.  Kit Kats were from Canada when they were good.

Canada, that’s a great candy-centric vacation.

Chunky . . .

I miss Chunky.  No, I miss the idea of Chunky.  I miss Arnold Stang (who did Chunky commercials).

My grandmother Anna  Soltzberg had a candy store at 15102 Kinsman Road, Cleveland, from 1927 to 1937:

I studied this photo with a magnifying glass.  Here’s the inventory:

Mr. Goodbar, Ivory soap, Sensen breath mints, Boston Wafer, halvah, Ringo, Lux and Lifebuoy soaps, Coca-Cola, peanut bars, chocolate-covered cherries, Maxwell House coffee . . .

Uneeda biscuits, Dentyne, Lifesavers, Tootsie Rolls, Oh Henry, and cigars: White Owl, Dutch Master, Websters, Cinco, Murad, John Ruskin and Charles the Great Pure Havana.

Candy was a low-cost entry point for immigrants.  John Lokar — the man with the gigantic Snickers  — was a Slovenian-American candy wholesaler.  I bought new baseball cards from him in 1981.  Didn’t make any money on it.

When did Snickers come out?

1930.  Frank Mars named the bar after his horse. (Googled.)

Here’s an ad from the December 1980 Candy Marketer.  Lokar gave it to me:

Jaw Breakers.  I haven’t had one of those since the Center-Mayfield stopped their 25-cent Saturday matinees.

Reese . . .

Who was Reese?

—
For relatives only: candy-store photo . . .   Anna Soltzberg, apron; her husband, Louis Soltzberg, behind counter; her sister-in-law Lil Seiger, behind counter; and two unidentified women.
—
Anybody have strong feelings about MilkyWay? I doubt it.

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I was in my car in the grocery store parking lot, listening to Terry Gross interview poet Donald Hall, my old English professor.

Gross asked Hall how he liked being old.  Hall couldn’t complain, he said, but then he did for several minutes.  Hall talked about how he had published a story in the New Yorker in which a security guard at the National Gallery had treated 83-year-old Hall like a child; the guard had leaned over to Hall, who was in a wheelchair, and asked, “How was din-din?”

I could listen to Hall talk about aging all day.   I didn’t really want to get out of my car and shop for prunes, yogurt and salmon.

I used to be a lot younger . . .

Fifty, for instance.  In 2000 my then-teenage son attended a New Hampshire summer camp an hour from Hall’s house. I visited the camp on parents’ day.  Should I look up my English teacher?  I had taken courses from Hall 30 years earlier?

Maybe Hall lived way back in the woods.  Maybe he sat on his front porch with a shotgun.  I didn’t know.

Hall’s house was not deep in the woods.  It was about 50 feet from a federal highway and across from a summer camp.  (There are a lot of camps in New Hampshire.)  He could sometimes hear “Reveille.”

Don Hall at family house, New Hampshire, 2006 (Photo by Ken Williams/ Concord Monitor)

Hall was happy to see me, and said pretty quickly, “I’m rich.”  Hall made his money mainly from his award-winning children’s book Ox-Cart Man. Only a poet would ask, “Are you rich?” He added, “How about you?”

“I’m doing OK,” I said.  I had a kid at a New Hampshire summer camp. Enough said.

In 1973, when I had graduated college, Hall discouraged me from returning to Cleveland. He had said, “Why do that — to sell insurance?”

I went home.  I “sold insurance.”  I joined my father’s real estate biz.

Hall took me to a fancy restaurant near his farm.  I said, “I own and manage apartment buildings.  I’m a landlord.  And I play clarinet.” Meaning: I can improvise. I’m still in the arts!

Donald Hall and Bert Stratton New Hampshire, 2000

My first year at Michigan, Hall had looked like a stock broker. He went hippie about a year later, I think. In New Hampshire he wore a hippie shirt, and I was the guy in the polo shirt.

Hall quit his tenured job at Michigan in 1975 and moved to his grandfather’s farm near Wilmot, New Hamphsire.  Hall did exclusively freelance writing.

At the restaurant, Hall said he had traveled to the Amazon River on a private jet with a Michigan grad who had made it big in the movie business.  The student owned a movie company.  Hall said, “His family was in the grocery business in Detroit, until I warped his mind.”

Hall warped many minds. He told me to guard against bitterness.  His late wife, poet Jane Kenyon, had died five years earlier, at 47.  I remembered her from English classes.

Hall had struggled with colon and liver cancer, which was supposed to have killed him, but didn’t. Instead, his wife died from leukemia.  He said, “Every generation thinks they know more than the next generation.  Schopenhauer was writing about this in the 1700s. You don’t know more than the next generation.”

Hall wouldn’t even let me pay the tip.

The next day I drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, and flew back to Cleveland to evict people, fix leaky faucets and collect late rents.  It was not poetic.

Eleven years later I mailed several of my published op-eds to “Donald Hall, Eagle Pond Farm, New Hampshire.”  (He doesn’t use email.)  I wrote: “From your student — your 61-year-old student.”  I dated the letter.  Hall is big on dates.

Don wrote back, “I know you know I know that you feel old and know you are not.”

Get out of the car.  Buy the prunes, salmon and yogurt –- and some beers.

I want to make it to Hall’s age.

—
Donald Hall, 84, is poet emeritus of the United States and a recipient of  the 2010 National Medal of Arts.

Donald Hall and Barack Obama, 2011

—

by Ralph Solonitz :

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Charlie Chaplin brings me to tears.  Louis Armstrong and Beethoven do too.  T.S. Eliot — yes, I know he didn’t like Jews — but you can’t deny his greatness.  For instance, “Humankind can not bear too much reality.”

Yes, reality blows — as we used to say in junior high. (We said the “blows” part.)

Art?

I escape to the arts.  I escape to this:

Fire escapes have to be painted every year in Cleveland, or they rust.

I used to be shallower, vainer, younger and facetious.  Now I’m all that, and older.

I’m thinking of getting elevator shoes. A couple inches might change my life.

I don’t like ferrets.

Go ahead, indict me.

Indict me on this too: Anglomania, Jewmania and prickliness.

Downton Abbey — the TV show — is terrific.  Everybody is so taciturn and proper.  Nobody runs his or her mouth.

Who’s a Jew?  That’s my second obsession.  I annually debate whether Brubeck was a Jew.  He wasn’t.   Or was Chaplin Jewish?  No,  he wasn’t.

Prickliness, that’s a universal trait.  I cut off a man’s position in the check-out line at Dave’s supermarket. The man said,  “What you doin’?”

“I’m ahead of you.”

“No, you ain’t. You moved!”

I had moved for a second!  I had left my cart in one line and walked to another line to see which was shorter.

I said “you win” to the man, and let him in front. He got out of the store before me!

I’m looking for elevator shoes.

I cry a lot.

—
SIDE B

This one is real.  The above post is half real.

FIRING SABINA

It’s easy to fire a drunken building manager, or a thieving one, but it’s hard to fire a manager who is only lousy.

For instance, he doesn’t answer the phone quickly enough, or he doesn’t clean enough.

I thought about firing Sabina; I had hired her husband, not her, and her husband had skipped out on her. She was shoveling snow, cutting grass, and climbing ladders. It wasn’t her strong suit; she had majored in Russian lit at a Russian university.

My tenants reported negative things about her.

That helped — me.

I asked a tenant how the manager was performing, and he said, “I hate her.”

“Do you hate me too?” I said, trying to establish a baseline on his “hate.”

He didn’t hate me. “She doesn’t clean, she has her kids cutting the grass, and she doesn’t tell us anything — when anything is going to get fixed.”

I fired her.

Then I rehired her. She couldn’t get welfare because she had no green card. I let her stay.

Avon calling

She found a boyfriend – a guy in Avon Lake – and moved out.

I owe that guy in Avon Lake.

—
“Sabina” is a pseudonym.

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My cousin David owned a GMC tractor-trailer, which he parked in the May Co. lot in University Heights.  David may have been the only Jewish long-distance trucker in the Heights.  Maybe the only long-distance trucker, period, in the Heights.

In 1975 David borrowed several thousand dollars from my father, Toby, for the truck.  David had a contract with International Truck of Rock, Minnesota.

David moved to Pennsylvania and never repaid my dad.

In high school David had stolen hubcaps.  He had been a Shaker Heights juvenile delinquent.

David even looked like James Dean. My cousin Danny once said, “David’s dad was the most handsome man you ever met.” David’s dad drifted around Cleveland, playing pool.  David’s dad and mother divorced in the 1950s.

When David’s mother heard David hadn’t repaid my dad, she made payments, but she never fully repaid the loan.

My father’s attitude was “win some, lose some.”  Toby believed in lending money to family. My dad had borrowed from his Uncle Itchy to buy his first house.

Last year I called David’s sister. This was a big deal; David and his sister were  out of the cousins’ loop. David is now in his seventies and has had several heart attacks, his sister said.  He is living in a hotel that his son runs in Florida.

No more truckin’.

No more David as family black sheep. Stolen hubcaps and an unpaid loan, is that the worst of it in my family?  I think so.

Now, my wife has an estranged cousin who stole sterling silver . . . Stop.
—
“David” is a pseudonym.

—
SIDE B

FITBIT

I became bionic.  My daughter, Lucy, gave me a pedometer.

I can count my daily steps. I can even monitor my sleep patterns, but that’s too much data — even for a guy like me who likes data.

Brisk walking. If you do it, ipso facto, you’re a dork.

I gave up jogging last year. My right knee wasn’t into it anymore. I miss the “sweat” of jogging.

I walk.

Should I post my step count here? Dieters post their calories online.  Bicyclists post their heart rates.

My step count today is _____. (Will post up at 11:59 p.m for maximum effect.)

Your count?

—

For a couple new illustrations by Ralph Solonitz, please  scroll down to “KlezKamp 2012,” which went up last week.

—

Yiddishe Cup plays at First Night Akron on New Year’s Eve.

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I went to the White House for a Christmas party.  Did you?

My daughter, Lucy, works for a Chicago event-planning company, and she helped decorate the White House for Christmas.  She got me in.

Lucy and I arrived fashionably late, because my daughter has been to the White House before, and she didn’t want to wait in the long line.  We were the last guests — numbers 485 and 486.

I was denied entrance. What?

I sat on a folding chair in a heated tool shed–like room in the White House backyard. My birth date was listed incorrectly on the White House checklist. I thought I might miss the party.

But the guard, constantly checking her smartphone for updates, finally said, “You’re good. Tell the next security booth, you’re a re-clear.”

I was a re-clear at the next security stop — a dog-sniffing station.

A Marine Band jazz quintet played in the main entrance of the White House. Michelle Obama was there. Lincoln’s portrait was up in the State Dining Room.  There were 54 live Christmas trees, according to the Washington Post.  Plus some fake trees — classy fake trees, like out of glass.

I told the Marine Band’s bass player to tell his boss to bring in Yiddishe Cup for the Chanukah party next year.

I did not see Bo the dog.  I did not sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. I did not see any celebs. The food — at grazing stations — was very good.  Spielberg, dressed like Lincoln, was at the White House a couple nights before, to screen Lincoln with the president.  That was the word at the party.  There was a 300-pound gingerbread replica of White House.

This event was a thrill for me — a once in a lifetime experience. No, wait, I’ve got to talk to my rabbi; he once lit the White House Chanukah menorah.  Maybe he’ll know how to get Yiddishe Cup in.

My rabbi called.  He said,  “Somebody from the synagogue got me in. Or a group of people.  No one person from the synagogue took sole credit.  Maybe the White House wanted somebody from Cleveland.”

The Jews of Cuyahoga County.  Work with them.

Lucy Stratton, Bert Stratton, and Claus.
White House, 2012

—

SIDE B

KLEZKAMP 2012

This year’s KlezKamp theme is anti-NY.

No rush-rush.

The KlezKamp swimming pool has piped-in klezmer music. Don’t do the crawl; your wildly flapping arms will drown out the underwater speakers. (Kapelye’s classic, “Chicken,” is looped.)

New this year: a pretzel bar . . . Rold Gold, Dan Dee, Snyder’s of Berlin, Snyder’s of Hanover. (Trucked in from Cleveland.  Heymish.)

There is a spiritual gathering every morning in the exercise room. Universal love machines. Yarmulkes optional.

You can touch your musical instrument but can’t play it.  Oil keys, apply grease to cork joints, rub valve oil. And calm down.

Dress code?  Only if you insist.  Try the all-cotton plush bathrobes with the KlezKamp logo ($179).  Notice how young klezmer musicians  wear KK bathrobes on stage?

At KlezKamp, director Henry Sapoznik repeats the same spiel every hour, so you don’t miss anything if you skip a lecture. His topic this year: “New York Sucks. I Moved to Wisconsin.”

Also, this year pianist Pete Sokolow blots out — pours Manischewitz on — his classic how-to book, 100 Jewish Music Insults That Really Work.

Before this book disappears forever, here are, for the record, Sokolow’s five favorite putdowns:

1.  What’s your phone number? Junior congregation needs a clarinetist.
2.  You’re slicker than butter on matzo, but there’s no salt.
3.  Tighten your neck strap.  Tighter.
4.  You couldn’t find D freygish with a GPS.
5.  I make desk lamps. Let me see your clarinet.

—-
This is KlezFiction.  KlezKamp is real.  It happens next week.

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PART I

I worked at a key warehouse as big as Home Depot. But just keys.  The  warehouse supervisor drove a golf cart.

I packed car keys.  This was a summer job.

My dad worked in the front office.

My shift was about seven hours too long.  I rested on my cart for massive breaks. Sarge, the warehouse supervisor, threatened to fire me, but he had a problem — my dad (aka the front office).

I told my father I wanted out of the job; I didn’t want any more money; I didn’t want a car; I didn’t want a UAW card. I had several thousand dollars from my bar mitzvah money.  Let me go.  I could be in Barcelona in a minute.

But I was stuck in the warehouse.  Big presses stamped out car keys.  Kaboom.

A band instrument factory was right next door.  Why couldn’t my dad work there? King Musical Instruments.   King had an employee who stood at the end of the assembly line and blew saxes all day.

Next time around, work at King, Dad.

PART II

The taxicab supervisor, smoking a stogie, asked, “Where’s Charity Hospital?”

“I don’t know, ” I said.

“Where’s the Federal Building?”

“Ninth Street.”

“The Pick-Carter Hotel?”

“I don’t know.”

“The Hollenden House?”

“Downtown — St. Clair.”

“People want to know where their hotel is,” he said.

Fair enough.

But hired me.  Yellow Cab.

I drove welfare recipients with vouchers to hospitals, and workers to Republic Steel Works #4.  I didn’t drive many rich people; I thought I was going to drive rich people, but it was poor people.

I picked up a fare downtown.  The customer said, “Severance Hall.”

“Are you Claudio Abbado?” I asked.

“How do you know!” he said.

I knew because I had seen hi’s picture in the morning paper.

I stopped at my neighbor, John, afterward, and told him I had just driven a famous person.  I said, “He’s a conductor from Italy.”

“Why did he come here?” John said. John’s favorite expression was “Cleveland is the armpit of the nation. ”  Put that slogan on your cab door.  This was 1970.

Taxi driving ultimately didn’t agree with me. A cabbie told me to carry a bat.  He said, “A bat isn’t a concealed weapon. It’s legal.” 

I had a low batting average.

My cab stalled at Fairmount Circle.  The engine smoked.  I left the cab and hitched back to the Noble Road garage.

The supervisor said, “You mean you left your cab, son?”

“I knew I could get back here. ”

“You mean you left your cab unattended?”

“Yes.”

Fairmount Circle, 1970

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1.
When a groom shops for a band, he doesn’t care what he gets. He is usually on assignment from the bride. I’ve rarely heard a groom say, “Yiddishe Cup is wonderful!” It’s more like “What’s your minimum — minimum hours and minimum rate?”

One groom said to me, “Let’s cut to the chase.  What’s your price?”

I gave him a fair price and we made a deal.  Bye.

A friend told me to act more alive on the phone. She coached me: “Say, ‘Hel-LOH, this is Bert STRAT–tin!’’  I did it that for one day.

If a groom likes the price, beautiful. But he might call the next day and say, “Man, my fiancée is just totally unwavering!  She wants this horrible other band now. If it were up to me, I’d have you. Change of plans, sorry.”

“No problem,” I say. “Marriage is full of compromises.  Get used to it.”

Old bandleader advice.

2.
When a bride asks about cool wedding venues, I mention Windows on the River in The Flats, the Cuyahoga National Park (Bath, Ohio), the Shaker Country Club and Manakiki club.

Brides — at least some of them — don’t want the standard wedding mill, aka Landerhaven party center, by the freeway in Mayfield Heights.

On a typical Saturday night at Landerhaven, the place is hopping with four or five parties: there is background jazz in the Michelle Room; in the East Ballroom, an Asian Indian DJ; in the Lander Room, Yiddishe Cup. During breaks, I hop from one party room to another, talking to musicians and sightseeing. At a Sikh wedding, the groom rides through the parking lot on a white horse to meet the bride.

Landerhaven’s food is good, and the help is attentive, but Landerhaven is very faux Fontainebleau — so many mirrors and fountains.  Brides often want less.

Yiddishe Cup played a gig where the bride married an American Indian by a creek. It rained the whole time.  That wedding moved into a lodge, which held, at most, 50 people.  We could barely find room to toot our horns. At Landerhaven, you’re not going to have problems like that. Landerhaven is well-run.  No surprises at Landerhaven, except maybe the guy on the white horse.

Another option: rent a tent.  Some Jews love to worry and the tent is perfect for that.  At one tent gig, in Dayton, Ohio,  the caterers used 30-gallon wastebaskets to catch the rain pouring in.

Yiddishe Cup's Steve Ostrow, Hunting Valley, Ohio, 2010. No rain.

3.
Yiddishe Cup played a wedding for an anthropology professor and a German professor.

Here’s how it went down, anthropologically speaking:

a) In the Midwest, the band often works Ohio State and Michigan into the repertoire.  The anthro prof’s mother was a Michigan grad, and the groom’s dad was from Ohio State.  We played “Hang on Sloopy” for Ohio State and “Hail to the Victors” for Michigan.

b)  Yiddishe Cup’s bassist sang “Du, Du Liegst Mir In Herzen.”  This bombed.  The German guests — real Germans from Germany — didn’t like it.  Apparently, Germans don’t show much outward pride in their folk culture.  And at a Jewish wedding, who can blame them. (Yiddishe Cup has played “Alouette” for French Canadians and “Guantanamera” for Hispanics, and they like hearing from us.) The Germans were no funt.

c)  When Yiddishe Cup had a wedding guest sing with us, I said, “Attention, anthropologists, please welcome one of the stars of Jewish pop.  He has appeared all over the world . . . Yehuda Cik!”  Yehuda is a former neo-Hasidic Ortho pop star.   Yehuda sang the last verse of L’Cha Dodi, the Sabbath welcoming prayer.  Big hit.

4.
Sometimes the bride and groom are starry-eyed; sometimes, not.

Years later I run into the moms of the brides.  The moms tells me the “kids” are now divorced — the starry-eyed kids.

I run into an old groom. He says, “Isabel and Isaac, this is Mr. Stratton.  He played Mommy and Daddy’s wedding.”   Was the groom starry-eyed at his wedding?  Give me a break.  I can’t remember.  I play a lot of weddings.

The groom is still married after 12 years. He says his daughter’s bat mitzvah is coming up. “She’s a popular kid,” he says.

“That’s bad. Popular kids usually want DJs,”  I say.

—

Two add-ons . . .

1. Dave Brubeck vid

—

2. On the CoolCleveland.com website, 12/6/12. “Keep the Plain Dealer Dealin’.”

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Notso Kosher Records

My desk is piled high with free CDs: Ezekiel’s Wheels, Golem, all kinds of Dutch and Polish bands, and the old standbys — Klezmer Conservatory Band and the Klezmatics.

The 12 best klez CDs of 2012 jumped out of the pile and said, “Kiss me, I’m Jewish.”

These recordings (listed below) are the nonrequired klezmer albums for the year.  These recordings are essential:

1. Orlando, 3 Days, 2 Nights. Frank London and his Klezmer Brass All-Stars lead us on a klez tour of Disney World. Talk about selling out – but a good selling out.  The cut “Mickey’s Philharmonic” features London on electric toothbrush — pulse position.  “Whistle While You Work” is all about short people — Jewish short people: Billy Crystal, Abe Beame and Menachem Begin, and that’s just the first 30 seconds.

2. I Believe in Cod.  Andy Statman flips out.  Sample lyrics: “May cod bless you and guide you . . . . Praise cod in the high heaven and in the deep sea . . . Teeming oceans, fire and hail, snow and mist, storm and wind, obey cod’s will.”

3. The Room Where I Was Born.  Violinist Steven Greenman recreates the aural architecture of his childhood bedroom in Pittsburgh.  Check out the Steelers pennants and Fiddler on the Roof LPs. Greenman does a cover version of the Klezmorim’s “Medyatsiner Waltz,” which itself was a cover. Sweaty and no A/C.

Alan Douglass, Yiddishe Cup enforcer, 2011

4. This Can’t Be Klezmer by Yiddishe Cup. This Ohio band goes outside the matzo box and constructs a toy jail, complete with corporal punishment. Perfect for the heartbroken, horny and dead.  Yiddishe Cup mixes barely adequate musicianship with a touch of humor.  On “Toot,” an earthy trombone solo morphs into a mimicry of flatulence.  It doesn’t sound like klezmer, but what did you expect from This Can’t Be Klezmer?

5.  Nonhierarchical Dynamics by tsimblist Pete Rushefsky.  Nothing on the 1 and 3; it’s all off-beats.  Drives you crazy, but in a provocative way.  There is an after-party. You have to be in New York City to get full value.  Beer by Brooklyn Brewing.  Be there.

6. The Recluse by Merlin Shepherd.  Shepherd, a British clarinetist and actor, reads Thomas Hardy poems while his wife, Polina, does consecutive Russian translation. The clarinet licks are sparse, but apropos to lyrics.  Novel.

7. Correspondence by Michael Wex.  Wexmaniacs,  you’ll love this: 60 LOL minutes of Wex badinage from his KlezKanada emceeing.  Can anybody top Wex’s Walter-Brennan-is-a-Jew riff?   No.  Almost as good: Wex’s riff about trash-talking Miami Heat Yiddish-spewers.   All but LeBron, who remains the Hebraist.

8. Odorless and Colorless.  Shtreiml.  Bandleader Jason Rosenblatt spent years in the lab on this one.  This record is rotten.  It contains sulfur.  Le jazz hot — and funky — from Montreal.

Jack Stratton, about 2008

9. Without a Net. Acrobat-and-drummer Jack Stratton uses metal parts from surgeries gone bad — mostly hip replacements — to perform Meron-klez drum licks.  Particularly good: “Blur Blind,” “Bodies Thrown Back” and “Clarity.”  The rest of the album is pretty conventional.

10. I Want to Make You Edible by Yiddish Princess.  Lead singer Sarah Gordon does freestyle rapping here about cereal (Kashi Autumn Wheat and Island Vanilla), which leads to kishke, which leads to ka-ka.  Juvenile.  And fun!

11. Red-Dirt Jewboys. Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys go down to Georgia on this one.  How does Margot  balance her terrific cross-cultural composing and heavy drinking?  Margot is the klezmer mixologist for the 21^st century.  Her next album is, efsher, Klezmer Gamelan?

12. Blackout. Henry Sapoznik and the Original Klezmer Jazz Band give us a wake-up call: Pete Sokolow pounds stride-piano chords while Sapoznik plays electric banjo.  On the last cut, Sapoznik smashes his banjo and picks up a clarinet. Tons of squeaks.  Sapoznik whines like a fourth-grader at the end: “I quit!  I quit!”

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Merjeme Haxhiraj, a tenant, tried to get her rent reduced. She wrote, “Mr. Albert, I wish you will only rise the rent to $470/month.  I think you will fulfill my wish.”

She wrote this letter annually (changing only the dollar figure).  I knocked her rent down to $490 from $500 the last time.

Ms. Haxhiraj was Albanian, worked in a nursing home, and had cancer.

After 10 years, she said she was moving.  I couldn’t figure out where to.  New York? Albania?   Some place where I couldn’t find her, I bet.

She didn’t want to pay the final month’s rent.  She wrote, “I am leaving country and will not have forwarding address. Please keep the security deposit.”

Wait a minute, Ms. Haxhiraj, the tenant has to pay the final month’s rent! I knocked on her door and said, “We need the final month’s rent, Ms. Haxhiraj. That’s the rule.”  (I said Hacks-er-aj.  Totally wrong no doubt. Loved the x.)

“I am old woman.  I no work for three years.”  And don’t forget the cancer.

I walked through her apartment.  “OK, but don’t leave anything,” I said. “Take everything.” I pointed to the hangers in the closet. “Even the hangers.”

“Everything go,” she said.

“Not that it matters, but are you Christian or Muslim?” I asked.

“Muslim.”

I was curious.  That’s all.  I try to make my job as interesting as possible.

When Ms. Haxhiraj moved, she left a bed, five chairs, a sofa, handbags, four bags of garbage, many oranges, several chocolate bars and a lot of hangers.  No gym bag.  I needed a gym bag.

The little old lady from Albania, Albania . . .

I didn’t  get the chocolates.  The building manager beat me to them.

I got the hauler’s bill.

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The place: Brooklyn

The venue: the Barclays Center.

The show: Jay-Z on the mic.

The kingpin: Cousin Brucie Ratner, owner of the Barclays Center.

Brucie isn’t  my cousin, and I don’t know Jay-Z’s music.  But I felt part of the Barclays Center’s grand opening.  I walked around the outside of the arena.

Furthermore, I occasionally play gigs for the Ratner family in Cleveland. The Ratner patriarch — Albert — likes “Oyfn Pripetchik” (At the Hearth).  Albert doesn’t even have to ask.

Bruce Ratner told the New York Times he used to be embarrassed he was a developer. He was an anti–war protestor back in the day, he told the Times.

Brucie is me x 1 billion dollars.

I was at a wedding in Brooklyn.  Beyoncé’s sister was there.  I sat across from Beyoncé’s marketing agent. (Jay-Z is married to Beyoncé.)

The music at the wedding was arena quality. A gospel singer from the Blind Boys of Alabama sang the ceremony. A doo-wop group did the cocktail hour.  An eight-piece New Orleans brass band walked  into the wedding through an industrial garage door and wailed for hours.

Where was I — other than two miles from Jay-Z?  I was in a former brass foundry, close to a toxic site, the Gowanus Canal.

I saw guys in Brooklyn Nets T-shirts.

My band, Yiddishe Cup, once played the Brooklyn Center for the Performing the Arts in Flatbush.  Not too cool, apparently.  (My band or Flatbush?)

I think the wedding venue was in Red Hook, a section of Brooklyn.  Not sure.  Maybe Carroll Gardens (another Brooklyn neighborhood).  I like to know where I am.

Boys, hit ’em with “Oyfn Prip.”  Cousin Brucie might drop by.  Just like back home.  (There is a Brooklyn, Ohio.)   Jay-Z in the house?   Strike up “Money, Cash, Hoes.”

—
SIDE B

TOO SMOOTH

I sat on a bench at Horseshoe Lake and read the Cleveland Jewish News.   I felt like Isaac Bashevis Singer with the Yiddish Forverts.  (Typical Singer opening: “While I was sitting on a park bench I noticed that my left shoelace was untied.”)

I had a letter to the editor in the CJN and wanted to make sure the paper got it right.

The park bench at Horseshoe Lake had a plaque: “In loving memory of Arthur Lipton. He played at Carnegie Hall.” My question: Did Arthur Lipton get paid, or was he in a youth orchestra? Did they — the orchestra — rent Carnegie Hall?

The CJN got my letter right.

The “wombs and tomb” section of the CJN is the crux of the paper: the births, bar mitzvahs, weddings and deaths. Deaths are always a good read. Who owned what business. Who fought in Japan. In the weddings, there is usually a U. of Michigan grad. Does every Jewish family in Cleveland have a Michigan connection? I skip the bar mitzvah and birth announcements; I’m too old for those, or not old enough.

On returning from the park, I saw a dog crapping on my front lawn. I paused at a distance, to see if the owner would clean up. She did.

Great day.

Snack time: I opened a new jar of peanut butter.

It was creamy! I bought creamy by mistake!

Heinen’s should be more distinctive with its labels:

My (future) park-bench epitaph: “Albert Stratton preferred crunchy peanut butter.”

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I liked to provoke my mother-in-law. She would say, “They’re wearing their hair high in the 1940s look.” And I would say, “Who’s they?” Or she would say, “I don’t have any shoes to wear tonight to the party.” And I would say, “You going barefoot?”

I shouldn’t have been such a smart aleck. I hung around Harvey Pekar, who was inspirational — very bitter. “I’m hateful,” he said.  “I’d like to have a cool way to slip my George Ade article to Lark [Pekar’s second ex-wife, an academic]. She’s small-minded. Who wants to dig through Ade’s school grades? So what. I want to do something more creative.”

This was in 1981.

Now I’m twice as old as my son Ted. Exactly twice as old. He’s 31. Pekar was at Teddy’s bris. Pekar considered writing a comic about the mohel raising his hands like a prize fighter and saying, “Golden hands!”

Ted has been a newspaper reporter and taught English in Korea. He has a law degree. He was on Jeopardy. He has worked temporary crap jobs, too. He has done a lot, but he’s still only half my age!

Here’s what I’ve learned in the past 31 years:

1. Guard against bitterness
2. Make your job interesting
3. Do something beneficial for others
4. Zekhor  (Remember)
5. Get married and have kids
6. “Don’t just view it, do it”  (Shari Lewis)
7. Old people are dumb! (joke)
8. Don’t judge people by bumper stickers, neighborhoods, or their tastes in music.

I hope to list 10 items by the end of the decade.  (Make it to the end of the decade, then worry about the list, dude.)

***

When my youngest child, Jack, moved to California last year, I held a mini-shiva; I walked through the music room in the basement and threw out old mic cables, cassette tapes and tons of drumsticks.

Eli “Paperboy” Reed (L) and Jack Stratton down the basement, 2011

Jack took his drums and an electric bass out west.  I called him when he was driving through Nebraska, and said, “Did you open the letter I wrote you?”

“Yeah,” he said, “my friends thought it was funny that on the envelope you wrote, ‘Don’t open till Nebraska.’ They thought it contained hallucinogenics.”

I’m anti-drugs!  I was dispensing wisdom-in-a-can (in an envelope) to my youngest child. If  he could combine my old guy’s experience with his 24-year-old’s enthusiasm and creativity, he would do fine. [Story about the letter is here.]

I filled up four contractors garbage bags in the basement.

I hauled the stuff to the tree lawn on garbage day.  An hour later, three bags were gone, but the fourth remained. A junk man had picked up three bags.  And I had put some paperwork in those bags, as well as Jack’s garbage.

Mac — the  junk guy  — pulled up the next week in a pickup truck. He said he liked my trash, particularly the ersatz medieval knight’s helmet from my son’s high school days.

I said, “What about the paperwork?”

He said he had pitched that. Good. I didn’t want my identity stolen that day. He handed me his card.

Age 24 is when you have the least amount of possessions. Now Jack has even less –- four bags less.

And Mac has some good stuff, like the helmet.

—
Yiddishe Cup is at the College of Wooster (Ohio) 9:30 p.m. Sat. (Nov. 17).  More info here.

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Yiddishe Cup has played in 19 states and Ontario.

Our most recent state is Massachusetts.

I didn’t tell anybody about our Massachusetts gig, except Ari Davidow, the dictator of Klezmershack, a Boston-based website.

I didn’t shout, “We’re playing Boston!”  Wouldn’t be right.   I didn’t want to drive the Mass. bands crazy. There are so many good Jewish wedding bands in Massachusetts.

How did Yiddishe Cup get the Massachusetts gig?   Connections.  My cousin Margie.  She hired us for a wedding.

Mass. football huddle

The band stayed at the Marriott near the Natick mall.  The food court at the mall had take-out Indian food; you don’t see that very often in Cleveland.

Yid Map

Notice, we haven’t played Kentucky.  That irks me!

Daniel Ducoff — Yiddishe Cup’s Sir Dance-a-lot — collects refrigerator magnets of states Yiddishe Cup has played.   Twelve years ago, I gave Daniel magnet-investment advice.  I told him to buy “Kentucky.”

Kentucky is ridiculously, abuttingly close to Ohio.

What’s with Texas?  We’ve played Texas three times.  Once at Temple Emanu El in Dallas, and twice at the Chamizal National Memorial park in El Paso.

Some people think Yiddishe Cup plays only in Cleveland.  I hope this map straightens them out.

Buckeyes and fellow travelers, here are the Ohio towns we have played. (Obama and Romney have nothing on Yiddishe Cup.):

Elyria, Akron, Lorain, Warren, Youngstown, Oberlin, Wooster, Lakeside, Toledo, Springfield, Alliance . . .

Kent, Canton, Granville, Gambier, Lancaster, Findlay, Columbus, Delaware, Hiram, Cincinnati, Dayton, Oxford, Celina, Urbana.

You can find good Arabic food in Toledo.

Gambier is not a real town.  It has a post office, bookstore, pizza parlor and Kenyon College.   Mount Vernon — an authentic town –- is just a few miles from Kenyon.   Hey, we played a wedding in Mount Vernon.  Please add “Mount Vernon” to the list.

Yiddishe Cup probably won’t play on the West Coast unless one of my sons marries a West Coaster and the wedding is out there.  That’s our best hope.  Boychicks, you can use a DJ for the breaks.  No problem.

Yiddishe Cup’s number-two hang-out state is Michigan . . . Ann Arbor, Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, Calumet, East Lansing, Evert and Grand Rapids.

Calumet is in the Upper Peninsula.  We  flew there via Minneapolis.  We should have played for change in the Minnie airport so we could color in Minnesota on the map.

Michigan has so few cities.  What percentage of Michiganders live in Metro Detroit?  My guess is 33 percent.  [42 percent –- Google.]

Mappin’ . . . Have you looked at a map today?  (Electoral College maps don’t count.)

—-
My op-ed “It’s Campaign Season; Ohio is Swingin‘ was in the Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer.  (Similar to post below.)

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(A version of this post appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer 11/4/12.)

When will it end?

Superstorm Sandy or the election?

Either.

Definitely by Tuesday.

Ohio returns to flyover status Tuesday, and I’m back to looking for celebs at Ohio Turnpike rest stops — bands and gangsters traveling from New York to Chicago.

Bill Clinton, Bruce Springsteen and Condoleezza Rice: history.

My friend Jane posted on Facebook: “Can’t wait until this election season is over so I can be sane again.”

A friend from Rhode Island asked me, “How is it living in a swing state?”

“It’s swinging,” I said.  It’s sweet. We’re loved.

When I’m not loved, I’m a landlord. I receive calls from political operatives who want to rent stores for “staging areas.”

I haven’t rented to a politician in years, because politicians tend to trash stores and not pay enough rent. The campaign workers are gone the day after the election, but the pizza boxes aren’t. And where are the keys?

I’m supposed to give the store away cheap, as a political gesture. My gesture: Pay and I’ll rent to you.

“I’m Brian,” said the young man on the phone.

“Where are you from?” I asked. He didn’t sound local.

“I’m in Cleveland right now.”

“I see.”

“I need the store for a few days.”

“How many people will be in the store?”

“Twenty to 30 people. They’ll go out canvassing. Teams are sent out.”

Twenty to 30 people is a lot of foot traffic for a 1,000 square-foot store, and a lot of pizza boxes.

Plain or pepperoni.

I’ll never know.  My price was too high, I guess.

—

SIDE B

From the history channel . . .

PLAYING POLITICS

When a relative ran for school board and lost, my father said, “Don’t run again.  You don’t want to get a loser’s reputation.”

My relative didn’t run again.

I, too, play by my dad’s rules.

I might run.  When?  Not saying.

First, a little background: I was a Kennedy man.  (Who wasn’t?  A lot of people.)

Bert Stratton w/ Kennedy buttons, Ohio Stadium, 1960

I started my own country (on paper) in sixth grade and elected presidents and representatives.  My country was a solace, because  in the real world I couldn’t run for president because a) I wasn’t 35 and b) I was Jewish.

My mother said I could run and win.  She duped me!  My man, Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut, couldn’t even run.  Newsweek  said the country wasn’t ready for the Ribman for prez or even veep.

Now presumably a Jew could win the nomination for the top job.

Let me be clear: I won’t start out at school-board level or even vice president.

My Little League teammate Joel Hyatt (Cleveland Heights High ’68) ran for U.S. Senate and got clobbered.  He hadn’t paid his dues; he hadn’t run for lesser offices.

Lee Fisher wins state senate seat, 1982

Lee Fisher (Shaker Heights High ’69) paid dues.  I saw him at civic club meetings in Collinwood in 1982:  six neighbors, me and Lee.  Fisher eventually climbed to lieutenant governor. Then he got clobbered for the U.S. Senate.  He paid  dues.  Give him that.

I’m willing to pay dues.  About $10.

My American history teacher in high school said Stratton is a good political name.  (My teacher was Americo Betori.  He should have run for mayor of Cleveland in 1950.  He would have won.)

Stratton.  Remember that name.

***

A few weeks ago at Simchat Torah, the rabbi said, “We will now read the last verse of the Book of Deuteronomy.”  A Yiddishe Cup musician — not paying close attention — said, “Did he just say, ‘We will now read from the Book of Mitt Romney’?”

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1. THE BUG MAN

Drain flies aren’t bad.  Roaches aren’t bad. Mice are nothing.

Two-hundred dead flies in an apartment — that’s bad. I saw 20 in the bathtub alone.  The building manager said, “I killed them with spray.”

I said, “Where are you hiding the body?”  I meant the dead body.

Swarma

Another 50 dead flies were by the window in the living room. The apartment was vacant.

I called
the pro exterminator. The bug man’s secretary said, “Are they metallic – the flies?”

“What do you mean by metallic?”

“Blue or green?”

“They’re big flies,” I said “You see them all the time, like on horses.”

“Oh, excuse the expression — they’re shit flies.”

“Yes. My manager says he has 500 dead ones in his vacuum cleaner. I need you over here.”

The flies were officially called blow flies, and are attracted to carrion and excrement.  The bug man found a nook above the drop ceiling in the bathroom that we had missed.  He hit it.

The flies are gone now.  I wonder what was up there.  I didn’t look.

2. THE SCRAPPER

I was looking for a scrapper to take a dilapidated, nonfunctioning boiler out of an apartment-building basement. The boiler was sitting in the basement, minding its own business, but the city inspector said it had to go.

I called a heating company, which suggested I hire them and an asbestos-removal company to remove the old unit.

Instead, I contacted Charles the scrapper and said,  “What are the chances of you doing this job and just taking the good stuff — the metal — and leaving behind a mess?”

“I don’t do it that way.  I’ve been doing this all day — all my life – and I do it right,” he said.

The boiler consisted of eight cast-iron sections, each about 200 pounds.  And it was down a flight of steps.  The boiler was the size of a VW bus.

“That’s what I do,” Charles said.  “Get rid of it.”

But I didn’t use Charles.  I used Daryl, another freelance scrapper. Daryl got to the job site long before Charles and gave me a good price: free. “I’m here and I’m ready,” Daryl said.  That counted for something.

—
I wrote this one,  “The Nostalgia Vortex,” for today’s CoolCleveland.com.  I was raised by a village — Norge Village.

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Yiddishe Cup played a wedding in a backyard in Connecticut where the floor partially collapsed.  The ground became soggy underneath the tent, which was built into the side of a hill.  The tent grid work — which supported the plywood floor — sunk.  About 50 semi-drunken partygoers did athletic hora steps and pogo-ing, and the floor buckled.

The groom’s mom told me to stop the music.

I  didn’t. You can’t stop the hora at a wedding; it’s bad luck for the marriage.  I said, “Two more minutes.”  She said no, and jumped onto the bandstand and yanked the saxophone from my mouth. Luckily, I wasn’t playing clarinet (different embouchure, more likely to damage my teeth). I said, “Don’t ever do that again!”  She was oblivious to me.   She frantically dialed her phone for a repairman.

The tent-repair crew arrived shortly, and during a break the crew crawled under the tent and put in extra supports.  The mom had the band playing only background music. We sounded like a string quartet at a funeral.  We didn’t want anybody to dance, because the floor would collapse even more.   We had traveled 500 miles to play tepid tunes like “Jerusalem of Gold” and “Tumbalalaika,” and have my ax yanked.  What a letdown.

The dancing picked up after the repair crew fixed the support grid work.  Lots of ruach (spirit), and no more assaults on my teeth.

***

SIDE B

Watch out,  literature here . . .

THIRTEEN JEWS
IN CONNECTICUT

I.

13 Jews are in line
for omelets

II.

A woman says
“Do I want the mushroom omelet?”
Is she talking to me?
No
To herself

III.

The beauty of the East Coast
Red maples in Connecticut
We’ve come a long way

IV.

Why do I imagine everybody at this wedding
is thin and wearing black?
Because everybody is thin and wearing black

VI.

“You’re from somewhere near Hungary,” I say
“Finland,” the woman says
“Don’t they share a language bond?”
“Distantly”
I’m on a losing streak with accents

IX.

Where is the euphony?
This band is loud
This band is Yiddishe Cup
Turn it down, guys!

XIII.

We are in the Berkshires
The leaves are falling
So are we

The tent and Yiddishe Cup, Lakeville, Conn., 2010

—

I wrote this op-ed, “Main Street’s Landlord,” for the New York Times, 9/30/12. (Illustration by
Rebecca Mock.)

—
Yiddishe Cup plays for Simchat Torah 7 p.m. Sun., Oct. 7, Fairmount Temple, and 7:15 p.m. Mon., Oct. 8, Park Synagogue. Cleveland.

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Re: my op-ed in today’s NYT (9/30/12)

Welcome, NY Times readers.

I know you’re busy. You have other things to do.
Like benching the Sunday Times.

Guys, give me a New York minute!

Are you looking for top-quality real-estate lit?  You just found it!  (To subscribe, enter your email in the space on the left and click “submit.”)

I’ve been on the NYT op-ed page three times in the past year and a half. I’ve written a million — make that 72 — blog posts about real estate.  Check them out here.

Must read amusing posts about real estate now.  Yes, you must.

I do a music/prose show, “Dear Landlord.”   I’m doing my “Dear Landlord” (aka “Klezmer Guy”) show at The Ark, Ann Arbor, Michigan,  on Sat. Feb. 9.

My band, Yiddishe Cup, plays all over the country. When my buildings turn to dust, this song will remain.

Meshugeneh Mambo (Crazy Mambo) by Yiddishe Cup

I post up every Wednesday morning.  Subscribe and you’ll get a weekly post.  I won’t sell or give away your email address.

I’ll gladly write a book about real estate if a publisher offers me a contract. (TV series would be OK, too!)   Title:  How to Jam with Your Tenants.  The mock-up for the book is here  — an article I wrote for City Journal. The article is my best essay.

Thanks for your time and interest.

–Bert Stratton

—
Vid time. Here’s a clip from the “Dear Landlord” show.

—
One more vid, “Should I Rent to a Stripper?”   For landlords only!

—
No, one more!  Michael Brecker, on electronic wind instrument, jams with economist Milty Friedman.  This vid was on my blog last week, too.  By  Jack Stratton.

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