Downtown Cleveland When I Was Young

At the time I agreed to take saxophone lessons, not only did I not know what a saxophone was, but I had no idea I would have to spend hours each week “practicing.” I wanted to play a trombone, but the music store salesman saw the look in my parents’ eyes and said something to the effect that I had the wrong kind of teeth for blowing into a trombone. It worked: He made the sale.

My music teacher was Jack Upson, who had a studio on East 4th Street, almost in the dead center of the postcard image above. (The tall building was the Terminal Tower, at that time the tallest building in the U.S. outside of New York City.)

Every week, I took the 56A bus downtown. It let me off at Prospect and Ontario. From there, I walked two blocks or so to Jack Upson’s studio.

Truth to tell, I never liked the saxophone as a musical instrument. The moisture from my mouth formed a gooey discharge that made the reed of the sax very mucky after a while. What I did enjoy was being downtown on my own. I would eat lunch at Woolworth’s lunch counter, walk around a bit, and hang out at Schroeder’s book store on Public Square.

I started playing the sax at age nine and quit at age eighteen, when I went out of town to college. Seeing that my parents weren’t there to force me to practice, I just quit playing altogether. I was no good at it anyway; and it was no fun playing an instrument only because my mother and father liked it. More importantly, I didn’t like it.