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Saxophone Lessons

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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.

Fun With Sharks

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Great White Shark

It all started last year when the National Geographic Channel put on their annual SharkFest. There s something so beautiful, yet so menacing about these predators of the sea that I am enthralled.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I used to love going to the beach and going in the water. Some ten years ago, I stopped going—mostly because the ocean was getting more polluted, and my blepharitis began bothering me increasingly during the summers.

Although I never encountered a shark in the water, I was always conscious of the life in the ocean. There were all the large strands of kelp and, from time to time, dead fish.

I live only two miles from the beach, but I have yet to visit the sands of Santa Monica Bay this year. When it gets hot, I do go to Chace Park in the Marina to enjoy the sea breeze while picnicking and reading. There I get the smell of the sea and also get to watch the sea lions and gulls the alight on the shore.

As for the sharks, I would rather see them on television. No in-person shark encounters for me!

Dropping Off to Sleep

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Before I retired, I had difficulty falling asleep. That was primarily because, in all my jobs, my bosses were megalomaniacs who were experts at fomenting stress in their work force.

Then something interesting happened. It suddenly became cheap and easy to go downtown. The opening of the Expo Line (now the E-train) from Santa Monica to the L.A. Financial District. I wasted no time in getting a senior citizen TAP card, which meant I could whiz downtown in 45 minutes for a mere 35¢ each way.

One Thursday, I went to the Central Library at 5th & Spring Streets. I noticed that there was a free half hour mindful meditation session at 12:30 PM in one of the two meeting rooms. I attended and suddenly things seemed to change for the better in my life. I was still working, but it was apparent that the accounting firm would close at year’s end.

It suddenly became easier to fall asleep. Martine usually fell asleep around 11:00 PM, and I followed a little more than an hour later. I still chewed a 3 mg Melatonin tablet, but I started to fall asleep by using mindful meditation. I started off with three deep breaths, followed it up with an inventory of my body, from the blepharitis in my eyes to my tendency to develop ingrown toenails. Next, I would concentrate on my breaths and incorporating the outside sounds of traffic and aircraft.

Usually, I would be out within 30 minutes. Sometimes it would take longer; sometimes, shorter. I had difficulty only if I had a long drive ahead the next morning, which wasn’t often.

The key: With mindful meditation, I have a way of neutralizing stress.

Death of a Crow

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Martine at Chace Park

It was another warm day, so I decided to drive to Chace Park in the Marina . stopping at Trader Joe on the way to pick up a salad and beverage for a picnic on the way. I had only a few pages more to read of Virgil’s Georgics and hoped to finish the book while enjoying the sea breezes.

It was not to be. A crow was flopping around on the ground, unable to fly. Several passersby had stopped and were loudly discussing what to do about the poor crow. There were as many opinions as there were people. Eventually, a homeless person picked up the bird and placed it a few feet away in the shade.

What did I do? Nothing. Crows are wild creatures. Any intervention on my part would have terrified the bird at a point when it was dealing with its own problems. I was not about to make a pet of it so that I could brag to my friends that I had “rescued” it.

I was outraged that the people in the park had in some way profaned the final moments of one of God’s creatures.

Perhaps many people would feel that I was being hard hearted because I chose not to interfere. Perhaps I was being kinder to that bird by leaving it alone. After all, I actually like crows.

My Libraries

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The Main Branch of the Cleveland Public Library Downtown

Books and libraries have always played an important part in my life.

When I was a toddler, my mother took me to the branch of the Cleveland Public Library on East 109th Street (now Martin Luther King Drive). Not that I could read, but I could indicate based on the illustrations the books I would be most interested in. She would check them out and read them to me in Hungarian, probably embroidering a bit. The one book I remember from that period was Dr. Seuss’s The King’s Stilts, which I now have in my collection.

In 1951, after my brother Dan was born, we moved to the Lee-Harvard Area on the East Side of Cleveland. For many years, I went to the Lee-Harvard branch which was located on Lee Road, first north of Harvard, and then south of it. The head librarian was a fellow Hungarian, Mr. Matyi, who played the oboe in the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra.

During my college years at Dartmouth, I spent many hours at Baker Library, which was modeled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia. What I loved most about it were the frescoes in the reserve room that were painted in the 1930s by José Clemente Orozco.

Jose Clemente Orozco, Murals at Baker Library Reading room, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH; The Machine

Once I moved to Los Angeles, I spent some time at the UCLA University Library, but I liked going to the main branch of the Santa Monica Public Library—which satisfied me until an opportunity opened up with the construction of the E (for Expo) Line of the Metro Rail. Driving and parking downtown was always a major pain. But now I was able to whiz downtown for 35 cents in three quarters of an hour.

I am now hooked on the Central Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. Not only because of the library’s holdings, but various events sponsored by the library, especially the guided Thursday mindful meditation sessions.

The one library I forgot to mention is my own personal library of some 6,000 volumes, which I am slowly trying to thin by donations.

Bending Time and Space

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It was not until I retired at the end of 2017 that I had any control over my life. First it was my parents, who exercised a mostly benign control over my life. That then shaded into my work life, where for over forty years I felt stressed working for a couple of egomaniacal bosses.

Suddenly, at the beginning of 2018 I was finally able to do what I wanted. Mostly, that entailed extra time for reading and catching up on hundreds of classic movies I had always wanted to see. It would have been perfect if I were able to travel more, but that requires money; and money is always in short supply when one is on a fixed income.

Just before retirement, I started going to the mindful meditation sessions at the L.A. Central Library. Every Thursday—except during the Covid epidemic—there was a free 30-minute mindful meditation session guided by a trained member of UCLA’s mindfulness education center.

I suddenly felt space opening up in my life. Even when I was waiting in the doctor’s office or stuck at a long traffic light, I no longer felt stressed. During these interstices in my life, I would use the time to relax totally while still being attentive to my surroundings. (Compare this to those poor souls who try to relax with a smart phone in their hands.) And I didn’t even hat to sit in some uncomfortable lotus posture.

Previously, I had been prey to insomnia. Now as soon as I slip under the covers, I take three deep breaths, inventory how relaxed I feel from the top of my head down to my toes, and slowly think about my breathing as I drop off to sleep.

At the age of eighty, I’ve never felt happier. I know very well that I am in the endgame of my life. Hard times lie ahead, but I feel stronger and more able to weather them.

ARPANET

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Daily writing prompt
Do you remember life before the internet?
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I was an early user of the Internet. In fact, in the late 1960s, I used the Internet’s predecessor, ARPANET, at System Development Corporation in Santa Monica. ARPANET was the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. At that time I was around 23 years old.

A Wedding in Temecula

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A Winery in Temecula, CA

Yesterday, I drove 100 miles to the city of Temecula, midway between Riverside and San Diego on Interstate 15. My niece Jennifer Duche was being married to her boyfriend John Margolis at the Falkner Winery east of the city.

The wedding ceremony itself was short and sweet; but as we waited for the outdoor reception to begin, a cold wind from the west set us all to shivering. I was just recovering from a cold from the week before, so I decided to leave before dinner was served.

So instead of tri-tips with chimichurri, I stopped at an In-N-Out Burger in town on my way back to the motel. At least I think I was spared from a relapse.

Temecula is a weird town surrounded by picturesque wineries and neo-Spanish architecture. Most of the restaurants were from regional or national chains. My hotel was brand new, full of elegant suites; and I think I was the only tenant.

The important thing was that I was there to wish Jen and John a good start to their married life together.

The English Teacher

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Daily writing prompt
Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.
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It was September 1958. I had just entered high school and been introduced to my English teacher, the Rev. Gerard R. Hageman, S.M.—a Catholic priest of the Marist order. He was incredibly strict. We had frequent quizzes in which one could only get two possible grades, 100 or 0 (Z-e-r-o). And the numerical grades were averaged out.

Father Hageman had created a one-page mimeographed summary on yellow paper of jis “Random Rules of Grammar and Style.” I will present you with two excerpts. The first are the rules which call for commas. This was abbreviated to D SAPS DT C CINQ MOC. The letters stood for: Direct address, salutation, appositives (I have since forgotten what those were), parentheticals, series, dates (city and state), titles after names, compound sentences, contrasting ideas, introductory adverbial clauses, non-restrictives, direct quotations, mild interjections, omitted words, and common sense.

Here are three random rules from the yellow sheet:

  • Pronouns are weak. If used, they must have clear and definite antecedents.
  • Introductory participles, infinitives, and gerund phrases must refer to the subject; and the subject must come immediately after.
  • Nouns and pronouns used as modifiers of gerunds are in the possessive case.

Imagine the impact on a thirteen-year-old boy and the threat of a zero score for any single violation of the rules.

Father Hageman was relentless. But, you know what? I still follow his rules religiously. The young student who wanted to be a nuclear physicist wound up preferring writing and, maybe, becoming an English teacher.

Unfortunately, Father Hageman returned to the Marist college in Atlanta, where he died suddenly on January 1, 1961. I wish I had a picture to show you, but that was years before the Internet.

In a 2018 interview with the then Catholic bishop of Atlanta, Joel M. Konzen, S.M., the interviewee noted:

All of us who went to Josephinum had a wonderful education there, but particularly wonderful in English. Writing and languages were highly emphasized at the Josephinum in that day. We had a wonderful teacher, Msgr. (Leonard J.) Fick. I think that anyone who went there would tell you the same thing. …

It was … kind of what they say about Father (Gerard) Hageman at Marist, that if you ever had either of those, you knew you were good to go in terms of writing and so I liked to write.

East Side, West Side

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Cleveland’s Shaker Rapid—Way Back When

This was a particularly vivid dream that I had last night. I was visiting in Cleveland, and my mother was still alive. I was wandering the streets of downtown looking for the bus stop of the #71 CTS (Cleveland Transit System) line that went down Pearl Road to York Road, letting me out in Parma Heights where my mother lived.

The stop used to be near the corner of Prospect and Ontario, but in my dream the streets were different; and I didn’t see any bus stops. So I walked to Public Square and around Euclid and Superior Avenues, noting where Schroeder’s Bookstore used to be when I was young.

I gave up and decided to take the Shaker Rapid instead and headed for the concourse under the Terminal Tower.

Entrance to the Terminal Tower Concourse

But wait! Mom lived in Parma Heights on the West Side of Cleveland, while the Shaker Rapid served the East Side, where we used to live in the Lee-Harvard area.

My dream ended inconclusively, as I got stuck in a busy store and then had to deal with a Shaker Rapid ticket seller who pointedly ignored me.

It wasn’t a nightmare: I almost never have nightmares. It was just a curious amalgam of my many trips from home to downtown and back again. It was at a point after my childhood after 1985, when my father died. My widowed mother lived alone in Cleveland until she decided to move to Hollywood, Florida, a number of years later.