Hand Clapping Games

River Bay Day Camp
That's me, second from left.
(August 1978)

The girls had secrets. This was understood. There were no girls in our house (mom wanted a girl, apparently that’s why they had me) so I remained ignorant of even the most basic facts of girlhood until I started dating one.

But as I was saying, girls had secrets. And they had mysteries. They could divine the future and probe the inner-most thoughts of their friends and others through the use of a cootie-catcher. 

They passed notes and looked at you and whispered (or in my case, they didn’t look at you and whispered) and they executed intricate hand-clapping games with bravely-recited, risqué lyrics.

Miss Suzy had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Suzy went to heaven
The steamboat went to …
HELLO operator
Give me number nine
If you disconnect me
I'll kick your big …
BEHIND the 'frigerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Suzy fell upon it
And cut her big fat …
ASK me no more questions
Give me no more lies
The boys are in the restroom
zipping up their …
FLIES are in the meadow
The bees are in the park
Miss Suzy and her boyfriend
Are kissing in the D. A. R. K.
D. A. R. K. D. A. R. K.
Dark Dark Dark!!

When I was ten, the cool girls really liked to say the word “ass.” Like in that Blondie song, you know the one.

There was this oral tradition among children which goes back generations (see: Ben Is Dead) where songs like these were passed along without thought of where they came from or where they might lead. Do kids still recite "Miss Suzy" while clapping, or jumping rope?

Regardless, I am thinking of composing some verses for this thing I'm working on. I think it will be fun!

River Bay Day Camp, 1963
Cleveland Memory Project

Euclid-77th Street Theatre

During the 1930s and 40s, Cleveland Play House Artistic Director Frederic McConnell had a problem to tackle, namely that his theater had grown too big for the Brooks and Drury theatres -- he needed a third stage.

After a few opportunities fell through, CPH finally acquired a former Christian Science space on Euclid Avenue at East 77th Street, a building which remains today, appearing something like a domed mosque though it has never been one.

McConnell and his architects created something unique and rare in Cleveland theater history - a thrust stage!

"I never saw a theater in which the sight lines were clearer. The stage is semi-circular, and the audience is bestowed around three sides of the stage. It is altogether different from the ordinary picture-frame theater. It brings audiences into closer contact with the players and will form a wonderful background for certain types of plays, such as those of Shakespeare." - William F. McDermott

The Euclid-77th Street Theatre did, in fact, feature the works of William Shakespeare when it opened on October 15, 1949 with a production of Romeo and Juliet and for a time the Bard was an annual fixture in the CPH season, in this 560-seat auditorium.

It was on this wide, open stage that CPH presented the Cleveland premiere of The Crucible in 1954.

The Play House abandoned this location in 1983 when it invested in Philip Johnson's $14-million dollar money pit, which left the organization with three adjacent prosceniums, each chronologically less charming than the one that came before.

Sources:
Showtime in Cleveland (John Vacha)
Cleveland Memory Project

Lou Groza

Right in the middle of the post-game argument between Frank Kilroy of the Eagles and Lou Groza of the Browns was Russ Gestner, business manager of the Browns. The angry Groza finally was restrained from belting Kilroy. The Toe charged that Kilroy elbowed him in the face.

The Browns beat the Eagles 6-0, improving their record to 6-2 for the 1954 season. (Nov. 22, 1954)

- Cleveland Press photo by Fred Bottomer

Louis Roy "The Toe" Groza (January 25, 1924 - November 29, 2000) played his entire career for the Cleveland Browns. Back in the day, people used to commit to one team. The son of Eastern European immigrants, Groza was the shortest of his three brothers, growing to only 6'3".

While playing for OSU, Groza was drafted and upon discharge began playing for the Browns (1946-1959, brief retirement, 1961-1967.) He was an offensive tackle, but also an astonishing kicker, which is how he got the nickname The Toe, and not for some other reason.

Groza’s signature season came in 1954, when he was named NFL Player of the Year as a powerhouse offensive tackle and steady straight-ahead kicker who converted 16 of 24 field goals and 37 of 38 extra points. The season ended with Groza leading the way for the Cleveland offense in a 56-10 destruction of Detroit in the NFL championship game.

- Cold, Hard Football Facts.com

In 1954 the Browns went 9-3 for the season. It was the last year the Browns would ever win an NFL championship. Ever.

Sources:
Cleveland Press
Cleveland Memory Project
Wikipedia
coldhardfootballfacts.com

The Lady

I am a devoted Heights Schools parent. Perhaps I could do more to contribute to the betterment of my children’s education, but I am doing what I can. I attend PTA meetings, volunteer when possible. I cannot describe the joy I felt being able to bring the GLTF School Residency Program, to which I have devoted the past ten years of my life, to a school where my own child could experience it.

My daughter and my taxes go to Noble Elementary School.


Noble Elementary c. 1960
Last year when she was in first grade I heard there was going to be a Black History Month program, featuring a short play. Even then I began trying to come up with an idea for a play I could write which would be suitable, from the point of view of appropriate, and entertaining, and worthwhile content -- as well as something that was practical, that ten year-old could memorize and perform on a minimal (non-existent) budget.

What emerged is my new ten-minute play, The Lady. If the subject is Black History, then I didn’t just want to write about slavery, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass or anything like that. Not that these stories aren’t important, they are. But I was reminded of my daughter’s American Girl dolls - the only African-American doll is Addy Walker, a runaway slave girl from 1864. No South Side Chicago girl doll from 1964, nor the Black daughter of a Republican Representative doll from 1994. Just the former slave girl doll. We have all come so far, and there are so many stories.

When it became evident that Michelle Obama would be our first African-American First Lady, historians went to work and discovered family history she herself was unaware of, stretching back to the pre-Civil War era on her mother’s side. Using the simple framework of an interview for my play, Mrs. Obama sets the scene for three vignettes which reference not only the voyage from slavery, but also the Great Migration and the rise of the Black Middle Class. In seven pages.

I met today with the Young Ladies of Noble, a group of select fifth grade girls, who will be performing this work in late February. They were all very excited. It was delightful to hear them read it out loud. I will be joining them several times in during the next six weeks to direct the piece. I think we are all going to have a lot of fun.

Tremont

The Cleveland neighborhood called Tremont sits west of the Cuyahoga and South of Ohio City. It is a stunning, ramshackle, exciting and sometimes dangerous downtown industrial/residential neighborhood, featuring over a dozen attractive churches including Pilgrim Congregational UCC (founded in 1859), St. Michael the Archangel Church (1888), St. Augustine (1893), St. John Cantius (1898), and St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral (1912). It is also home to Lemko Hall.

It was the site of the short-lived Cleveland University in the 1850s, a fact which gave name to the still-extant Literary Rd. and Professor and College Avenues. The neighborhood was called Cleveland Heights, then University Heights, and finally Tremont after the Tremont School, founded in 1910.

Homebase to a fastener manufacturer, the neighborhood was home to working-class immigrants following a familiar cycle -- the Irish and Germans in the late 1800s, followed by Poles, then Greeks by the end of the century, and also Syrians and by the 1950s a large population of Ukrainians. By 1954, Puerto Ricans were joining the population, and they play an important part of Tremont's neighborhood today.

Lincoln Park is a center of public activity, bounded by West 14th and West 11th Streets and Kenilworth and Starkweather Streets. A memory of Lincoln Park ...

"Sundays people would gather on the grass and benches to chat with friends or play cards, checkers, dominos and chess on the picnic tables. Some would bring picnic baskets from home while others stopped after church. Children played soccer or played at the pond that was in the center of the park, they also had a carousel and swings, too.

"Water fountains were at the corners of the park off Kenilworth/West 11th and West 14th and Starkweather. There were bushes completely around the whole park and Post Lamps that lit up the park at night. They had toilets, but Mom remembers them being dirty. Mom seemed to think there were no sidewalks on the inside of the park in the early days, but brother Mike says there were always there.

"I remember goldfish in the pond and Mike says they broke ground in 1957 to put the swimming pool in that still stands today. Swimming was free from 7 years old and up, but you had to sign in your name and age before getting in. They would check our toes and make us take a quick outside shower spray before getting through the bar gates. Wednesday was Family night for swimming where parents could come. Teenagers would climb the fence and skinny dip late nights, too." - Maria Cairns-Yuras

Sources:
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Cleveland Memory Project
Tremont History Project

Mayfair Casino

Built in 1921, the Ohio Theatre is the smallest of the four Playhouse Square theaters which line the north side of Euclid Avenue, west of East 17th Street. The Ohio was designed in the Italian Renaissance style, and throughout the 1920s it had a stock company and presented touring Broadway productions.

In 1935 it received an art-deco face-lift and was re-opened as the "Mayfair Casino" supper club. It wasn't really a casino, because casino gambling was at that time illegal in the state of Ohio. It closed in December, 1936.

The Mayfair Casino in Cleveland, Ohio is a theatre restaurant so intriguing so perfect in its appointments and subtle good taste so superlative in its service so ultra modern different and new it will entice you to come again and again. The Main Dining Room and Sky Bar. Largest and most beautiful Cocktail Lounge in America. Under the personal direction of George Pomerantz. - Mayfair Casino program

Sources:
Cleveland Memory
Wikipedia

Kokoon Arts Club

The Kokoon Arts Club was founded in 1911 by commercial artists from the Otis Lithograph Company. They were inspired by "the bohemian spirit of the Kit Kat Club in New York" and through the year enthusiastically explored "new art" (Modernism) in all its forms. The club became notorious for its annual (on an irregular basis) benefit parties or "costume bals." Apparently everything they did had artistic spellings - their name, it was eventually decided upon was inspired by the idea of metamorphosis or transformation or what have you.

Kokoon Arts Club: Narrative and roster

In 1934 they held the "Bal Risque" and in 1935 the "Bal Artistique." I wish I could report there were a "bal" in 1936, but there weren't another until 1938. The Bal Artistique was held at the Ballroom Trianon, and the Kokoon headquarters were at "the former Van Camp home" on East 40th Street from 1930.

At the age of 19, Philip Kaplan (born in Russia in 1903, came to the United States in 1911) developed an avid interest in the European and American artistic and literary movements of the day. Attending evening classes at the Cleveland School of Art and at the Kokoon Arts Club prepared him to begin working as a professional artist. In the late 1920s and 1930s Kaplan worked as a decorative painter, painting murals in homes, schools and business in Cleveland. He also worked as an amateur photographer and lithographer. Kaplan received awards in the Cleveland Museum of Art's annual May shows in 1929 and 1930.

Kaplan joined the Kokoon Arts Club in in 1925 and became a very active member, serving in a number of posts including president (1932). According to his own notes, Kaplan left the Kokoon Arts Club in the late 1930s following an incident in which a fellow member, Rudolf Schatz, spread an anti-semitic leaflet around the club. Kaplan wrote a protest letter, but few club members supported his response, most feeling it was better to ignore the original leaflet. - Kent State Archive

Members of the Kokoon benefited from federal arts projects, painting murals at the Cleveland Public Library, and other public buildings. The Kokoon Club's influence began to wane as what was considered "Modern" began to move into the mainstream.

11/8/2011 UPDATE: Dee Perry interviews CWRU Professor of American Art Henry Adams about his new book, "Out of the Kokoon."

Source: Kent State University Museum

In The Heights

Laminated black-and-white photograph of the Heights Theatre in Coventry commercial district. Marquee says "Movietone" and "I Married a Doctor" and "Show Boat; Irene Dunne, Allan Jones." Another sign advertises a dry cleaner and "surgeon." Streetcar tracks are shown in foreground. Back of photo is labeled "2781 Euclid Heights Boulevard" and "Heights Theatre, Euclid Hts. Blvd. and Coventry." Scanned image has been lightened, as original photo is dark. (Cleveland Heights, Ohio) - Cleveland Memory

Black-and-white photograph of Cedar Lee Theatre taken in 1936. Includes signs on marquee for "Sylvia Scarlet" "The Garden" and "Murder Case." Also it reads "Shirley: Captain January!" Additional signs for Burrows, The Nut Shell, and Bowling. - Cleveland Memory

Scrapbook sheet of photos of Heights High band at their home football field and at Lakewood, dated 1936. In some photos they are in lines and other formations, including the "H" for Heights High. East Derbyshire Road in background. - Cleveland Memory