My dad wasn’t a financial genius or even the hardest worker in the world, but he did make one genius financial move and one giant effort, and it made my adolescence perfect. I never really cared about being super rich. I’m not super rich. I’m no longer even living as comfortably as I once was, but I wish everyone at minimum could have the youth and comfort that I did and we were not super rich ever.
Somewhere before 1977 had to be at least two years maybe more, my father purchased a five acre wooded lot on a proposed private drive in Chesterland, Ohio, and was able to build an amazing home there. We even had a small creek behind our house way behind our house.
My guess is that we were the poorest family on Pelham Drive, and it probably wasn’t even close, but we lived there. We had the longest walk to the main road, but we lived there. We had a gravel driveway, when I’m pretty sure the rest were all paved. One icy year, my father’s Suburban and my mother’s car both slid down our steep frozen, unpaved driveway and crashed into each other.
We didn’t have a pool, but our next door neighbor’s did and we were there almost constantly. Later my dad installed a lake, which was more popular than the pool for about a month. Actually, I have no idea why my dad installed a lake.
We had a small area of nice grass. The rest of the houses had huge beautiful lawns. Our big lawn closest to the street was mowed weeds, and we never played any sport there we always played next door, but we still lived there.
Our house (7613) itself was very nice and the person who benefitted from it the most was me by a long shot. It wasn’t even close even more than my parents who had an awesome blue huge bathtub, but that was it. Before we moved to Chesterland, we had one bathroom and my brother and I shared a pretty tiny room and slept usually on bunks, which were sometimes split into singles. In Chesterland, my bedroom was so big it got both beds. I got the entire upstairs, including my own bathroom and dictated by a tirade I made one night at dinner before it was built it had Bronze tile.
Not only was my bedroom as big as my brother’s and sister’s room combined. I also by default had the accompanying loft to myself for most of my life, which was about the size of my bedroom. It just wasn’t fair, it was probably a fluke of the house my father chose to build, but I can never complain ever. My room even had a large crawl space which was bigger than my sister’s room, it was freezing in there and filled with insulation, but I had it, and since I never threw anything away it was always filled with books, comics, trading cards, stolen pornography, whatever I owned.
I had a light in the center of the room that was a big red, white and blue basketball globe surrounded by a rim and netting. I had two windows. My room had awesome banked walls that led to the ceiling. My parents bought me about 14 Major League Baseball team pennants that lined one of them. Eventually, the four portraits of the Beatles from the White Album would be on the embankment above my big closet.
My wallpaper was animated athletic figures from all four major sports, but the pièce de résistance was the inset wall next to my closet that was lined by corkboard, which you couldn’t see until you entered the room. I gradually filled it up with cut out newspaper clippings of my favorite teams and players that grew organically for years until it was finished. I wish I had a picture of it, but it’s gone forever now. A big chunk of it was devoted to Ohio State star quarterback Art Schlichter, who ironically and maybe fittingly for the rest of my life ruined his career and his life with a gambling problem and went to jail several times for writing bad checks.
I have never failed to pay off a debt in my life and for a long time I never even had a debt. For years after I repaid my student loans, I never even had a credit card and paid every single thing off with a debit card. At one time in San Francisco around 1996 I was told that I had the best credit this apartment complex worker had ever seen. Ten years later, still with zero debt, and still lacking a credit card, I somehow couldn’t even get a credit card because my rating was bad because I never borrowed anything. I don’t understand it now and didn’t in 2006.
Either way like Art, a huge portion of my life was gambling and eventually I even had a problem with it, although not to his extent.
Our next door neighbors with the great pool had three sons.
I quickly and some would argue, but in my memory solely, burned a winding path that I can still likely navigate in pure darkness by running and falling over it with a football a million times in the first week. It was heavily wooded and I fell … a lot and I bled. That was my path and there is no doubt it is still there.
One our next door neighbors had three boys , one was older than me and got me my first job. One was a tad older than me and was very eccentric. We were friendly, but never that close. Their third son was my brother’s age and we mostly hung out and played sports with him.
His name was Andy. Of course, I was two years behind athletically. Andy was a pretty good athlete I still have yet to tackle him, and another kid who was about two years younger and lived next door to Andy named Chip was a really good athlete. The three of us played sports together and Andy was the best. Andy and I owned Chip at the time. Of course, at any given time I was maybe 13, Andy was 11, and Chip was 9. Who do you think was really the best athlete?
He even has a Wikipedia entry now.
Lance R Yandell (born March 4, 1970) was a football wide receiver in Cleveland, Ohio. His career started out in Baldwin Wallace College where he set many records as a wide receiver. He then moved on to go to the Canadian Football League where he was drafted to the Baltimore Stallions. He then went on to play arena football and was on the Cleveland Thunderbolts from 1994-1995. He was one of their star wide receivers and line backers. He then moved on to the Memphis Pharaohs from 1996-1997. Lance then went on to the Cleveland Browns practice squad and was about to move onto the actual team but he had a career ending injury and required surgery.
I found this too!
“At 6 feet 5, 220 pounds, rookie slotback Lance Yandell has been hard to miss at the Baltimore Football Club camp. When he’s been on the field, that is.
Yandell, the all-time leading receiver in eight categories at Baldwin-Wallace College who played last year in the Arena Football League for the Cleveland Thunderbolts, strained his right hamstring a week ago and missed Monday’s workouts at Towson State.”
Lance was always very good looking and I hope he’s well. He also had two beautiful sisters who I was rarely able to muster a word to even though one was younger than me. They had a very nice family.
Sports wise I never stopped dreaming, I tried everything and thought eventually that something would come that I was good at. I even had golf lessons, but even at the age of twenty when I was competent at it I couldn’t hit a drive with my father looking without completely flubbing it. I hit many great drives, not that many, I never played much, mostly when brokers paid me to play with them, but I never hit a good drive in front of my father, nor many other good shots either. In my life with him, I made a par three once.
So that may well be the athletic accomplishment of my life. I owned Lance Yandall for at least seven years, which again would have made me 17 and him 13, but you know playing with better players makes you a better player. Lance Yandall wouldn’t have set all of those records at Baldwin Wallace without me! Even though he did end up 6 feet 5 and 220 pounds, while I still lie that I’m 5 foot 8. Lance probably had a girlfriend before I did too, and you can probably forget the probably part.
Chesterland didn’t start out so well. In fact it started off terribly. We had to walk a quarter mile to get to the main road Wilson Mills to catch the school bus. Later my mother often drove us, especially in the winters. I’m sure old people walked 30 miles in fact my mother likely did in the sleet, snow and rain, but to me a quarter mile was pretty damn far.
Early one day, it wasn’t and I beat her to Wilson Mills, the third day of school. We had two dogs as I said, Fritz, the Schnauzer, and Lightning, the Alaskan Malamute. Fritz was my dog though. Lightning was wonderful and forever the best, most beautiful, epic and heroic dog, but Fritz was mine.
It would turn out to be one of the worst days of my life and it was mostly my own fault. If you know anything about the career of Disc Jockey Casey Kasem, you know what is coming and you can scroll on if you like.
My mom came up behind us with small Fritz and gigantic Lightning, but she had the leash on Lightning and had Fritz’ collar hooked onto Lightning’s, which probably wasn’t a big deal, but it looked awful to me at the time, and I was upset with my wonderful, perfect mother about it. We had only been up to Wilson Mills twice and Fritz wasn’t a runner, but my mother unhooked him from Lightning because of me (of course she did). Fritz immediately ran across busy Wilson Mills and made it. He probably would have been fine, but Andy all of maybe 9 at the time crossed the street and grabbed Fritz by his collar and I still feel bad for Andy to this day.
Fritz immediately bit Andy and ran back across the road and was hit head on. I didn’t even have to look twice. I just turned around started to cry and slowly walked home. My brother and sister went to school.
My dad took me with him to work that day, and for once there was no “You brought the boss with you today, huh?”
For the only time I went to work with my father I didn’t read anything. I didn’t listen to the radio. My father told me some of the history of the neighborhoods we were in. One of his stops was at a temple for about an hour. I didn’t do anything all day, but cry. I went back to school. I wore his collar on my wrist for the first month. No one was told where Fritz was buried, although I overheard it one day. Chesterland was wonderful. It was ideal. It just didn’t start out very well.
My father was never a better father to me than he was that day.
* * *
Anyway, cheer up I lived, but sixth grade was a fairly shocking and hilarious year. I wasn’t going to Junior High until 7th grade. I went to Northview Elementary and they weren’t ready for me and I wasn’t ready for them.
Remember, I hadn’t been in a class with a regular student for four years. In that time, I never had any homework. I never had any tests that mattered. I never got a single grade. I may not have even known what the letter grading system was and I probably didn’t care either. The baseball card foreclosure was probably the only time I had even remotely been in trouble.
I got a good starting slot. I sat next to Dan, who was the best looking guy in class and became one of the best basketball players in the history of our high school. Dan and I were instantly cool and so I was accepted. I even played kickball that day competently so I wasn’t outed as an athletic misfit yet.
(Above is Dan in 8th grade, still the best athlete, still the coolest, still the best looking.)
Meeting my sixth grade teacher was odd, and she was a very nice woman so please don’t judge her harshly. Her name was Mrs. W.
So I got to school and sat down and all of our books were in our desks for the year. Now you may recall from my ode to Jim Bezdek that I did sixth grade math, all of it under his tutelage and my independent study in the previous year. All of it. And I peered down and I saw “Hello” my previous year’s textbook, the exact same one!
What’s protocol in this situation? I had no idea. I rarely even had books, most of my study material was special because I was “supposedly gifted and thus in the gifted program and you know.” Anyway, I had already done that entire book. All of it.
So never being shy around teachers, before class started I went up to Mrs. W and told her politely that I had already finished this entire book. She then looked at me as if I were crazy (she probably didn’t even know I was new in town) and told me to sit down. Records? Northview, for some reason never got any of mine, either at first or for a very long time.
So Mrs. W was my main teacher, but we had maybe three or four others we would go to for various subjects. I had a male math teacher my first day. Having already told Mrs. W my math dilemma I let it go and didn’t say anything to any other teacher the rest of the day.
Thank God for this man, who I have no recall of at all for he spent his first day giving his class a quiz. He was the remedial math teacher! He taught the lowest level of math. I don’t think this quiz was very extensive, but after that first day without anyone saying anything to me, I was no longer in his class. I may have heard it or I may have not but it was said luckily. “This kid in no way belongs in my class.” There were three math classes. Strike one.
No one said much to me the next day and no questions were asked. If Mrs. W had remembered that I had told her that I had already done that entire math book she wasn’t talking. So I was put in the middle math class where due to some lazy errors (I had never taken a test for a grade and had no knowledge about how seriously to take them or how quickly to dispatch with them. I just knew that when I was done and turned it in, I could read. So I’m guessing I spent no more than 5 minutes on anything in this woman’s math class.) I lasted about two weeks. Strike two.
I ended up in the highest math class and was of course way ahead of them for the entire year, which would be true of every math class I ever took in my life past Northwestern and into the business world. Mathematically, the entire year was a waste of time. Now the other subjects, I wasn’t as good as, but yeah the entire year was a waste of time, and eventually I stopped being as cute and funny as I used to be with my wicked smart friends and fancy teachers and got sort of a bratty lip. It didn’t get that bad until high school, but it started in 6th grade. How could it not have?
Here was my first introduction to grades. On my first test that year, Mrs. W left the room, and my friend Dan was the helpful type and opined to me that I had one of the multiple choice answers wrong while she was out of the room. I’ll judge him at his best and say he really was trying to be helpful. He probably wasn’t correct though, and he needed my help on a different question. Now I’ve already said that I’d cheated before, but usually in a closet for convenience sake. I guess I’d had tests but usually over in a corner and never for a grade. I was willing to help Dan, but my technique was nowhere near honed yet. I just looked over at his test page without any attempt to hide it and it was then that Mrs. W walked back in and blatantly caught me head deep into his paper. We both got zeroes. I can’t remember how upset Dan was if at all. It meant nothing to me. I don’t remember if we were called into the office or anything, but I’d never had a grade, I had no idea the implications of a zero and I really wasn’t fazed by it. To me it was the same as finishing in five minutes; I got to read or do something else more interesting, which potentially was meeting the Principal for the first time. All fun right?
Somewhere early in the year someone was caught with what must have been the smallest marijuana joint in history. I’ve already said that I’d seen that and had no interest so again I wasn’t fazed, but it went down at Northview like an national crisis. Probably like at least three different assemblies and or meetings, which again I either read through or got yelled at for reading though.
My best friend quickly became Billy Reinhart, who was excellent at math and a true character. He was Hispanic, which I guess I knew but never really thought about ever, not once for some reason. I knew. I slept over his wonderful house a ton of times, but it wasn’t ever anything I thought about. I was raised not only racially tolerant, but even racially clueless. One of my best friend’s in college was Chinese, but had you tested me on what country he was from and told me that my life depended on it I would have been very nervous, because I never once asked him what part of Asia he was from.
There was a family on Wilson Mills who had a killer basketball court in their barn, really nice. I’m sure Dan played there often. An African American kid played there once and we were stepping all over ourselves to be really nice to him. I was raised well. There was one black student in my entire high school the entire time I was there. Nice guy, no idea what it was like for him, I was always nice to him. I’m pretty sure Billy’s family was the only Hispanic family, but I’m not sure. Of course there were about 10-12 Jews and we stuck together in high school, but mostly because we were in the same classes and went to Sunday school together.
Billy was awesome. We played stuffed animal baseball together in his crawl space and in my room. There weren’t very strict rules to this game other than the fact that there were a lot of stuffed animals (and remember my dad ruled at shoot out the star so I had a lot of them!) and we hit some kind of ball with some kind of thing that you could hit a ball with. How fast your stuffed animal actually ran was up to you and it varied on the stuffed animal. Of course it did we were really smart kids!
We went on a school trip to Deerfield one year it may have been that year. The two kids we shared a room with were kind of thugs. They definitely scared the shit out of me. I don’t think anyone ever scared Billy. He was odd. He was smart. He liked to have fun and didn’t care what anyone thought of him and of course this was why he was my best friend.
We had dinner that night and took a lot of abuse from the two thugs. I was too picky to eat much. Billy spent his entire time playing with and narrating his dinner which was mashed potatoes, gravy and some sort of meat. To Billy this became a castle (mashed potatoes), a moat (gravy), and a lot of casualties in the ensuing war (the peas, lots of them). This wasn’t cool to our roommates and they let it be known. Billy completely ignored them as he described an epic battle for at least 15 minutes and I watched it all in amazement, hilarity, and with the ultimate respect. After all I hadn’t eaten a pea since I was a baby, much less any other vegetable to the eternal torment of my father (mom, remember as I said, they would fight about it occasionally but she and I and my brother and sister always won although maybe not in the long run.)
Mrs W, also pretty much taught the only somewhat serious sex-ed class I ever had in my life. She did her best. She had one drawback. Her first name was Gay, and she was incensed that there was any other connotation to her first name other than it being her first name. That sex-ed class didn’t discuss gays. Actually, only one other class ever discussed gays and we were essentially, sadly told that they were all child molesters and to beware of park benches and this was about three years later.
The word fag was used a lot, but no one knew what it meant other than it wasn’t a complement. My mother had explained it to me once gently, and I never gave it much thought. Here’s how clueless we remained.
In 1982, Culture Club led by Boy George released their first album. In their debut hit video, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” which we all saw 1000 times, he wore a dress, and no one had any clue that he was anything less than a man’s man. In fact, I remember that one of the kids who picked on me in home room for at least three years in high school and probably called me a fag any number of times, owned the cassette and had no reservations listening to it in school with the casing on his desk!
Also, in 1982, about half to three quarters of my high school went to see the band Queen, and I’m pretty certain almost every single person who went and wore the concert T-shirt the next day (all of them) had no idea that Freddie Mercury was gay or why his band was named Queen. The ones who did were most likely gay, but it was equally as likely that they might not have realized they were gay yet, and even if they did they might not have known either. We were very naïve, which can be both good and bad I suppose. It was a long time ago in that regard.
Donnie Iris opened that show, because Donnie Iris opened every big show in Cleveland of my youth.
So none of Mrs. W’s sex-ed class mentioned homosexuality, as for heterosexuality I had first seen it when I was around 6 or 7 and didn’t believe it was true because I couldn’t picture George Washington doing that and everything at that age was George Washington. When I’d accepted the truth, I figured out that there had to be some fluids exchanged at some point, but had no idea forever what that entailed.
Mrs. W’s presentation was pretty short. At some point she said, “You may be wondering how the penis knows whether to urinate or do something else? It just knows.” I was happy with that at the time. I wish we had Dr. Drew and his show Loveline when I was in high school on the radio. It would have done me a lot of good and saved me a ton of grief, but I was fine with “It just knows” at the time and for the foreseeable future. You know I listened to a ton of radio. I would have heard it. I would have found out everyone masturbated and it wasn’t shameful; I would have known about gays and the difference between them and pedophiles; I would have known that many boys and girls were molested by their relatives and/or teachers; and I would have known that marijuana wasn’t as bad as heroin.
Looking back I suppose that “It just knows” was fine though.
Elvis died that year. I was in Pittsburgh when it happened. My first show was the Jackson 5 in 1973, and I had a poster of them on my wall and proudly knew that they were great and the Osmonds sucked.
A few years earlier, Fonzie (Henry Winkler) sang “Heartbreak Hotel” on a Happy Days episode commemorating how easy it was to get women on the night Elvis’ train took him to the Army or because Arnold’s needed to make some money. Even I can’t remember, but no one was cooler than Arthur Fonzarelli then, and it began a lifelong worship of all things Elvis for me. By the time of Northview, I had listened to Elvis’ Golden records easily a thousand times.
I had every magazine that was put out cheaply after his death, and there were millions of them. Perhaps the only time I had talked to a girl that year was when I sat next to someone in class and she saw a picture of Priscilla and said, “She was beautiful!” So I had that going for me.
Elvis’ death was dwarfed by Star Wars that year, for everyone but me. Saw it, liked it, and instantly moved on. Elvis was an obsession though.
So anyway, Mrs. W’s class wasn’t all sex-ed, drug lectures, and getting zeroes for cheating, she had a fun side.
We’d play trivia games on occasion and I was extremely good at them and still am. It’s my biggest talent sadly. I didn’t raise my voice much and didn’t have a very fun 6th Grade, but I was loud on those days. We were split into teams. I was good for everything except geography, which I still know absolutely nothing about.
So the final question one day was an audio question. It wasn’t supposed to be a hard question. In fact, every team got it correct.
Mrs. W played the song “Hound Dog” and everyone quickly wrote down “Elvis Presley” on their answer form, every team but mine of course.
Remember I had heard “Hound Dog” perhaps not 1000 times, but 2000 times, and I knew the intro to that song better than my middle name; better than I knew who my mother was; more than I knew 6th grade math!
Instantly, and I didn’t swear much at that age, I knew that the song Mrs. W played was in “no fucking way Elvis Presley!” which I voiced to my team instantly and emphatically. They had gotten the Brad was smart thing, but you could hear all of the other teams yell out “Elvis Presley” as they wrote it down, and I was quickly voted down and our team voted Elvis Presley, which was of course soon revealed by Mrs. W to be the right answer. Game over. Only it wasn’t, because not much of anything taught in that school that year mattered much to me, but this mattered a really fucking lot!!!
So I politely (honestly) said, “Mrs. W, I’m really sorry, but that was not Elvis Presley. I am really familiar with the vernacular of Elvis Presley and I am quite sure that that was not the work of said Elvis Presley.” Mrs. W, said something like, “Bradley, you are very smart, but you are of course wrong, the answer was Elvis Presley and it doesn’t matter because your team answered correctly and your team won.”
Let’s take a moment to think about whether this answer was sufficient to me? Remember, I was mostly well behaved that year even though I was pulling out C’s (not turning in homework, which again I never had, actually really hurt your grades, which again I never had) and I was usually reading something else because I had already been taught whatever it was that was being taught.
It was ugly and I swear I’m sorry to that poor woman, but after she raced to put the album, which had no cover, back into her ladies bag, I ran over and pulled the vinyl out. The album was by an impersonator.
Put me in the lowest math class for a day after I’ve told you I’d already done the entire book, fine, but there wasn’t any (pick your favorite expletive – I’m suggesting Samuel L Jackson’s favorite, which I’m quite sure I’d never heard) way that woman was going to tell me that that was Elvis Presley!!!!
Back to race, because why the hell not!
I was accepted by most of my classmates, thanks again Dan! My intellect was respected by almost all of my classmates. My work ethic that year was known to every single student in that Elementary School. “Grades we don’t need no stinking grades!”
So, that sounds like a good time to have a charity slave auction right? Sure, why not!
I can’t remember if I chose to be a slave. My heart tends to doubt it, but it was for charity it is possible.
Most of the slaves went for less than a dollar, but there had been some backstage, pre-draft discussions, which I think were led by Dan. Dan pretty much ran everything in that class and sat next to me all year. If anyone knew my work ethic and a really funny joke, Dan certainly did.
So Dan had met with I don’t know perhaps every other boy in my class and convinced them how amazingly awesome it would be to pool their resources and own my non-black ass for a day! They also knew how funny the auction would be as they each kept bidding against the other to do it.
I was up maybe second to last. It sounds better to say I was last so why not.
About nine innocent children had been bought, in order to teach something about the horrors of slavery, and of course all the massive proceeds fueled by milk money went to some charity. I’m guessing not the NAACP. Let’s guess Unicef because we all had those cartons at the time. So far the broadest buck or lass in the house had likely gone for $1.25.
I slumped to the front of class. Everyone who knows me now and forever knows my posture wasn’t the best on any day, and for a slave auction and the ensuing work that might entail, so let’s guess I had my hands in my pockets and was staring at the floor almost completely hunched over.
The bidding started quickly as well as the laughter. I was past $3 dollars in less than 30 seconds. This was instantly the most fun had at a slave auction ever! Dan and four others were rolling on the floor as they kept bidding me higher and higher.
I quickly surpassed six dollars, accompanied by loud really fucking loud laughter. Mrs. W was probably laughing very hard during her evocation of the trials and hardships of the mass holocaust of the African American experience.
This is when John W decided to join in on the fun, which was a big mistake for him. He wasn’t stupid, ok he was a little stupid, but he saw who the winners were going to be and wanted in on the fun. So of course, he started bidding against the Dan crew!
Eventually, John W bid the proud price of eight dollars a fifty cents. Now one of two things happened.
Either Dan’s crew ran out of funds at this price, that’s very possible.
Or Dan and his pals knew an even better joke when they saw one. Either way, Dan’s cartel bowed out, and I was sold to John W for $8.50! Given inflation I had raised a small fortune and poor John W was about to have a conversation with his parents about how awesome charity was.
Dan led West Geauga’s basketball team to the CVC title in 1984. His brother, who I saw as a kid and won’t imagine was better than Dan, would with the son of their coach, Casey, make to the State Finals. Neither of them ever played a better game than Dan did that day.
Now on my Scout’s Honor and I never made it to First Class in Boy Scouts, I did everything John W asked me to do that day as well as I would have done my own tasks! I swear to God.
Two days later I had to have a discussion with Mrs. W.
Mrs. W: Brad, John paid quite a lot for you to be his slave and does not feel that you did your best.
Brad: Mrs. W, I did everything he asked and did my best.
Mrs. W: John doesn’t think so and I do not either. You did all of his homework and received C’s or worse and your handwriting, which I’ve seen was horrible.
Brad: Mrs. W, I also got C’s on the same assignments, which you know I don’t always turn in, and the handwriting on his homework was better than the handwriting on mine.
This discussion continued similarly for the next five minutes or so.
Mrs. W: Brad, this slave auction was to teach you about slavery and it was for charity. I think that you should be John’s slave for one more day!
Brad: Mrs. W, I was taught a lot about slavery in the past couple years in Mayfield Heights, in my gifted program, and we were taught that the slaves were not extremely happy to be slaves, never gave to charity, and that the proudest of the bunch banded together to resist the horrors of slavery, and gave their jobs as little fucking effort as possible at all time!
Ok, the last line quoted from me was never said. It would have been said in 8th grade, but by 8th grade I wouldn’t have ended up a slave even if the Charity had been the Anti-Defamation League and the lesson was on the Holocaust and they had a concentration camp auction. I would have told my mother I was sick that day and watched cartoons for a while and maybe even sneaked into the pool next door.
But it was 6th grade; I was still young and upstanding and I said, “I dunno I guess I’ll be a slave for another day. Can I go now?”
And the next day I did everything John W asked me to do and I did my best this time, but oh I forgot, I actually had done my 6th grade best the first time, but John W got another day without having to do his homework and we both … no lets say him (there was no way I did those assignments twice again) John got some more C’s on his homework that day.
I made it to West Geauga Junior High and I’m quite sure, as wonderful as that woman was and I’m not lying, she was very nice. She was extremely happy to see me go.
