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- Papa's Place
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- Judah Bruce Leblang
Papa's Place describes the life and death of my grandfather--an old fashioned pharmacist who worked 7days a week under the shadow of Cleveland's steel mills, for over 50 years. The store and my grandfather were intimately tied into the life and fabric of the Polish neighborhood in which the store was located, and his life and death were bound up in its dusty confines.
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Piece Description
Papa's Place describes the life and death of my grandfather--an old fashioned pharmacist who worked 7days a week under the shadow of Cleveland's steel mills, for over 50 years. The store and my grandfather were intimately tied into the life and fabric of the Polish neighborhood in which the store was located, and his life and death were bound up in its dusty confines.
Broadcast History
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Transcript
Time & Place
Papa’s Place
by Judah Leblang
1975, CLEVELAND’S SOUTHEAST SIDE
My mother often said, "Your grandfather’s gonna die in that store," and now it appears she may have been right. I press the accelerator hard and careen down Harvard Avenue, propelled by the scribbled note left on the kitchen counter.
"Papa rushed to St. Alexis – collapsed at store. Hurry!" she wrote, and I do, a nervous 18-year-old steering Papa’s rusted out Chevy Bel-Air through Mt. Pleasant toward Slavic Village. I inhale the smell of tobacco that clings to anything he touches, his special scent of Camels mixed with musk.
On special Saturdays, I would ride with him to Harvard and East 71st street where we entered the dusty recesses of Harvard Drug, Papa’s pharmacy. Once he told me of his arrival in this close-knit Polish community in the 1920s, when Jews were no more welcome than rabid dogs. B...
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