In its own unique way, the accordion seemed to hook up more to these older, more ethnically grounded Americans then to my own, much more assimilated generation. As I think back to that formative experience, I realize more and more how beyond all the vestiges of urban blight on that narrow slip of land, the notion was being instilled in me that perhaps the great secret ingredient to that ever elusive meltingpot essence of "feeling" American is precisely the ability to relax with the differences in peoples' ethnic/cultural backgrounds, and in my estimation, the more one can appreciate and enjoy this concept, the more "American" one truly is.

With such thoughts in mind, in my own humble way, this is how I would emotionally prepare myself to embark upon my restaurant rounds every weekend. The sly humor never failed to escape me that grounded in the amenable folkloric outfit of black jeans, white shirt and green vest, was someone who received advanced experience in performing on the accordion via the "Fame" High School in Manhattan, i.e. the High School of the Performing Arts, followed by study at the Aaron Copland School of Music, part of the City University of New York. And the ability I had to converse fluently in German with the diners when needed is thanks to an American college education (Queens College, City University of New York). Upon that occasion when a customer would speak in "Mame-Loshn" i.e. Yiddish, (in Queens, New York, it is not at all improbably to hear Yiddish spoken at a German restaurant) I owe much of my ability in that language to studies with an Argentinian maestro of Yiddish, Pascual "Pesakh" Fiszman. What could be more "American" than all of this some might say improbable mixing and matching!

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Michael, performing at an annual Yiddish convocation