Abstract
Art Ledger, the son of migrants who left Alabama to work at Republic Steel in Cleveland, became the first African American taxidermist in the United States as well as the first African American to own property in his Near West Side neighborhood. He explains how the Near West Side has changed demographically over time. He discusses his childhood on the East Side and move to the Near West Side during high school, his experience as a U.S. Marine in the Vietnam War, and how after his return he apprenticed with longtime taxidermist John J. Koza and eventually operated his own taxidermy business and the state’s first taxidermy school. He also discusses the area’s Puerto Rican community and the diversity of ethnic backgrounds in the Clark-Fulton section of the Near West Side. He recounts the role of a Clark-Fulton nightclub he owned, Diamond Dill’s Tropical Lounge, contributed to the racial integration of his neighborhood. He relates how he worked with fellow community members to designate the area International Village, form a bird sanctuary, and plant orchards and green spaces on vacant lots left after the demolition of abandoned houses.
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Interviewee
Ledger, Art (interviewee)
Interviewer
Nemeth, Sarah (interviewer)
Project
Metro West
Date
6-4-2017
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
52 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Art Ledger interview, 04 June 2017" (2017). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 956001_955030.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1091
Transcript
Sarah Nemeth [00:00:00] And we will start.
Art Ledger [00:00:02] Yeah. Testing, one, two, three. Is that what you do?
Sarah Nemeth [00:00:04] Okay.
Art Ledger [00:00:05] Find out if we’re saying something. Okay.
Sarah Nemeth [00:00:07] All right, I’m just gonna begin that I am here. My name is Sarah Nemeth. I’m here with Art Ledger. I am with the Cleveland State University Regional Oral History Project, and today is 6–4–17. We are at his place of business, A & K Taxidermy on West 48th Street, Cleveland, Ohio. Could you please state your name for the record?
Art Ledger [00:00:33] Art Ledger.
Sarah Nemeth [00:00:37] And where were you born?
Art Ledger [00:00:39] Well, I was born, actually, in Alabama at an early age. Can’t remember. Migrated with my parents to the city of Cleveland, Ohio.
Sarah Nemeth [00:00:51] Really? You were from Alabama originally?
Art Ledger [00:00:53] Actually, born as a toddler. You know.
Sarah Nemeth [00:00:58] What did your parents do there?
Art Ledger [00:01:00] Besides pick cotton, they left Alabama and moved to Cleveland, Ohio, for a job in the steel mill for work.
Sarah Nemeth [00:01:09] Oh, really?
Art Ledger [00:01:10] Yes.
Sarah Nemeth [00:01:11] And where did you settle when you came here first?
Art Ledger [00:01:18] We settled at, actually, East 55th Street.
Sarah Nemeth [00:01:26] Okay, you were on the east side first?
Art Ledger [00:01:28] Yes. It was small homes. We call them ex-war barns they had for the old veterans from the war.
Sarah Nemeth [00:01:42] Okay.
Art Ledger [00:01:43] Yeah, that used to be on East 55th.
Sarah Nemeth [00:01:45] Do you remember what the house looked like?
Art Ledger [00:01:48] Yeah. Square box. Square box with two steps to it.
Sarah Nemeth [00:01:52] Two steps up the front?
Art Ledger [00:01:53] Yes, that’s what they look like.
Sarah Nemeth [00:01:56] And were there a lot of houses that they all look the same?
Art Ledger [00:02:01] No, there wasn’t a lot. It was just a small group of ’em right there off of Woodland.
Sarah Nemeth [00:02:07] Okay.
Art Ledger [00:02:07] East 55th. And then there was larger homes around outside.
Sarah Nemeth [00:02:13] Okay. And how old were you? So how old were you when you moved to Cleveland?
Art Ledger [00:02:20] One. One or two right in there. Really young.
Sarah Nemeth [00:02:23] Where did you go to elementary school?
Art Ledger [00:02:27] Woodland Elementary. It was on the corner of, I believe, 55th and Woodland.
Sarah Nemeth [00:02:39] Okay. What’s one of your first experience or memories in the neighborhood? Like, really vivid memory.
Art Ledger [00:02:46] Walgreen’s drugstore.
Sarah Nemeth [00:02:48] Walgreen’s?
Art Ledger [00:02:49] Drugstore was one of the biggest because they had candy and they had everything. Little toys, everything. So my mom would carry me up there, and that was a trip for me. It was a big memory.
Sarah Nemeth [00:03:06] And do you remember much of the neighborhood, like, maybe-
Art Ledger [00:03:13] Oh, yeah. I even remember the white mule, and the wagon, was a rag man. I remember what they were paying, one cent a pound for all the rags out of your house. So you would go running around in your old clothes, grab your rags, run out to the street to the mule man, and he would load ’em up on an old wagon when we had streetcars.
Sarah Nemeth [00:03:40] You remember that?
Art Ledger [00:03:41] Yes.
Sarah Nemeth [00:03:43] Did you take the streetcars?
Art Ledger [00:03:44] Yes, I did. And the most exciting part about it was electric jumping from the top. Yes. And we used to take it from home, we’d go all the way downtown through Woodland, to Public Square.
Sarah Nemeth [00:04:00] You did go downtown?
Art Ledger [00:04:01] Yes. That’s when we had the big May Company’s and all those big stores. And, we used the streetcar. That was when we also still were using horse. Horses too. Yep. We had, uh, we also had, of course, the milkman carrying the jugs of milk. And all the houses had the little pantry in the sidewall where the milkman would just put the milk in there every morning you just leave him a note and let him know whether you want a chocolate or white. So, yes, I remember all that.
Sarah Nemeth [00:04:40] You could get chocolate milk?
Art Ledger [00:04:41] Yes. That was special. You had to let ’em know, though.
Sarah Nemeth [00:04:44] Wow. I do want to go back to what you’re talking about. The mule man collecting your rags. What does that- I’ve never even heard of that before.
Art Ledger [00:04:53] Of course, that was a way of actually poor people getting rid of all their old clothes and making a little money, you know. Five cents was five cents back then. So they would get a stack of boxes, boxes of old clothes, and run out there to him, and then he would pay them cash right there by the- One cent a pound,
Sarah Nemeth [00:05:21] Wow.
Art Ledger [00:05:21] So, you know, it would take a hundred pounds of clothes in order to make a dollar.
Sarah Nemeth [00:05:26] Wow, I’ve never heard of that before.
Art Ledger [00:05:30] That’s what Cleveland’s really about. [laughs]
Sarah Nemeth [00:05:37] So you’re on the east side of, well, I guess it’s not even the near- What did you call that neighborhood? Do you remember, like-
Art Ledger [00:05:44] No, it was just the east side.
Sarah Nemeth [00:05:48] Just the east side?
Art Ledger [00:05:49] Just the east side. Everything was east side because we had- Don’t forget, we had what we call Woodland Market, which was a rival to today known as West Side Market. We had the biggest market. That’s how the West Side Market got going. It’s from big east side market.
Sarah Nemeth [00:06:08] Do you remember when that shut down?
Art Ledger [00:06:10] No, I don’t remember. I was out of civilization by that time around there.
Sarah Nemeth [00:06:17] Okay. So your parents continued to work at a steel mill. Do you remember which one?
Art Ledger [00:06:25] Oh, Lordy. I thought it was Republic. Not positive, but I think Republic Steel. I think that was the name of it.
Sarah Nemeth [00:06:33] Yeah, I just did a project on Republic steel.
Art Ledger [00:06:36] That’s pretty way back in it.
Sarah Nemeth [00:06:37] Mm hmm.
Art Ledger [00:06:38] Yeah.
Sarah Nemeth [00:06:38] Yeah. They arrived in ’37.
Art Ledger [00:06:40] Yeah, in Cleveland.
Sarah Nemeth [00:06:43] And you- Well, when did you graduate high school?
Art Ledger [00:06:47] ’66.
Sarah Nemeth [00:06:49] So you were, like, in the fifties? I guess.
Art Ledger [00:06:54] Oh, yeah.
Sarah Nemeth [00:06:57] Do you remember the Civil Rights movement in Cleveland?
Art Ledger [00:07:01] Oh, I definitely do.
Sarah Nemeth [00:07:02] Can you tell me about that a little bit, your experience?
Art Ledger [00:07:05] Well, I missed half of the riots, the Hough riots, because at that time, I was, so to speak, migrating to the west side. But the Civil Rights movement was taught and preached inside my home. My mother being Indian, and my dad would teach us more about the civil rights and tell us more about people who came from the Deep South, from where they were from, who were making the movement for their civil rights. And it went from Martin Luther King all the way up to Malcolm X. And it was a daily topic of what they were doing in Alabama, putting the dogs and the hoses on Black folks down in Alabama, because they were from there. And they were teaching us as children, young adults, why the movement, and that the color of your skin has been a major problem in this country. And they didn’t teach it as hate. They taught it as, educate yourself and you’ll survive it. So, yes, I remembered civil rights. And what happened is by the late sixties, ’66, I joined the Marine Corps. I left, finished high school.
Sarah Nemeth [00:08:54] You did finish high school?
Art Ledger [00:08:55] Oh, definitely.
Sarah Nemeth [00:08:56] And you joined, you weren’t drafted?
Art Ledger [00:08:58] No, I definitely joined, yes.
Sarah Nemeth [00:09:01] And you were in Vietnam?
Art Ledger [00:09:03] Oh, yeah. 13 months, 22 days, 15 minutes.
Sarah Nemeth [00:09:06] Where were you stationed? and 2 seconds.
Art Ledger [00:09:08] No station. Just dropped. Yeah. I went from one end of that country to the other, and my job life expectancy was 11 seconds. I lived with radio on my back, and every time one of our company or outfits would get wiped out, they would turn around, replace me, fly me to another one. And I went from July to Da Nang on up to the DMZ. I am- Four alive out of 140 men in one night in Vietnam. So, yeah. Seen enough combat.
Sarah Nemeth [00:09:56] I bet. Thank you for your service.
Art Ledger [00:09:58] Oh, yeah. Thank you for that check. I hope y’all keep paying it.
Sarah Nemeth [00:10:04] [laughs] I do hope so. I think everyone definitely deserves it. That without a doubt, there’s no question. During- You were in high school when the war really took off then.
Art Ledger [00:10:20] Yes.
Sarah Nemeth [00:10:20] So do you remember people leaving?
Art Ledger [00:10:23] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, the truth of it, it was, it blends in with the question you asked. It was a chance to escape a bit of this civil rights stuff and get some rights, because you were gonna get clothing, you were gonna get food, you were gonna get shelter, and you were gonna get paid. So being from poor families, the military was an opportunity to most of us Black males. They didn’t take women back then, so that was an opportunity. And if you have, especially if you finished high school, then you could go into the military and get a good job. Yes.
Sarah Nemeth [00:11:15] Were there any protests of the war around Cleveland?
Art Ledger [00:11:19] Oh, God, yes. There was even protests when I come back. I got spit on coming off the plane in California when I landed, coming back from Vietnam, was still protest.
Sarah Nemeth [00:11:28] How did that make you feel after you just did and saw what you saw?
Art Ledger [00:11:32] It didn’t, it’s funny to say this, it didn’t bother me until many, many years later. And then I didn’t real- That’s when I finally realized how mixed up America really is. Right. You don’t know, you don’t realize. You’re confused. You’re going, wow, I think I did my duty. I did what they asked me to do. Now what’s this? You don’t know. You don’t get any news on the other half of the world, when you’re stationed in a combat zone, you don’t get any news. It’s all blocked out. You don’t get anything. And the only way you find out something, maybe somebody slipped something in a letter or says something. But other than that, it’s no different than prison almost, because when you get back here, then you find out. And that’s when we had the hippie movement. That’s when somehow or another United States believed in marijuana until they decided they gotta have a law to stop the smoking or something. I don’t know.
Sarah Nemeth [00:12:35] Did you have someone that you kept in contact with that you served with?
Art Ledger [00:12:47] No, and no again, everybody died before us. So you had nobody to be in contact with. Now in the last 40 years, some people have tried to contact me, let’s say by computer, and says, I served with you. Such, such, I can’t remember. After 22 combat operations, you don’t remember your name. You know, you’re lucky.
Sarah Nemeth [00:13:21] Were your parents, were they proud of you to go into?
Art Ledger [00:13:25] Oh, no, no. It was a struggle. I come from a family of ten, I’m the oldest of ten children, so therefore it was time for me to get out of the nest anyway. But the reason I ended up going to the Marine Corps was because I had a chance to go to - I was an artist - to go to art school, and my mother was so proud that I was gonna continue my education. And I was so pissed at my dad because he would not let me stay out at 18 after midnight. So I went and joined behind their backs at the age 18, signed up on what they call the Marine Corps delay plan. So by the time I finished high school, I was almost ready to go right into the military. And then I came home and told them, I’m not going to college. Nah, nah, nah. I’m going to the Marine Corps. I’m going to be a Marine. Well, my dad was also a Marine. World War One, Two. I’m the Vietnam veteran. My son Art is, uh, the next war, the last war we just had. Art just come home eight years ago. We’ve all- Yeah, exactly. We’ve all served. We’ve all been Marines. Long story short, no, my parents were not happy. They were very disappointed. They were shocked. They said, son, don’t you know there’s a war over there? Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. We don’t want you to go. So I already signed it, and y’all can’t do nothing about it. I’m 18. So six months later, I was writing a letter, and the letter went like this. Dear Mom, they are really killing people over here. I did not think people were dying. That’s the letter I wrote home. I really didn’t believe they were killing people in Vietnam when I left here. I was that naive. All I know, I was getting a uniform and I was gonna be a marine. I know they was teaching us to kill and all of that, but, boy, they flew us over there in 16 hours, and we was on the soil of Vietnam, and that’s when I had the rude awakening, what was going on.
Sarah Nemeth [00:15:43] I guess I know- I don’t think about it ’cause I’ve never-
Art Ledger [00:15:47] You’re not old enough to.
Sarah Nemeth [00:15:48] I don’t know.
Art Ledger [00:15:49] You can’t grasp it. You will. You will. You have Trump in office. You will. You will see it.
Sarah Nemeth [00:15:54] I’m sure. Yep, that’s happening.
Art Ledger [00:15:57] You got an idiot. You’re getting ready to see it.
Sarah Nemeth [00:16:02] So when you returned home, you were spit on and- You were an artist, though-
Art Ledger [00:16:12] Yeah. Not only that, before I left- Before I left, I had served 18 months apprenticeship in embalming, and that’s where this taxidermy background- This is where the taxidermy come in at. When I got home, I was like- I won’t say there was nothing here for you. You’re like a lost sheep. You’re like, not like the veterans today, where y’all have the parades and y’all give them flags. Y’all welcome home. And y’all got people walking up, people saying, thank you for your service. We had none of that. So we were lost. We were just like- We weren’t Americans. We were lost. And that’s why we become the best alcoholics and dope addicts they’ve ever seen. And that’s why I always say Vietnam veterans are crazy. No, they’re not crazy. Vietnam veterans are mistreated. You as a child, me as a child, we’re mistreated. We don’t come out to be perfect adults unless we get help. Exactly what it is.
Sarah Nemeth [00:17:16] So you’re faced with being lost, but you have some sort of a background. How did you get that background? How did you get an interest in doing this?
Art Ledger [00:17:26] I decided that I didn’t want to work on humans anymore. From being a dropout embalming student. I would have kept going. I would have had my embalming license and directors. But once I went to Vietnam, and I got back here. I decided I didn’t want to do animals and, I mean do humans, and I chose to start doing animals and working with them. And an old man called me up one day and he said he knew all about me and he could help me and that I had been to Vietnam and I hung up on him. He called me again, this is all by phone. And I go, who are you? What do you want? He said, listen, I can help you, son. Man, don’t call me no more. And I’m not puttin’ up this bullshit. Third time he called me, I told him, give me your address, I will be over to see you. And he said, my address is 3172 West 48th Street. I got in my new car, and I come flying to this address, came through this door, and that’s the man I met that’s in those black and white pictures on that wall there. His name was Mr. Koza [John J. Koza], who was a master taxidermist. And then I really had problems with it because, like you said, with all the racial things, the Vietnam thing. And then I hated for somebody, because I was in the top secret, and I hated for somebody to tell me, you know, about me, because you can’t know about me, you know. But he did. He’d done his homework, and he said he would teach me taxidermy. And I looked at all the work in there and I went, wow, this is neat. I’d like to do this. He didn’t even give me a chair. Made me sit down on a crate, orange crate, sat there. And he starts telling me that he would teach me and it would not cost me. I go, oh, nah, wait a minute. Nothing’s for free. It’s the kind of guy, that’s the way I was coming home from Vietnam, but didn’t believe in nothing. And he kept telling me, no, no, no, it doesn’t cost you anything. All you gotta do is sit here. And so I sat at his elbow for two years. That’s how I got my basic learning of taxidermy. And then I went to every school that was available in the United States in taxidermy. And back then there was only like, oh, I reckon six schools 45, 50 years ago. So Missouri and different places. I got the certificates on the wall, I think, still. Yeah.
Sarah Nemeth [00:20:37] So he- How? Did you ever ask him how he found out about you?
Art Ledger [00:20:41] Yeah. Sun, Sun newspaper on the Near West Side here. I had tried to mount a couple animals on my own, had taken a couple pictures and wrote a little story article on me. And he had gotten a hold of that article and he searched me out.
Sarah Nemeth [00:21:03] So he saw your potential.
Art Ledger [00:21:05] Yeah, yeah. And he really liked me because he was a whippersnapper and so was I. So we were. Yeah, yeah. So he said, I’ll teach you. And then he started showing me stuff and he wasn’t easy on me at all. At all. And so I would try to go get books. And back then there were only two magazines on taxidermy, and I’d order the books, and believe it or not, him being a master of taxidermy, he’d look at the books and he’d take and go, oh, that’s nothing. Throw it away, you don’t need it. And they were showing back then, 40 years ago, showing how to paint fish with an airbrush. He took my airbrush, threw it away. You’ll learn to paint fish with a paintbrush. So I learned to paint every dot on a fish before I ever learned to use the airbrush to do fish. He was a true master, and that’s how a lot of my education went. He really was hardcore old, old school. Yep.
Sarah Nemeth [00:22:22] The true craftsman.
Art Ledger [00:22:26] Oh, he was a craftsman for sure.
Sarah Nemeth [00:22:31] Well, we can continue on. I don’t know really anything about taxidermy. So how, who do you get your mounts from?
Art Ledger [00:22:42] Oh, oh, supplies and that? Well, first of all, the taxidermy is strictly means the same way you got here. Taxi. Taxi. It’s like you move yourself around by a taxi. Dermy is skin. Taxidermy. That’s where it’s derived from. The oldest taxidermists in the world, of course, were your Egyptians who’d done the mummies that you heard about.
Sarah Nemeth [00:23:17] Yes.
Art Ledger [00:23:18] On taxidermy, most of the supplies when you started out, when I started out, you had to make your own supplies. And they had like two companies, and one was Van Dyke from South Dakota, and the other one was from Colorado, which was Jonas and Brothers. And they had your pins, a few of your little needles for ejection thread, and stuff like that. And as the trade modernized up and grew, more supply companies come along, but we made almost all of our parts. and skinning knives we didn’t buy. We took old pocket knives, and the old man showed me how to sharpen them to make a curved knife, to make whatever you needed, even to skin a sparrow. That’s how small the blade was and sharpened. And the tools and catalogs start to come out with molds and parts. And if, shoot, right here, if you look up here, these are all molds. Oh, you can’t move.
Sarah Nemeth [00:24:49] Okay.
Art Ledger [00:24:50] Yeah, well, we’ll go back there anyway. You’ll see. But I made lots of molds, and they were made out of the old paper and paper mache and plaster. And then one- They look just like a deer head. And then you put the skin over it. That’s how it’s done. All right. And they put glass eyes in it. Well, I had my own two-page catalog, and they- I’d drive from here to Pennsylvania to other taxidermists to sell the forms I made. And that progressed on up until they got into the plastic stage, which polyurethane. And these are what the forms look like. There’s the deer heads, the supply companies. And lots of the chemicals that were used - of course, most of them are banned now because we don’t use a lot of poisons anymore or anything - but back then, your pharmacists, you had to go to them, and they would have formaldehyde, for instance. Then different chemicals, they’re piggybacked off of every trade. Taxidermy, you’d almost say, have a taxidermy material, it comes from some other trade that somebody discovered that would take blood off of a feather, stuff like that.
Sarah Nemeth [00:26:27] Well, I did read that you helped invent a special technique?
Art Ledger [00:26:33] Yeah, yeah, I helped on building the freeze dryer in Nisswa, Minnesota. Matter of fact, I went there for fish school and I got there and mastered there. A guy who really was good at, he took a liking to me, and he was in the process of putting out Northstar freeze dryer. And I worked with him and helped him and done some. I done a few different inventions that I invented or helped improved for taxidermy.
Sarah Nemeth [00:27:16] Okay. Well, how about when you come back from the war, where do you move to?
Art Ledger [00:27:27] I moved to Vega Avenue, West 25th. And I got married to my first wife. And I can’t remember what year now. And I’ve been the Near West Side. I graduated from West High school, but I’ve been Near West Side all my life all my life from time I went to Vietnam to the time I come back, till I settled, till I married and married and married and married and been on Near West Side.
Sarah Nemeth [00:28:17] Why did you choose to live on the west side, if you grew up on the east side?
Art Ledger [00:28:22] Well, for a couple of reasons, and they may not make much sense. One, actually, my parents in my senior year were actually asked to remove me from high school on the east side for fighting. And so my mom and dad just moved the whole clan to the west side. Yeah. And I was fighting about a girl, my girl, another guy. But that’s how we become West Siders. And the other part was myself. I hadn’t seen the great big racial division and the way homes and the way people lived. It’s all Black folks as compared to White folks, and White folks live better. So I like to look at it that way. So I become a west side, whatever looks good to you.
Sarah Nemeth [00:29:45] That makes sense. [laughs]
Art Ledger [00:29:46] That’s exactly the way it went.
Sarah Nemeth [00:29:49] So there definitely was a racial divide between east and west?
Art Ledger [00:29:52] Oh my God. Oh yeah.
Sarah Nemeth [00:29:54] Like night and day, basically.
Art Ledger [00:29:55] Yes, it was. Yes, it was.
Sarah Nemeth [00:30:00] Could you give me maybe an example of the difference in the living condition between east and west?
Art Ledger [00:30:07] Yeah, there was, there was the pressure from 90% of the property was owned by Jews or Whites that the Blacks lived in. So there was always pressure on their rent, always pressure on that. You come over to the west side and it wasn’t near the kind of pressure even from house to house, home to home. You found the stores were better stocked. West side stores were cheaper. Gasoline still is cheaper 50 years later. Check that out.
Sarah Nemeth [00:30:56] It’s still cheaper?
Art Ledger [00:30:57] Yes. Than the east side. Amazing. Now once in a while you’ll see advertised on radio or whatever. Go on the east, so and so and so on has the lowest gas. They just started doing that the last 20 years. That is something that most folks have never noticed. Cheapest gas is on the west side, I’ve never noticed.
Sarah Nemeth [00:31:19] I’m gonna have to look now. A lot of my research is on the east side and I just started researching the west side, so. Hm.
Art Ledger [00:31:26] Yeah.
Sarah Nemeth [00:31:28] Interesting. I’ll hold you to that one. And you came to the west side. What was, you mentioned that it was White.
Art Ledger [00:31:40] Yes, 100%.
Sarah Nemeth [00:31:43] Was there a specific maybe ethnic group that was here?
Art Ledger [00:31:48] Well, no. We call it good old boys. There was country boys mainly, and mainly West Virginia roots is what was doing in this particular area. Thing about it is right around here now there’s no minority-owned anything. Nothing. Not a store, not a gas station, not a house. I was the first Afro American, you might want to say, that ever owned property here on the Near West Side.
Sarah Nemeth [00:32:32] This one?
Art Ledger [00:32:33] Yeah. That’s why I won’t let it go.
Sarah Nemeth [00:32:38] I wouldn’t. You should consider making this a landmark.
Art Ledger [00:32:41] Oh, we are. We’re working on it.
Sarah Nemeth [00:32:42] You’re working on it?
Art Ledger [00:32:43] We turn it into a museum. That’s what I want to do.
Sarah Nemeth [00:32:45] Oh, well, that’s nice.
Art Ledger [00:32:47] I want to turn it into a museum so kids can come and see wildlife and that. And not only that, we consider this area now, we’re trying to make it completely International Village, and we want to have a museum just like Tremont as the Story House, Christmas House, whatever. Everybody area has what, so International Village. We want to have a museum here, and I’m going to donate my time and turn this into a museum. And one of the reasons I’m doing it is self, selfish, because it’ll be one way I can leave a spot that is the first Black taxidermist in America. I will be remembered if I have a museum that you-
Sarah Nemeth [00:33:34] You’ll definitely be remembered then.
Art Ledger [00:33:36] Okay.
Sarah Nemeth [00:33:37] No one can ever forget you now.
Art Ledger [00:33:38] No, they can’t. Like I told somebody, in next ten years, somebody will come up and they’ll be a computer taxidermist and claim they were the first Black taxidermist or whatever. So that’s- I’m always teasing about that. That is a big thing. But you have to have a lot of love for wildlife and that. And it’s a- The taxonomy stuff is really a lifetime study. Like I told you, I spent quite a few days in the hospital. I sent- You won’t believe this. I sent home for a set of binoculars so I could look out my hospital window and watch three sets of ducks hatch, breed and make your babies while I was in the hospital.
Sarah Nemeth [00:34:31] Oh, really?
Art Ledger [00:34:31] At Wade Park. Yeah. I was gonna write a story about that. That’s a true taxidermist. [laughs]
Sarah Nemeth [00:34:37] Definitely. [laughs]
Art Ledger [00:34:38] Who in a hospital would ask for binoculars? You need anything, Art? How you feel? Okay, get me my binoculars. I was up on Charis Towers, fifth floor, I believe, and I’m seeing these ducks, and they’re going through their mating ritual and everything. I go, oh, wow, is that cool. And then they could see where the drake wouldn’t listen to the hand, and she’s pulling him, following him to go make a nest, and he wants to go make a nest near the road. And she knows it’s not safe. He’s a dummy. And all this I see it’s taxidermist. Y’all don’t see all that? [crosstalk] That’s- No, you don’t. And my sister goes, it would take you to find every inch of wildlife in this place. I said, you’re right. So that’s- That’s neat. You’re not recording this-
Sarah Nemeth [00:35:28] Oh, we’re recording.
Art Ledger [00:35:29] Can’t let people know all our secrets. [laughs]
Sarah Nemeth [00:35:33] [laughs] Well, you can- We have to sign a paper at the end, so you can say you don’t want it to go anywhere.
Art Ledger [00:35:39] I don’t care.
Sarah Nemeth [00:35:40] Okay.
Art Ledger [00:35:41] Tell the truth. It’s just funny. It’s just interesting.
Sarah Nemeth [00:35:44] It’s interesting.
Art Ledger [00:35:45] It’s different.
Sarah Nemeth [00:35:46] It is, definitely. I love doing this because everyone’s story is different.
Art Ledger [00:35:50] Oh, yeah.
Sarah Nemeth [00:35:50] And it’s fun. I want, before we go to International Village, because I do have questions about that since you’ve been so involved, I did want to talk about when you saw a change when it started to change from White to when it started to have a mix. When did that start to-?
Art Ledger [00:36:12] That started- The big fluctuation came actually only about 25, 30 years ago. We had one Spanish lady who lived around the corner, but she had been there. Other than that, all the Puerto Ricans started to move into this area and rent. And then the Blacks came. Now, mind you, this came from the interracial marriage. All my wives are Puerto Rican, so I brought mixed children, Puerto Ricans, moving into this area. And we also owned the largest nightclub on Clark Avenue, which was interracial and that’s how this area started to change.
Sarah Nemeth [00:37:16] What was that nightclub called?
Art Ledger [00:37:18] Diamond Dill’s Tropical Lounge. It’s the only nightclub with African lion rugs. Had game heads with ram heads on it. Glass tables were unheard of because it was rough. This area was rough. No bar could ever, like they always told me, no way, Art, you can have glass tables. I am- I did. Yeah. And sometimes we’d have too many people. Eighty. Eighty, I think was a capacity, eighty. And we’d have 100 and something. Fire department come down and said, Art, you gotta let some of these people out of here. So we’d make them come out, walk up by the bridge, come back into the club. Yeah.
Sarah Nemeth [00:38:04] Was it a dancing club?
Art Ledger [00:38:08] Yeah. Oh, yeah, nightclub. Yeah, yeah. Every third song or every second song was changed. It was in Spanish. country songs or the blues, rock ‘n’ roll. All night long. We changed it all night long. So you might say we made this a mixing pot.
Sarah Nemeth [00:38:27] Yeah, definitely.
Art Ledger [00:38:29] We made the change, Kat and I did, through our nightclub.
Sarah Nemeth [00:38:34] When did it open?
Art Ledger [00:38:37] Oh, it opened a long, long time ago. This was her father’s mother’s bar. I inherited it from the father dying. And then we opened that. So that had to be 20 something years ago. They had it 50 years ago.
Sarah Nemeth [00:38:55] Was it always that name?
Art Ledger [00:38:56] Oh, no. No.
Sarah Nemeth [00:38:57] What was it before? Do you remember?
Art Ledger [00:38:59] Oh, God, don’t let me forget this one. Oh, she’d beat me if I forget it. Oh, Lordy. All the days I spent there. Oh, Lordy. Can’t think of the name of it.
Sarah Nemeth [00:39:12] That’s okay. But it was the Diamond-
Art Ledger [00:39:15] Dill’s Tropical Lounge, that effected the big change throughout this neighborhood.
Sarah Nemeth [00:39:20] It was a comfortable place for everybody to come?
Art Ledger [00:39:23] Everybody. We used to say we have seven nationalities every night, drinking. Any kind of girl you want to look at. Oh, she got them there.
Sarah Nemeth [00:39:30] [laughs] Sounds like a good time.
Art Ledger [00:39:32] Oh, but I had my bad times with the councilman. Real bad times. But it only lasted one day. And he just died recently, too. He was our Judge, Pianka. He was our councilman back then. He came in and he said, what’re you running, some kind of prostitute place? I’ve never seen this many different nationality women all on a barstool lined up. Well, he didn’t realize I got 13 children. They’re all mixed children. They’re all pretty girls, and then all of their friends. It doesn’t take much, you know. And every time you come into our club, you’d see 10, 15 different, pretty different women. So. And him and I got into it about it. And he said, wow. And then he’d become the judge, and it was kind of funny. I’d go in front of him for some of these housing violations or something. He goes, all right, no more borrowers. Cause I picked him up. I picked him up like this. I didn’t know who he was, but he was our councilman. He become the judge, and so we really had a good, good, good connection there. And when I’d go into his courtroom, he goes, Art, no more bars, right? No more bars, Your Honor. [laughs]
Sarah Nemeth [00:40:39] When did- Is it still going, or did it shut down?
Art Ledger [00:40:43] No, we shut it down. We shut it down. It was an old, old building, and it had a main beam had rusted out. And they wanted to make us a deal where we take the liquor license and give them to safekeeping, to the councilman. And then when we spent, I don’t know whether it’s 40, 60,000 dollars to put the steel beam back in, they would give us the license back. And we already knew it was a political pull. We already knew what the game was. So what we did was shut it down, locked it all, the liquor, every mount in there, everything. Made the city tear it down. They came back a month later and apologized. We said, that’s okay. Yep. Yeah.
Sarah Nemeth [00:41:34] So has there been from the residents in the community and the councilpeople in the city of Cleveland has there been a lot of not a, perhaps not a good relationship?
Art Ledger [00:41:46] Oh, no, no. It turned into excellent. It turned into excellent. I become a precinct committeeman under Matt Zone for this area. My wife, the last ten years she’s been precinct committeewoman. We work direct with council. That’s how we’re able to get the [inaudible] to build these parks to. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It turned into a beautiful relation. It started out rocky one, but everything doesn’t have to start out beautiful.
Sarah Nemeth [00:42:16] No.
Art Ledger [00:42:17] Yeah. Most weddings start out beautiful. Look at how it works.
Sarah Nemeth [00:42:22] How many times have you been married?
Art Ledger [00:42:24] Only four that I remember. The other couple, I was a little fuzzy. I had four wives. Yeah, four wives, I think, 13 kids. Lord knows, I don’t know how many grandkids.
Sarah Nemeth [00:42:40] Oh, gosh, it’s probably so many.
Art Ledger [00:42:44] That’s grandkids. That picture right there is just grandkids from one son, right there. That’s from the one right there.
Sarah Nemeth [00:42:53] Oh, my goodness.
Art Ledger [00:42:54] Yeah. And all of them speak Spanish, so.
Sarah Nemeth [00:42:58] They’re both, they’re all bilingual?
Art Ledger [00:43:00] Oh, yeah, gotta be. I told ’em, if you’re gonna make it in America, you gotta speak both languages. Cuss them out in one, thank ’em in the other, and you’ll get a job. Crooked America. Poor crooked America. Yep.
Sarah Nemeth [00:43:14] Well, do you want to talk about maybe more of your community involvement now? Like the International Village? How did that idea become something?
Art Ledger [00:43:27] Well, it’s, uh, it’s mixed, mixed things. But what really happened was the neighborhood was starting to really deteriorate and all these empty houses and that. And so I started going down the block and they tear down a house, I take all the tires off the lots, you know, where they roll tires on and all the garbage, I cleaned them all the way up, go buy tomato plants and start planting green spaces, start planting gardens on them. Well, I got up to six. Pretty soon the councilman got in my case. Sorry, you can’t do that. You can’t do what? You can’t just walk up, take people’s land because they take the house down. I said, I’m cleaning the lots up. The city don’t have to clean ’em. They finally got it, then start calling it green space. I started that with all these gardens and International Village. And so we put in International Village Orchard, bird sanctuary, and about six gardens. So it was, the name actually comes from the fact that there were so many different nationalities all living together. And my rich folks stole the idea, built a brand-new school and set it over there and called it International.
Sarah Nemeth [00:44:56] Oh, the Thomas Jefferson School?
Art Ledger [00:44:58] Yes. I got the diagram for, in case one day they don’t believe me. So you. I started it, called this whole area International Village. All the signs were paid for and made by me.
Sarah Nemeth [00:45:14] Oh, really?
Art Ledger [00:45:15] Yeah. And eventually I got with the councilman and we chose up the green, yellow and red as our colors.
Sarah Nemeth [00:45:21] Okay. So around, when I was driving around, around all of the poles-
Art Ledger [00:45:25] Right, right.
Sarah Nemeth [00:45:26] Okay, right. That’s interesting.
Art Ledger [00:45:29] So that’s how that brand-new school over there got its name come right off of us.
Sarah Nemeth [00:45:35] Is this one of your gardens out here?
Art Ledger [00:45:37] Yeah, that’s our whole park.
Sarah Nemeth [00:45:42] It’s cool.
Art Ledger [00:45:43] Yeah, walk over there. Come on. We gotta- Can’t sit too long.
Sarah Nemeth [00:45:45] Okay, well, we’ll, um-
Art Ledger [00:45:48] You ain’t gonna miss nothing.
Sarah Nemeth [00:45:49] Okay, well, we’re just going to-
Art Ledger [00:45:55] African Anna. The other lions.
Sarah Nemeth [00:45:58] Are you allowed to have a lion in-?
Art Ledger [00:46:00] I have a license for all of that. Yeah, this was a state school. This is where you learned taxidermy for ten years. I just closed it. There’s a certificate right there. I just, I just closed it when I semi-retired. Yeah. So.
Sarah Nemeth [00:46:16] Was it kind of like an apprenticeship school where-?
Art Ledger [00:46:19] Yeah, it’s both. Both, yeah. And this way you could get a chance to- Ooh, the bird got in here. [inaudible] you’re not one of my birds, but I’ll tell you what. A couple more people in the yellow pages. And what happened is most of them that did come to school actually moved way out or whatever. I have one student that has his own shop, and he’s down in Florida. He was from Medina. And then I got another one. It’s Wadsworth. And then I have one, I think it’s Cleveland Heights. Thing is, most of them, they got a hold of as much as I could give them to teach them. But it’s, it’s up to the individual. Everybody has a like. And let’s say if you could become a bird specialist, maybe you don’t want to do all this junk and you can work on just for- Maybe you want to do squirrels and raccoons and stuff, or maybe you want to be a fish man. So what happens is they come to school and actually the schooling is giving you a little taste of all of it, and then you find what you like in order to pursue it. Most of them, I gave them, like, a year or two-year free consultants so that they ran into a problem or something they could call me, and I would either go to the shop and help ’em out. And the state had, of course, their rules and regulations, and being in an old building was a lot to comply with such as fire extinguishers and all that stuff. But we qualified, and I made it for ten years. And also, it’s not written or not much history written about it, and nobody knows that much about it. This was the first state school ever, state of Ohio, for taxidermy.
Sarah Nemeth [00:49:03] You have a lot of racking up all the firsts.
Art Ledger [00:49:05] I know, but they don’t have it out there. You don’t even hear of it.
Sarah Nemeth [00:49:10] Well, I didn’t know at all. No. But hopefully people will- This goes up, so that’ll be interesting.
Art Ledger [00:49:18] Oh, yeah.
Sarah Nemeth [00:49:20] How do you get the animals, though? Do people come to you?
Art Ledger [00:49:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. They bring ’em to you or they ship ’em to you, let’s say. Here’s an example. You got a guy that’s gonna go big game hunting. Let’s say he’s gonna go for blacktail deer, antelope and all that. Well, he goes all the way out there to Wyoming. Most of the hunting now is done on ranches. You pay to hunt the animal. Well, when they hunt the animal, they have the guides out there. The guides actually render ’em for the food. They actually skin them. Most of the time they either freeze them solid or they salt the hides. They ship ’em back. When you see the UPS truck come to this door, it could be a zebra all the way from Africa in a little box, because the only thing we’re using is the skin, don’t forget. So that’s probably 15 parts of the United States these animals came from that I got right here. So people come in- Now when it’s hunting season, our season here, deer season. Now we also butcher- We butcher deer for food, and we mount them. So they’ll bring the whole deer on the hoof, and we go through that door and we hang ’em up and all of that. And we also, I don’t do a lots of pets, but we can do pets, which is very touching, very expensive to do, but we keep the price up so high so that everybody won’t do it.
Sarah Nemeth [00:51:21] Right. That’s a kind of-
Art Ledger [00:51:24] That’s a whole ’nother field.
Sarah Nemeth [00:51:25] Yeah.
Art Ledger [00:51:25] Yeah. There goes a police car. What are you looking at my park for? Get out of there. We don’t want you over there.
Sarah Nemeth [00:51:38] Well, I guess kind of in closing, what is your hope for your community?
Art Ledger [00:51:45] Oh, I’m hoping that we’re able to not only maintain these bird sanctuaries and orchards and green space gardens, and also that we get together and also do International Village Museum, which will capture everything in one that I’ve tried to do in a lifetime. Yeah, it will be really, really great. That’s what I could see in the future. And one of the things that we have going on in America now is we’re finally realizing green space is so important for oxygen, period. All right?
Sarah Nemeth [00:52:39] All right. Well, thank you so much.
Art Ledger [00:52:40] Yep.
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