Thanks to Pop, a good part of my family has the funny bone chromosome.
We’re talking full spectrum mutations ranging from slapstick to suave joke telling. As far as I can tell, it started with my dad who went to college at 16 and discovered the sweet spot in the City College Assembly Hall for delivering hilarious whispered naughtiness that only the speaker at the lectern could hear.
So, when my son and youngest brother get together, there’s always a point where I’ll have to leave the room. They’re not nasty, they don’t fart, spit or scratch unattractively. They are punsters, inveterate, I’ll-one-up-you, let’s see how long we can keep this one going funny guys. Leaving the room is easy. Try walking down a city street with them when they’re on a roll!
When our family gathers the jokes come out. Riffs on the early greats we listened to with Pop (Spike Jones, Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer or Shelley Berman, and yes, Lenny Bruce) topped only by Mel Brooks or better yet Mel teamed up with Carl Reiner. To this day my take on longevity and grand feats of daring has a lot to do with the nectarine.
Ah, the nectarine you say? An off the cuff bit from The 2000 Year Old Man. Interviewed by Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks’ alter ego gives credit to the nectarine, “half a peach, half a plum” for his longevity, or at least 164 years of it.
Pop also had a thing for watches.
The backstory is that he had an institutional supply business in upstate New York and much of New England, all of it with Catholic parishes and schools. You name the town, he knew the local parish priest or Mother Superior. This meant that Pop could get just about anything wholesale, including watches, which he loved and gave to us at the drop of a hat.
In 2005 at age 89, Pop’s (internal) ticker gave out.
It was July, and very hot. We all converged on my sister Annie’s house and hugged and cried and told Pop Stories, fanned ourselves and took care of the obit, cleaned out his apartment, planned a memorial to be held in the fall, the nuts and bolts stuff.
Someone mentioned the watches.
At which point my nephew Jason told us Pop had sent him a watch on his trip east from Chicago. He flew out very late, so O’Hare was almost deserted. When he got through Security, there, in a plastic bin ahead of the one with his stuff in it, was a watch. Sitting there all by itself.
The TSA guys had no idea where it came from, said it had to be his, no one had been through for over an hour. Jason got the weirdest feeling about that watch. It was from Grandpa, he was certain. So the watch came along, as I guess it was meant to. More laughter and tears, as we looked at the Last Watch.
Well this has been fun, but who the heck is Archibald you ask?
He, or more accurately, it, is an honorary member of our family. For the uninitiated, Archibald Essselbrook is a tour de force joke, a supremely racy tongue twister that Pop mastered many years ago. He always told it perfectly, at breakneck speed. It never failed to leave his listeners helpless with laughter.
So, old Archie was listed in Pop’s obituary as his dear friend Archibald Esselbrook of Hudson, NY. It made perfect sense to all of us, our private In Joke for Pop.
Its delivery seems to be a guy thing, and that’s cool with me. My brothers all know it, and I guess my son will too eventually. That’s one I’ll stick around for.
Life With Horace 