Another classic

Sometimes, you would call my dad, and this is how he'd pick up:

Morton's Morgue, you stab 'em, we slab 'em!

Plaques, Bathrooms, Posterity

My dad had a serious affinity for weird signs.  Coupled with his absurd follow through on any joke, it has produced some strange things around our house.

(Seriously, you might joke about how the mirror over the toilet in the new bathroom is an awkward height for a urinating man, but my dad actually wrote and taped up the sign "Objects in mirror are larger than they appear.")

He got really into this one webpage of strange signs from around the world.  The strangest one, words don't really do it justice--you can see below.  He fell so in love with it that he commissioned one.   It now sits on the driveway heading down the hill from Kenwood, confusing/entertaining everyone who leaves.

He also really loved anything that was posted for posterity, particularly when he could have his own to mock it.  One of his favorite gifts from Lizzy:

Another joke with excellent follow through:  after looking at East Coast schools with Lizzy, my dad got completely into all the plaques declaring Washington had eaten at one place or Jefferson had picked his nose at another.  He came home raving about how incredibly silly and wonderful they were, and said he wanted one for Kenwood.  The "Washington slept here" one Lizzy got him is outside our front door there now.  (His kids have learned joke follow through too).

And this final one is just a window into the man's whole ethos.  

Hi Bill,

I have been going to Berkeley Rep since God was a pup, but for some reason had never used the mens room in the new theater until last Saturday night.  Imagine my surprise to see that it was called the William Falik Memorial Mens Lounge. And you're not even dead yet.

May I buy the naming rights for one of the urinals from you? I think it's all I can probably afford. I was thinking of a discreet brass plaque right above it:

"Steven Dantzker pissed here."

Steve

Steve Has Fun with In-laws

  Steven and I went on a 3-month "sabbatical" about 7 months after we were married, intending to go to China, Berma, Nepal and Thailand.  When we found out I was pregnant, we went to New Zealand instead.  Before Alicia's birth, Steve did not make much of an effort to endear himself to my mother.  (After Alicia arrived, they bonded over their total and absolute adoration of her.)   In truth, although my mother was warm and welcoming to Steven, he pretty much ignored her.  So my mother was thrilled when he sent this postcard to her from New Zealand.  Despite his obvious and gleeful attempt to tweak my proper mother, she chose to interpret it as an friendly overture.  She knew that she had at least made it onto Steven's radar screen once he started making fun of her.    

Dear Ursula,  These little boys are Maoris, the original aboriginal inhabitants of New Zealand.  They are practicing for a Maori rite that a small number of Maori boys undergo when reaching puberty - - they hang themselves.  In the meantime they are not permitted to go to the bathroom which is why their other hands are clutched at their groins.  It seems a strange practice to us, but we don't criticze, not wanting to be cutural chauvinists.  love, Steve

(By the way, what's printed on the postcard only adds to its total bizarreness:  "'Penny for Haka' was once the cry that greeted every tourist arriving in the thermal area.  To the children of a Maori village it was a constant source of income.  Today they are at school, and only rarely can a group be found to perform.")  

Speaking of making fun of people, Steve loved to tease my sister, Barbara, who was a great sport - - she laughed harder than anyone when he did this.  When Steven and I met, my sister, Ginni, and I depended on Barbara as a constant shoe source.  Ginni and I (who were taller than Barbara) had size 7 1/2 feet, but Barbara took a size 8.  She obviously didn't like being the shortest sister with the longest feet, insisting that her shoe size was 7 1/2.  So she kept buying shoes a half size too small for her which somehow always turned out to be inexplicably uncomfortable and which she then gave to Ginni or me.  Steven thought this was totally hilarious. Not that long after we started dating, he came to a family function at my parents' house with a tape he told Barbara she really needed to hear.  So my family gathered around, and Steve turned on the tape, a recording of Fats Waller singing "Your Feet's Too Big": 

Who's that walkin' round here? Mercy
Sounds like baby patter

baby elephant patter that’s what I calls it

Say up in Harlem at a table for two
There were four of us, me, your big feet and you
From your ankles up, I'd say you sure look sweet
From there down there's just too much feet

Yes, your feets too big
Don't want ya, cause you feets too big
Can't use ya, cause you feets too big
I really hate ya, ‘cause ya feets too big

The song ends with the line:   Your pedal extremities really are obnoxious

information to share

It's the first time I've been to Kenwood since his service, and he's still all over this place. Both so nice and very sad. My favorite thing, though, is this note he left about the emergency lanterns in the pantry. A great example of one of his favorite activities: giving instructions that are reasonable, followed by a level of detailed direction that is somewhere between endearingly and insultingly overprotective.

How Did This Happen?

For a secretive dude, this is a lot of public info...

I stole it out of a phone book

Johanna's Memorial Talk

March 17, 2012

 

Steve

 

In the almost beginning, there was Steve,

and it has been so ever since.

 

We met in Mrs. Kerahare’s seventh grade class in McLean, Virginia in 1959.

I was eleven. Steve was twelve.

 

We were simple and pure and open.

We were very young.

We were different as night from day.

We were best friends from the start.

 

He gave me courage.

I gave him vulnerability.

Together we grew a lifetime –

a friendship powerful enough to support and inform

the foundation of the life that was to come.

 

We were part of a remarkable gang of four.

There was Steve, Dave, Suzy and me.

We were military brats.

We were kindred spirits.

We supplied the ground for each other’s roots to grow –

the fertilizer for each other’s minds to blossom.

 

We were miners for a heart of gold,

heeding our generation’s clarion call

to love and truth and right action.

 

Bob Dylan seeded our thoughts and lit a fire in our bellies.
He said the answer was blowing in the wind,

and together, we went a searchin.

 

Steve was our audacious, dear leader.

For better and for worse, I can tell you:

He was born that way.

 

Oozing confidence in his steel-toed, black, motorcycle boots,
he fearlessly led us into territory where no man or women had ever gone,
or so we thought.

 

Somehow he just knew everything about everything.

In the halls of McLean High they whispered:

He could read as fast as JFK.

 

 

Steve held up my sky.

In my darkest hours –

which were embarrassingly numerous in those days -

he believed in me.

 

He was one of the first positive voices in the soundtrack of my inner dialog.

He unapologetically poked holes in my sad story while cheering me on.

He counseled me to kick the shit out of my fear and grab life by the horns.

 

I think it’s fair to say, he taught me how to think.

Without him, I never could have dared to dream so big,

or question authority,

or think outside the lines.

 

I would never have thrown my head back

and laughed out loud at paradox.

 

His brilliant, hilariously irreverent mind was always on duty.

I can hear him now, bragging about how he aced his college boards and won a national merit scholarship.

 

I’m gonna apply to all them ivy-league schools just to make em let me in! he growled.

He did, and they did.

Bad Bob was well on his way to infamy. 

 

When I heard the unbearable news that Steve had left the building,

I madly started searching thru my old letters.

 

And there I found him in big bold handwriting that took up the whole page.

Even in his letters from Harvard, he said it like it was.

I think he’d like it if I read you some of what he wrote in response to my discontent with college. 

 

I’m telling you Jo – if you’ve got the urge for going, then go. Be careful about where you move to, but go, get out of Maryland. Somebody or other said that the value of a life was measured by the intensity with which it was lived. Don’t be a burnt out case somewhere in the wilds of Maryland. It’s the only life you have, don’t run it out someplace you don’t want to be. Put on your traveling shoes and go.

 

And a few months later, after I’d taken his advice and found a better place for myself at the American College in Paris, he wrote the following vintage Dantzker:

 

Sept 27, 1966

 

Jo,

 

It’s fall and school has me again. I trust you’ve also found someplace suitable to alight for the winter. Somehow a year in Paris seems better than a year in Cambridge, though there seems to be no good reason.

 

…Your travels sound great. People say it’s nice to go home, but I’d rather wander forever.

 

…My summer was profitable but tedious. My job was very interesting but it took so long – up at 7 in order to catch a ride and not home and done with dinner until 7. The only thing it taught me was not to do it again. I’m supposed to be an economics major here, but what I’m really interested in is social agitation. I’m up for riots and fires and explosions. I find it difficult to write about but: I’m violent. That’s probably the most succinct explanation of the way I am these days. All my solutions to social problems or any situation is simply to shoot the people. I think violence is a perfectly usable way to achieve social change.

 

He then blithely changed the subject to his plans to hook up with Dave at Haverford and Suzy at Antioch. He wanted to buy a car to go with his motorcycle and things like that. And then at the end he threw in some more wise advice for me to ponder.

 

…As for your parents, ignore them. You’re almost 19 and there comes always the time of the big break. Sometime you’ll have to break with father and assert yourself as an adult.

 

I hope you reply sooner than I. Your beautiful letters warm a cold winter’s day.

 

Steve

 

We went on to share many fantastic adventures in those formative years.

We drove cross-country four times I think.

I got the full force of his many sides.

 

I will treasure more than ever my supply of vivid memories

that stretch across our lifetime.

 

Steve lives in my heart now.

I can still hear his voice and feel the power

of the fierce, sweet truth with which he lived.

Ten thousand thank yous my dear friend.

Ten thousand thank yous.

 

Johanna 

Any Chance for a History Lesson

When my dad finally got a cell phone around 2000 ("I'm never going to pick up and people are going to have leave me messages which I will answer IF I feel like it!"), his new number ended in 1844. He very gleefully announced to everyone that he now had the James K. Polk phone.