I posted this piece around Father’s Day 2023. Most of you weren’t subscribers then, so this is new to you. For those of you who read it the first time around, I hope you enjoy re-reading it as much as I did.

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My father was one of the smartest men I’ve ever known, probably the smartest shipping clerk in the Garment District of New York City.

Irving Steiner was born in 1925 and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1941 at age 16 with a scholarship to Columbia University, where he wanted to study architecture. At 17, his epilepsy became apparent, and the doctor, who prescribed a lifetime of Dilantin and Phenobarbital, told his parents that he could either stay in school or keep his full-time job, but not both. My grandparents were in their sixties, and my grandmother insisted that it was more important that he “bring money into the house” than create a career for himself, so Dad gave up the scholarship, quit Columbia, and spent the rest of his short life filling out bills of lading.

He and my mother met at my maternal grandfather’s small summer hotel in Monticello, NY, the Maplewood Inn, where he joined his parents on vacation. My understanding is that he and my mother didn’t exactly fall in love. They each saw an opportunity to get out of the home they grew up in, and so they married.

It was not a good marriage, but there were three sons before it fell apart completely: I was (and am) the oldest, Brandon came later, and Adam after that. Then my parents split. By the way, in my brother Brandon’s book, You Gotta Have Balls, he wrote that my father left us. Actually, he left because my mother told him to leave. Had to clear that up.

My dad was not a good father. He was emotionally distant, self-centered, and often bitter. I’m a lot like him in too many ways. But he was a good pal when he showed up.

While my parents shared a home, my father taught me little lessons. He taught me that ‘hate’ was too big a word to use on people, except Hitler. He taught me to appreciate jazz by playing Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong records to me at bedtime. He taught me that sleep was less important than music or history one night when he woke me up and schlepped me into our living room because the great tap dancer, John W. Bubbles, was on the Hollywood Palace. Dad said, “This guy won’t be around when you grow up. You’ve got to see him now.” I was impressed. And John Bubbles outlived my dad by thirteen years.

Later, after the divorce, my dad took me (and sometimes my brothers) out on Sundays (except when, without explanation, he didn’t show). My favorite trips were to the Brooklyn Museum, the Prospect Park Zoo, and the colossal Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza.

For Father’s Day 1971, I took him to see The Mothers of Invention at the Fillmore East. Zappa was not Dad’s style, but he took it all in stride, and I got to smoke a joint with my father, which not many people my age can say.

He taught me to associate with intelligent people whenever possible. “You can learn from them, and you can influence smart people with logic. Stupid people just dig their heels in.” I wonder what he would make of the world now.

Dad also took us bowling, usually at Spa Bowl on Coney Island Avenue. It’s not there anymore - I believe it can be seen in the movie Lords of Flatbush. But I digress. It was bowling where my father taught me his most important lesson.

He had great form. Watching my father take three steps and release the ball was like watching ballet, only interesting. He was patient with us at the bowling alley, and once, when I was deeply frustrated by my own poor performance, he did something on the scoring pad that changed my life. He took his pencil and thickened the line at the end of my gutter ball frame. “Look at that line,” he said. “That’s the end of what you did before. Now you can do better.”

“You mean what I did before doesn’t count?” I asked.

“No - it all counts. But you’re not stuck in it anymore. It’s new from this frame on.”

That lesson has been the key to survival, the key to thriving, and the key to every reinvention of my life, from dropout to successful educator, from addiction to recovery, from lousy husband to loving husband, and from selfish self-centered dad to a pretty good grandpa.

My father died in the summer of 1973 at the age of 48. He had decided, against his son’s advice, to stop taking phenobarbital. Even I knew you can’t stop taking barbiturates without weaning. I was eighteen. I haven’t bought a Father’s Day card in fifty years. God knows I miss him.

It all counts, but you’re not stuck in it anymore. It’s new from this frame on.

Thanks, Dad.

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