Those of you that grew up with me, probably remember my house as one that always had people in it. It really didn’t matter if Mom was home or not. Our friends had the run of the place and, all in all, things went pretty well. David and I each had numerous people that might be over at any given time and whether either of us was home, it was no big deal. I’d come home after work and the only folks there would be a couple friends of either David or I. One of David’s friends that was there more than most was Steve Liebow. He was a couple years older than me and, up until he started hanging around the house, I’d never heard of him.
Steve was one of David’s friends that I truly didn’t mind being around. It wasn’t like we would be great friends but he understood my humor and always “got the joke” without taking offense. We could go off on some abstract subject and he’d get just as crude and disgusting as I would and, odd as it sounds, we kind of formed a bond doing stuff like that.
One night, for reasons neither of us would ever remember, we started talking about gross words. I mentioned that the way the letter g was printed made the word egg the most disgusting looking word in the English language. We used the word egg in every possible way; laughing like fools the entire time. We must have stayed at that Kitchen table until three in the morning laughing ourselves to tears with the stuff we came up with.
I had a room in the Basement at the time and eventually went to bed. Steve decided to go to the store, buy a few dozen eggs and proceeded to put large Paper towels around my room all held up with all these eggs. He had written, on the paper towel, in large letters of Magic Marker, “ TOP OF THE MORNING TO YOU EGG”. We both laughed for days and have called each other by the name “Egg” ever since.
Steve died this morning and, as usual, these kinds of things make us all remember. I wasn’t that close to Steve. I never even set foot in the famous Van. He was one of the guys at the house. I think those that remember being there throughout the years will agree when I say we were all like a big family. Not a very close family but we all cared for each other, never had fights there and just plain felt a comfort being there. Well, I guess that makes Steve kinda like a Brother. The more I think of it, I think we all felt that way. We had a certain comfort there, all of us. It was a place where friends came by and just relaxed. You couldn’t really do that at too many of our houses back then.
Steve used to walk around the house in his unmentionables, playing his bass guitar and making up lyrics as he went. Those that knew him will surely smile thinking of him singing the song “Rock n Roll Soul, playing the bass line to the "Tell everybody you know" part" and substituting the words "Tell everybody you know, you know STEVE LIEBOW".
Go ahead, tell everybody you know, I know I will.
