archie bunker

I found out about Rob Reiner’s death on Twitter, which seems to be how I find out about many famous people’s deaths. It’s the first thing I look at when I wake up in the morning.

The first thing I saw about it was the “Sock and a sock, a shoe and a shoe” routine, which I remember seeing so many years ago. I remember the first time seeing it on All in the Family with my mother. She loved it and for years after she would always bring up, “a sock and a sock and a shoe and a shoe.”

If you cannot see the video above, it’s at YouTube here.

I hadn’t seen it in all these years and there it was on Twitter. Rob and Carroll O’Connor were so good together, a comedy team, which you don’t usually think of them as being.

Rob once said, “When you make something, it’s for everybody else, but the making of it is what you have for yourself.” He also said, “I hope I didn’t take up space [in this life].

So many obits start off by giving Rob credit of the movies he was involved in, but so many of us remember him as “Meathead” on All in the Family, which was the number one tv show for so many years in the 1970s; it was a big part of the culture at the time. Archie Bunker, Edith Bunker, Gloria Bunker Stivic and Meathead (Michael Stivic).

My mother used to cut my hair at one point in time, I don’t know why, I think I just didn’t want to go to the barber. So she would cut my hair, and we would do an Archie Bunker routine then.

She would ask how I wanted my hair cut, and I would say, “Without blood, ma, without blood.” Which is what Archie said to Edith one time when she was cutting his hair.

Then I would tell mom to “go around the back, come back to the top and trim and for gawd sake, when you come to an ear, stop!” I would pronounce God like “gawd,” the way Archie said it.

When I would drone on and on with my long stories, my mother would cut me off by doing another Archie routine – she would pantomime loading a gun and shooting herself in the head or she would pantomime making a noose and hanging herself – just like Archie did when Edith told long, boring stories . Archie would also pantomime overdosing on pills and slitting his wrists.

Here are a few of the pantomimes above.

If you cannot see the video above, it’s here on Youtube.

My mom had a terrific sense of humor. So did my dad. So did Rob Reiner.

Till next time . . .