The Humor of Harry Brabec
Harry Brabec
NEWS!
In April 2010, I published a book about my life with Harry as a professional musician, and the whole book is loaded with his humor. If you appreciate the small sampling of Harry’s “craftsbiz humor” below, you’ll love the book, The Drummer Drives! Everyone Else Rides, which includes his humorous take on all areas of life. This book is also a partial autobiography of my own life. For complte information, visit the book’s companion website at TheDrummerDrives.com and download the free BOOK SAMPLER you’ll find there.
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IF YOU’RE STILL LOOKING FOR that first great home-business idea, my first tip is that you should take money-making idea books with a grain of salt. Some of the “profitable” ideas in such books are good only for laughs. When Harry worked with me full time on the business, he handled much of our daily mail and often wrote funny notes to me in the margins of letters or advertising material. There was this flyer promoting a book of home-business ideas that read:
“Selling dust from your vacuum cleaner is just ONE of the unusual money-making ideas in this book!”
In the margin, in red ink–and with lots of exclamation points–Harry wrote: “BUY THIS!!! We have a fortune under our feet and don’t know it!!!”
(If you get the idea that I have never been thrilled about pushing a vacuum cleaner around, you’re right.)
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AS A POPULAR WRITER, I’ve received a good deal of publicity over the years and, coupled with the thousands of thank-you letters and e-mails I’ve received from my readers, I sometimes got a bit heady from it all. But I was fortunate to have Harry, who always kept my head on straight with his humorous put-downs. I’ll never forget the day I told him there was once a Saint who bore my name.
“Did you know that St. Barbara was patron Saint to the artillery?” I asked in all seriousness.
“No, but that explains why you think you’re such a big shot.”
To keep myself humble, I put a sign in my office that read: “If at first you do succeed . . . try not to be insufferable.”
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ACTUALLY, I THINK HARRY always considered it part of his responsibility to keep my ego under control. I recall the time I walked into his office with a review of one of my books. Of it, the reviewer had said:
“Marvelously specific, the type of book you’ll want to savor slowly, one page at a time.”
But Harry quickly brought me back down to earth when he said, “What he’s trying to tell you, dear, is that your book is hard to swallow.”
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IN ANY MARRIAGE where humor rules the roost, one of the marriage partners has to play the straight man. That’s me. I always had a real gift for walking into situations that just cried for a humorous put-down from Harry. For example, one morning I got up and began to dress, selecting a pair of stretch pants to wear. As I was pulling them on, I remarked that I never could tell which was the front and which was the back.
To which my husband said, “That’s the trouble with you dear, you never know whether you’re coming or going.” He was right. I don’t believe in astrology, but it’s curious that my sign is a Pisces (fishes going in two different directions).
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ON ANOTHER MORNING , I was looking for a shoe that had mysteriously disappeared during the night. Without thinking, I set myself up for a joke when I asked Harry if he’d seen it anywhere. He responded, “Why don’t you look in your mouth? That’s where you usually put your foot.”
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IN THE CAR ONE MORNING on the way to the post office, I had the rubber-banded mail on my lap and my restless hands were fiddling with the rubber band on the top bundle. I twanged it, and it made a musical sound. I stretched it a bit more and the sound changed pitch. Then I began in earnest to twang the rubber band, saying to Harry, “Listen! I can make music with a rubber band!”
Giving me a raised eyebrow look, he took the wind out of my sails and made me laugh with his cryptic remark, “That’s stretching it a bit, dear.”
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BEING ABLE TO LAUGH AT OURSELVES, and with each other, not only made our marriage more tolerable in times of stress, but it strengthened the original foundation of friendship, trust and understanding on which our marriage was based. As Charlie Chaplin once said, “Humor heightens our sense of survival and preserves our sanity.”
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Harry died on February 3, 2005, but his humor lives on in my book about him. If you’d like to know more about the delightful fellow I was married to for nearly 44 years, visit TheDrummerDrives website where you’ll find a growing archive of articles and photographs related to Harry’s musical life, along with more of his humor.
If you happen to be a widow or know one who needs encouragement, you may also appreciate the series of articles I wrote as I began my widow’s journey.
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