Papa Winkler joins Zoe and he's giving her a hard time about her once very untidy lifestyle.
He shares all about the famous family's heritage, including their special holiday traditions and details what it was like for his family living in Germany when the Nazi's invaded.
You are listening to What in the Winkler and iHeartRadio podcast. Hello and welcome back to another episode of What in the Winkler with another guest, a regular Henry Winkler.
Hi, Hi Dad, I'm so happy to be here, so.
Happy you're here. Thank you for saving me. Mom is still out of town and you're my guy.
Hey.
Hey, yeah, I know you have a lot of things to do, and I'm really grateful that you.
Yeah, but this is fine to do this thing. This is fun.
It is fun. I like just talking to you. And also what's so incredible about this opportunity is that I'm going to have these memories for the rest of my life on tape with you and with Mom, which is such a beautiful thing.
Yeah, truly. Yeah, I'm very proud of you that this exists and you're so good at it.
Well, I'm proud of you because without you, baby, it wouldn't Oh, it's a real wow. Just remember that we both we both we both gave.
We gave gave at the office.
Okay, So I think this week what I really was thinking about and what I've been thinking about is the holiday season, because I cannot believe we're already at that time.
It goes so fast, and the older you get, the faster it goes.
I feel like I'm getting there. I mean I'm forty four. Yeah, I'm getting up there.
I'm forty nine. That's You're amazing, Yeah you are.
It's crazy. I can't believe, Like, would this week called mid forties.
Your mid forties? Yeah?
Jesus. Okay, So anyways, what I wanted to talk about was specifically we talked about this. I think like when the first time you were on the episode was this week is Thanksgiving, right, And I am so excited because tomorrow actually we do stuffing day here, right, which is my favorite day of the year.
You know what, It reminds me of the pioneer days. All of the women in the family and friends are so boys, so boys, your sons, but all of the women in the family and their friends and your sons come and in our kitchen make stuffing.
That's right, And it's Nanna's recipe, right, it's my mom's mom's recipe, right, and.
My with and without sausage, within without sausage.
So we do one with sausage, one without one vegetarian.
But smell in the house is to die.
For but that that day is one of our main traditions that I can for as long as I can remember. And Thanksgiving is my very very very favorite holiday me too. And I love the food. But I also think it's the coziest holiday mm hmm, because like it gets a little bit cooler. I mean we are in Los Angeles, so it's not freezing, but usually it gets cooler. And the colors, the colors, and it's family, it's all. It's the whole family together, eased.
To have in our backyard, stragglers who didn't have a place to go. Family. So there ended up to be fifty or sixty people at a at a circular or at a you shaped table, and then everybody got a chance to say what it is they were grateful for at that moment in that year.
And do you remember, and I remember, you would put our artwork all over the time.
I loved it. I saved every bit of your artwork, thinking the kids will love to show their kids idea their artwork. Nothing it's in boxing, I take it you.
First of all, you've dropped off every box at my home. I have a much smaller home than you, so it is not as easy to house, all of that, but I have You've dropped it all of the my house, and I save all of it and I love it, and I save my kids stuff. Oh yeah, but that to me, Thanksgiving here is just like the best holiday ever and it's still to this day, seventy five people.
Yeah, and and delicious. I mean it really does taste like you dream Thanksgiving detection.
I think so too.
But I did love putting all three of your artworks on the table, and that was the decoration.
Yeah, it was. I mean, I remember there's a home and you also took home videos of every single thing, so you would take you took a home video. I don't remember where it is. We have to find it somewhere. We'll find it. Yeah. Of me sharing with the entire table for way too long, going on for way too long. Someone should have cut me off about my artwork at the table, and I loved going around and saying what we were thankful for.
You were always a good talker, I.
Really, I agree. And then this year I'm with my husband's family, which I also love, and it's right up the street.
Right and only right that you should switch off.
Yeah, we switch off every year, but this year actually, Ace is going to cook the mac and cheese and the mashpapers.
Let's talk about Ace. He I'm going to be thirteen and just a month or two one month. He is in his soul a chef he is. He loves food. He knows how to make food. When you take a picture of him cooking, he looks like all of those chefs you see in magazines.
He loves it and he's thirteen. Such a passion for it. And I was looking through all these videos, like all the videos on my phone because I'm getting ready to have a big celebration for him, and we're going to show a video and it goes back his cooking videos go back to when he was five.
Years old, when we babysat for the three boys. Ace woke up, came to my side of the bed and said, you know, I'm up breakfast. I said, okay, what would you like for breakfast? He said pancakes. I said, I am so sorry, I don't know how to make pancakes. Really, he said, don't worry, and naked, he walked through the house, took the little stool at his sink so that he could reach up and brush his teeth, dragged it across the house to the stove, lit the stove and made chocolate chip pancakes that were unbelievable.
It's so cute because he spends the night now at his best friend River. He spends the night there, and the mom sent me a picture the other day of Ace making breakfast for everybody, And then at Zoo's house, same thing showed us, like, you know, lauren'sent. My friend Lauren sent me a picture of him making breakfast the next morning. It's such an amazing skill, honestly, because he also loves sports, and he loves music, and he loves so many things. But you can just see that this is his.
But one day, two years ago, let's say he was here. He came I picked him up at school and we came here instead of going right home. And he was hungry, and he went into the pantry and he found ramen noodles and he made Ramen noodles. And then he went about making the ramen noodles tasty, and he would add stuff. He would say, no, you know what it needs a and then he would find whatever I thought it needed. He would add that to the mix until he said they're ready, and they were delicious. They were They were delicious. It's not like he just likes it. He lives it, He imagines food.
He does well. Just like our family has a big Thanksgiving, so do the rhinuses. Yeah, that's like again, I think it's like forty seven people, right, And so Ace is in charge and we're all helping, and Ace is in charge of I'm going to do the stuffing here on the stuffing day, and Ace is going to make the mac and cheese and the mashed potatoes for the entire dinner, which I think is really exciting. And he's excited. I'm excited. I'm not excited for the way my kitchen's going to look. Will deal, Yeah, isn't He hasn't mastered the cleaning up part.
Well, you know what that that happens usually at about thirty two, Yeah, thirty two, all of a sudden something kicks in and goes I probably should hang up my clothes.
But one thing about me is that I am insane about cleanliness.
Not when you lived here, but as soon as you moved into.
Your own adult which which tracks I was then obsessed with cleanliness.
And how old were you when you finally moved out of your dad.
I don't really feel like that's a necessary conversation.
Oh, I say, well, okay, so I know, okay, But I want to say.
I went to college in Wisconsin. I came home after two years. I really I wanted to be home. I had a boyfriend. I missed home. Right, you should have never let me come home by the way, right, Okay, So then I came home.
Then what now you tell me we should never have led you come home.
Then I went to Lila Marry Matt Universe classes?
Did you take a year been for this?
This was in our first episode?
It was no, I wasn't.
I'm not a great second episode, I'm not great in school anyways. I then moved out into an apartment my roommate sticking and screening, you know, the first the first one I liked the first apartment. My roommate went to rehab. I had to come up. Then I came home because I didn't want to be in that apartment by myself.
I came home.
Then I loved being home, which is such a beautiful thing.
Nice it was.
And you mom said like, this is not okay? And I my room is right next to your room, Yes it is. And your TV is right against the true of my bed.
We do listen to the TV.
You guys are fucking deaf, and you listen to it so loud at all hours of the night. At all hours of the night.
Mom insists that the TV stay on so when she wakes up she doesn't have to figure out the changer.
Right, So every night I would be like, turn it down, and you'd be like, get your own apartment right now.
Max stays here sometimes with his wife Jesse and their babe, and he too comes in and said, could you turn it's wild?
It's actually wild, but.
We know that this is here. Here's a great thing about it. No, Mom, and I can actually hear what's on the TV. That's great.
I love that. But I was thinking, thank you, you should have gotten like earphones to just like watch and hear so that I wasn't kept awake.
That would have been thoughtful.
And at the time Max would have friends over, Oh my gosh, Max. All Max's friends still talk about how I would just come out of the room and scream over the banister. Shut up.
Yeah no, there was nothing banshee about you.
Yeah, yeah, well I was so not like that.
Well, no, because you know what, it's like, I really loved that at the holidays at the Winklers, everybody's friends were invited. Yeah, it didn't matter.
And the mean now even now, if I like Ace made an amazing friend in the Griffins, an amazing friend, and their whole family's in Chicago in elementary school. Now they're still friends. They're in seventh grade, and they've come to our Thanksgiving, Like, you know, it's just so avy and Miles so like it's the best. So it's just so nice that.
Like I met av when she was four, she wrote me notes, Yeah.
She so, but it's so nice. And then the next day we do Thanksgiving like a Thanksgiving lunch for and all of our friends caught and the boys play football outside and it's wonderful. It's the best, and it's just my favorite holiday. I love everything about it.
I do too, you know what, I could never have a Christmas tree. My parents were very short Germans who escaped Nazi Germany, and there was a pall over the house. We lit the minora with friend. It means it was no joy in my apartment. Growing up in New York City did it so differently, And then I came out here. I met mom, I met your mom.
But we were never allowed to have a.
No, because I could not. I couldn't have a Christmas tree. Tell now it's the front.
Tell now all these tell Now I went as soon as I lived, when you made me move out, then what did you get?
We got a Christmas tree celebration. But we got it in July.
It's like a ten foot Christmas tree. Thirteen okay, thirteen, yeah, that's right.
Ten would be affordable. The I'm not kidding.
And what's so amazing about it is beautiful Mom puts has like this has all these ornaments, yes, and they're all personalized. So like there's a Paul Bunyan one that's rob. There's a caviar one that's me. That's right, there's a ballet one, there's a dance.
One, there's Meanwhile, I just saw our granddaughter, our oldest granddaughter, in her musical at her high school Mia.
Oh my good, very talented.
It was like there was a beacon of light that just followed her around and she was in the back row of the chorus because she was she just has it. She's oh, she has.
Has it right, Wow, that's amazing.
And then her sister or her younger sister is a dancer with like a vengeance. There is a power that comes out of that little body. Holy Molly.
Okay, moving on. Okay, So then also it's not on the subject.
Oh so then, well isn't it interesting? It's interesting. No, it doesn't have to be about an ornament. But there is an ornament on our tree for every single time, for every single child.
And for every adult too, and or five or six. And there's many Fonzie ones.
I got them in the mail from fans.
I love them and as it's where's the fanzi? Yeah?
And and they were they were put out by a Hallmark Oh yeah, do we get any.
Money for that? No, that's disappointing anyways. So now you know what would be beautiful Christmas tree? And we celebrate Christmas. When we were little, we'd go to Hawaii every year for.
Christmas, right when there was happy days money, right.
And then you guys would mom would send ahead our stockings.
Yes, we would send nineteen boxes ahead. Yeah that's true, right, not just stockings, every gift.
So let's let's let's really go back and wonder why I am who I am? What came first? The chicken or the egg, the nineteen boxes in Hawaii? How am I supposed to live any different?
Yes? Right, that's true. Nobody else except for me seize the problem. Yeah, I did say to Stacy your mom one of those Christmases, I said, we have Look, we have nineteen bags.
Really you would let us each bring a friend to Hawaii too?
Yes? Okay, but we had nineteen bags. But that was just the winklers. Do you think we wear all of that stuff?
Question all the time?
Do you think we can cut down? And the next year we had eighteen.
So there you go. She listened. Every single time I travel with Rob, the anxiety I feel when we get to the airport and they weigh the bag is insurmountable, Like I, so I got to travel.
There's a solution to that, you know, put less in the bag, put less bags in the bags.
Put less? Well, no, because I need the option.
The option. You're in a bathing suit.
A nice right, Well, I don't like to Just sorry, I don't like to just walk around in a bathing suit all day. I need and also like it's more expensive to do laundry, so I'd rather just bring a lot of choices.
Oh, that's what it is. Your saving us.
Literally, he has the same conversation with me, and then he's like, well, I'm the one that has to carry it. First of all, the bag has wheels, so he's not carrying anything.
Second of all, Like, no, but you know what it is. It's not carrying it physically, it's keeping track of it. It's making sure it gets on the plane. It's making sure it gets off the plane. It's making sure it gets in the extra van. We have to rent for the bags alone. Okay, Wow, that's a big responsibility. Wait.
I felt traveling by myself last two a couple of weeks ago, where I could just like put my suitcase on there and just let my freak flag fly. Was you have? I felt so free.
When you're traveling by your life. I did.
I did. It felt so good.
But try not to do it when you're traveling.
It depends if you're going hot weather cold weather.
You know, it's just well Hawaii is mostly hot.
Yeah it is, that's true, but you never know it could.
Have a cold friend, so you pack a sweater.
Well that was a great tradition, and we actually just started doing that tradition again. Yes, last year we got to go this year.
We're not going because mortgage.
No, because Jesse's having a baby. Oh yeah, Jesse, my sister in law, Max's wife is having her second baby. Yes, and I'm so excited. And I get to be in the room for the birth.
Yeah, you were there the first time I was.
I was her doula, and and and.
The first time. It was during the pandemic. And because you were in the room, they would not allow the grandparents to go up and see their grand chi.
They did think that maybe if you showed your face they would break the.
Did I show my face? They did, and they did not bring I want to tell you, I showed my nipp I did everything.
You were so sad. You were so sad. The only other place that didn't work was didn't typhung one time?
And they didn't care that I was not one bit famous.
And I was. That was the first time I'd ever seen it. It was the first time that's never happened before. Welcome yours and didn't typhon.
Yes. All of the people who were working at desks now are younger. And they watched Barry.
That was a hip show.
They watched Barry. They didn't watch Barry, but the Fawns was the one that was so universal. And that is like my wife would say, if we got into trouble, show the show your face. Now it's can I see your license? Sir?
Wait? But you know what Ace and I started watching. Ace is watching the entire like all the seasons of Arrested Develot.
Do you know that? Isn't that wonderful?
Yeah? So at night, when after I put Gust to bed, which takes anywhere from an hour to four, I come into my room, Jewles goes to bed, easy peasy, and Ace is in our bed watching Rested Development. Yeah, he watched Modern Family and now he's under rest.
That makes me I wasn't on Modern Family.
I know it's over, but he's watching Arrested develop Wow. Yeah, so cute.
That makes me happy.
I think for every holiday we do it here, every single like Easter we do here. We do like an East d egg hunt. We do the only passover we do at my in laws. That's their holiday, right and we all you guys all come and all the kids do yep. And my father in law dresses up in a costume called Offye coman Man and.
He's an Affie coman. For those of you who don't know, is the middle matta on the table. It is broken in half and hidden. H And then all of the children spend right after the meal spend all of their time looking for that piece of matza, and the one who finds it gets a prize.
And then my favorite part of it is every single person is given a passage to read. And when you do it, it is literally like you are doing a monologue.
Is that true?
Yes? And I film it every year and I put it on my Instagram and it is to die for.
Thank you.
I'm going to find it.
Well, you know why I want something. Let me just say I literally cannot read and it is hard for me, so that I can read it and read it with gusto.
It is Gusto is the word.
Now? Can I just can I brag?
Absolutely?
Okay? It's holiday time. Yeah, my memoir being Henry. Can I say this is out in pay paper back, so you now have a pay a bendable buddy. We love that, okay. And our thirty ninth Lynn Oliver and I our thirty ninth children's novel for emerging readers called Detective Duck. She is a little duckling who dreams about being a detective great and also an environmentalist. I love that for that duck, and they are I think would be amazing gifts.
Beyond bless that duck.
Thank you.
You know. Actually, Gus brought in that book for his class with the duck, the detective Duck. He brought it in for his first grade class, and he said to all and then apparently this is another good story. So at the country Mart there's a bookstore there, Yes, and Gus went with my incredible nanny Emily to the country Mart to have lunch, and he walked into the Gus love's older girls. He just thinks that they're the coolest. So he saw all these older girls in the bookstore. They were looking at books, and he went and found your memoir and said this is my papa. And they didn't believe him. And he was so upset that they didn't believe him, and so he came back and he said, Emily, you have to go in there and you have to tell them that that's my papa. So Emily went into the bookstore and she said, yes, it's it's the papa. And they were like, oh my gosh. We thought he was joking. It was so cute. He's figuring it out at a young age, how he gets the ladies.
Yeah, but can I just say that story warms my heart.
I'm so happy.
Yeah, because you never know what is affecting them. You know, you don't really see what I do for a living in their daily life, except that one day I did come to your house because you really celebrate Halloween.
Oh my gosh, Halloween is our.
And Ace the oldest, Yeah, was dressed as the Fawnds, and I could not contain myself. I think I wet my pants.
Okay, Well, the best part was is that eight. Rob always likes to like match and Rob was like, I'm so uncomfortable that I'm dressed as your father, like because Rob was also the Fons and Rob wanted to cry. He was like, I'm dressed as your father. This is some weird shit. And I was like, enjoy but his was more like a Danny Zuka. Weren't you supposed to be Danny? Weren't you supposed to be in Greece?
I was asked, I was asked to be Danny Zuko, but I thought I've already done the Fonds for ten years, I will be completely type cast. Yeah, and of course not thinking right clearly because I was typecast and I could have done the movie. But John Travolta was amazing.
He was he did great.
I mean he was even in his commercials now, his holiday commercials today, he's amazing.
Never seen them, but I'm sure, yeah, he's dressed great. I love that. I'm trying to think what other holiday things we do. We always have bagels on Christmas morning.
I don't know that I do. Yeah, okay, we do.
When we open the gifts. Can come here really early.
In the morning, right, leave a mess. Yeah, have bagels. Yeah, and have bagels.
I remember we learned the hard way because we were always out of town for the holidays. So a couple like I don't know, maybe like five years ago, we weren't out of town, and so we came here in the morning and we tried to get bagels, and every single thing is obviously close. And now we get them the day before pro tip. But I'm sure everybody already knows that.
Yeah, a morning tip. Yeah, you know, we're celebrating Christmas. When I finally understood that it's probably okay to have a tree, especially one that smells so beautiful in the world and is made with such care and beauty. I don't see it as a religious symbol. I just the the idea of Christmas and snow and sleigh bells and the music, you know, just I actually I love it. I do too, and we also like the minora and at.
Queen, I make incredible lock cou do and I just can like I turn them out, I make like.
Right, you want to bring some over?
Yeah, okay, I'll make them at my house so they don't smell bad here because the oil, that's what that's the only thing that happens, is like when you make the lakas, the.
Oil take to get rid of that smell.
I don't know, Like I open and it's okay in the fan, No, but I I love making lakas. And we celebrate Hanuka too.
Oh my god. A potato pancake with either apple sauce or sour cream or both, you know.
It's even better.
Shocking.
So one of my best friends owns a caviar company called row Yes, and it's a sustainable caviar company and.
A what does that mean, I don't know.
A loaca with crem fresh or sour cream and a little bit of row. Caviar is to die.
Now do you think that? What? What about the people who are listening who cannot have cave.
Get cavia at the market, Like it's yeah, it's like you can get it. You can get any kind of caviar. Actually, Bethany, that Frankel, she was a housewife. Yes, I remember, he gets tobiko. She's like taken over TikTok by storm. She gets like these like they're like crunchy fish eggs and they're actually really good and they're ten dollars.
Oh wow.
Yeah. You have a publisher, your publisher who travels with you when you do book tours.
Christine.
I'm obsessed with her.
I am obsessed with her.
She travels with you and Mom, I cannot imagine. I heard you guys talking much order, and I was like, this woman deserves a medal of sorts.
That was the that she travels with us for the memoir.
She's amazing.
Yeah, she all over the United States.
I know it's amazing.
It's available.
Do you think you're going to write an your bendable buddy, Will you write another memoir?
No? I don't think so.
You think you could do a memoir part two, you.
Do, and what would it be? It would be all about me? Yeah, I kind of had the feeling now.
It would be all about like now, like these years, ever since, ever since when the memoir one stopped, memoir too about like.
Now, it's only a year worth of life, and it's a.
Lot of life, a lot of life, a lot of life. It is true, it's a tremendous amount of life.
Yeah, that is true.
You know what, I do think you should write a book about them, his being a grandparent and a parent, really, because I think it's pretty interesting that you had kind of an abusive, verbally abusive childhood.
Yeah, you could take kind of out.
Okay, So I didn't know. Okay, So I mean I do know, but I didn't know if that was an okay thing to say.
Do you remember when my father was talking to you and said something he slapped to you, and no, you slapped him first, and he he slapped you back. What you do? I said, Dad, you probably don't want to slap my daughter. But I slashed It was free.
Yeah, I remember Opie slapped me. I thought the story was he slapped to me and I slapped him back. But apparently I slept him first.
Good to know, I think.
So I've been telling the story all.
Right, and then I said, you probably don't want to.
Slap my daughter, And then what happened, And.
Then I don't think he ever did great. Yeah, yeah, they were a trip my parents.
But you do it so differently, and I think that that's such a it's really when you I don't know, I didn't grow up in an abusive household, but I would assume that a lot of the things I do know what it's like to grow up in a household, and a lot of the things that you learn or that you that you are exposed to as a child, it shapes you so to.
Almost every day I said, I promise myself I will not be like them.
But to actually do that, I think takes so much strength. I mean, well, I'm not saying that if you have an abusive household, you're going to be an abuser, but I just mean to do it so differently.
But remember when you came in and I would be rude and I would say to you, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to sound like that. I'm taking that back. This is the way I meant to say it. Do you know that in parent did I not say that? Yes?
But do you know that in parenting classes and groups like I meet with a parenting specialist, I think it's always important to keep working on it. They say that that is the number one thing that a parent should do to create closeness between their child repair because everyone's going to make a mistake. There's no such thing as a perfect parent. There's a million times where I you just said that, and couldn't you apply it to me? No, No, it's for the child to this. It's for the parents the child. You're my parent, But I'll accept all apologies right now. Would you like to start?
Yes? Okay, deeply?
Do you remember that one time when we were going fishing and I took too long to get ready and you threw the boot across the room, but not at you, But it raised my head.
It didn't graze your head, it didn't touch you.
One time you threw deodorant when the room. I do that time, I don't remember.
I don't remember that.
The amount of times you've gotten mattered literally on one hand.
Yeah, but I will say that when I'm fishing or when I have the opportunity to actually get on the rear animal. I was not going to say that, but it's possibly true that.
You loved it. But I only went that one time. I'm not a big fisher.
No no, but I actually.
Did it at this dude ranch and I loved it. I did it with the boys, and I liked fly fishing. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of What in the Winkler. Tell a friend to follow us and subscribe and listen. Yeah, and thanks for being my guest dad again. You know what you have next week off?
Wow, enjoy I'm going to take a nat