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"My father wove a tapestry of obscenity that as far as we know , is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan." 

I think of my father every year when I watch A Christmas Story. I also remember years ago watching City Slickers and Jack Palance saying "That's a mighty fine yahoo boy," just as my dad slammed the back door and was spouting off about his latest injustice. I simply smiled and said "That's a mighty fine yahoo boy." My mom laughed. Obviously my dad had no idea what the reference was. But he laughed anyway. One thing I know for sure is that Big D loved him some profanity. He was the type of linguist that would make George Carlin blush. He used the seven words you can't say on television in his Christmas card. And that's if he liked you.


He also loved animals. There were many rescues in our past; a struck deer that died in his arms, injured birds (one was even a homing pigeon), a Great Pyrenees, a suspected rabid dog that bit both him and our dog Skipper, and of course the battered dog I stole in front of him that caused subpoenas to arrive in both our names. But thanks to him polar bears at the Cleveland Zoo got plenty of marshmallows, my dog Dexter got pockets full of jelly beans, and the birds in the back yard had seed to keep them warm in flight. He often said he liked animals better than people. But as you can muster from the above paragraph that bar is really low.

He really disliked old people. He refused to join my mother at any events at the senior center simply saying "I don't want to be around those old people." He often suggested that he trade my mother in on two of whatever age she happened to be at the time. If she was sixty he would say two thirty-year-olds and so on. He hated chit chat. He would tell his barber "Jesus Christ George, if that story was any longer I would be bald."

He did love one thing more than, well, all the tea in China - McDonald's coffee. You may not know this. But McD's offers seniors coffee for a quarter. It's like offering Walmart shoppers spandex for two bits. Look out. He was hooked. My mother treating him to Mocha Java from Gevalia was his only methadone. It was the one time he didn't lie about his age. He was there so much that during one of his hospital stays flowers arrived from the clerks at his local haunt.

He had a delivery system of his sense of humor that let him get away with calling the man who owned the bodega where he got his lottery tickets simply Arab (pronounced A-rab), telling black jokes in front of my black girlfriend, and actually driving by a speed trap and tipping his beer to the cop he knew. I'm trying to master his technique. When my mother called years ago to tell me that I am in charge of their living wills, I said to tell dad that I am going to start practicing on the microwave right away. He responded with a favorite of his "Moosh, I love ya. But I don't like ya."

He loved to say I was his favorite daughter. He was my favorite dad.

RIP David J. Tomko

Love,

Moosh