IT’S FATHER”S DAY

And after 19 years this month, I still miss him!

He died on June 12, 1991, just a few days later after burying him, we “Celebrated” Father’s Day. It was an empty dark day, I don’t remember if the sun shined or not.

Dad had a way about him that made everything just fine, as long as he was around. As his son, we did everything together and as I got older, working, (I took over for him when he went on vacation) crabbing (He fell in once), we went everywhere together from the hardware store to my grandmother’s house. We worked on the basement and he taught me how to use a hammer and a paintbrush, and was my biggest critic. He taught me to work hard and never let anyone say otherwise. He gave me all the hard jobs when we worked together, so that today when I do the easy ones, they are very easy.

He was a big Mets fan, and later in life an Islander fan. I got him interested in reading something besides a newspaper. (He taught me the habit of reading the Daily News backward, starting with the sports pages. (The only paper I read like that to this day)

Dad was not a very aggressive man, he was kind to all people, liked company, and could take over parties by just being himself! There will never be another ‘Tony’ in my world. No one quite like him.

Dad didn’t go to college, didn’t even finish his last semester of high school in Brooklyn. He was devoted to helping people and never stopped that. He came from a dominant mother and a stepfather who was cruel. He had a brother who was younger who always tried to compete with him, and a sister and half sister who loved him.

He had a car filled with old maids that rode with him every morning to their job in the factory where he worked as a foreman of the shipping department. He asked about their lives and made like he was interested. He didn’t get old until he retired and was forced to because the place went out of business.

He could make up incredible stories and scenarios, but rarely put pen to paper. He was always entertaining, and always playing tricks on me.

Once he sent me a ‘love letter’ when I was about 8 years old signed “Secret admirer, but his handwriting gave it away. Once I was watching a scary movie, sitting on the very edge of my seat, ready to bail out, tense, when suddenly a hand drops in front of my face, and a weird screeching noise emanating from nowhere, scaring the living hell out of me, causing my heart to stop, and such disorientation as I have never seen before. What did I do? I laughed so hard: I thought he was so cool!

And he was cool, teasing my mother to no end, calling her all kinds of pet names, and everyone was told by Mom: “Don’t pay any attention to him.” But people laughed.

Dad was poor, and perhaps cheap in many ways, but he was from the hard times and experienced them himself. Although he never went without as a child of the depression, he knew what it meant to be without.

He wasn’t a disciplinarian, he left that to Mom, who constantly threatened me with: “Wait until your father comes home!” When he did I soon found out the wait was well worth it, he just looked at me with a quiz-like stare and life went on.

He was proud of me in the end, and to this day I cannot think why! I know I’ll never be a Tony, I knew Tony, and I’m no Tony.