Here are several of my favorite memories with Tomak. Several of us were going to have lunch at Mongolian Barbecue one day in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We saw Tomak walking down the sidewalk and our conversion van crept up on him slowly. As we got adjacent to him, the back passenger door suddenly opened up and we grabbed him right off the street, kidnapping him. As we sped off, the looks of shock on the faces of everyone on the street were priceless. Inside the van, Tomak asked what the hell was going on and when he saw it was us, we told him we were going to Mongolian Barbecue for lunch and asked if he wanted to join us. He was perfectly fine with being kidnapped and was happy to join us for lunch. About a year later, I was on a date with a gentleman from the IT department where I was working at Borders Waldenbooks. We were going to Mongolian Barbecue for dinner and as we were driving through downtown Ann Arbor traffic, I spotted Tomak on the sidewalk and hollered out, HEY TOMAK! He looked to see who it was, ran out through three lanes of traffic, hopped into the back seat of the car and asked, "Where are we going"? He kidnapped my date, not the person but the entire event! Later in the evening, we ended up back at my place and by the time I went to bed, he and my date were singing Poisoning Pigeons in the Park by Tom Lehrer. One year, when we were driving down to Cloudland National Park in Georgia, we were trying to figure out why his van was bouncing up and down the freeway when it was a perfectly flat, newly paved surface. Several hours later when we stopped for gas, he got out of the van and was running around, giggling madly. I don't know if you remember that credit card commercial but here's how it would have gone. 32 gallons of unleaded fuel, $75.00 1- 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew, $.99 A one pound bag of chocolate covered espresso beans, $7.99 15 minutes of sleep in 3 days, priceless! He had downed the entire bottle of Mountain Dew and the chocolate covered espresso beans within 30 minutes of purchasing them. I still have a few pictures of him from then and our trip to New Orleans when he was playing in some of the empty tombs. That was when he decided to ignore the warnings about messing with Marie Laveau and took several coins from her altar at the Marie Laveau Voodoo shop on Bourbon St. As I recall, over the course of the next year, his house was burgled four or five times and he was in four or five traffic accidents, the last resulting in that titanium plate that had to be put in his skull. He did make sure to return the coins with interest the following year and everything went much better for him after that. I miss you, Marsh Wiggle, and our crazy adventures together.
Oakland, ME