LouisianaBluesman

Several years ago, my husband and I stopped by my dad's house for a visit.  We sat down in the living room, soft drinks in hand. But before we could start talking, my dad stood up and said, "Let me show you what I got."  He walked out of the room, returning a few minutes later with a metal ball the size of his fist.  "What is that?" I said, taking it into my hand.  It probably weighed five pounds or more, it was so dense.  "It's a giant ball bearing!" Dad said, smiling.  "I got it off Ebay!"

I have bought a lot of useless things off of Ebay over the years.  In November of 1999 alone, I bought a Medieval Barbie; a toddler-sized Strawberry Shortcake rocking chair; and a VHS tape of Unico and the Island of Magic, a rare anime cartoon that I was obsessed with as a kid.  Though I can't remember the cost of these things, I do know that I spent way more than any rational adult should.  And to this day, I look to Ebay when I remember some obscure toy from my childhood or an out-of-print book that I might be interested in acquiring.  But my love of Ebay, my regular use of the site, is nothing compared to that of my dad.

Dad's Ebay screenname was LouisianaBluesman (or some derivative thereof), a moniker drawn from his interest in blues guitar, and he spent much of his free time on the site, just looking for stuff he could buy.  A few years back, someone hacked into dad's ebay account and began selling knock-off Luis Vuitton purses using his name.  While identity theft of any kind is downright irritating and troublesome, I think dad was especially annoyed because the incident sullied the good name of LouisianaBluesman.

To dad, Ebay was an excellent resource for miscellaneous airplane parts or rare tools being sold at a fraction of their cost, but it was also a place to find strange novelty items (like a giant ball bearing) that would baffle or delight his family members.  One day when I was at his house, dad pulled up an auction that was about to win.  This is, roughly, the picture that I saw:

"What is it?"  I asked, completely confused.  As far as I knew, I had no personal connection to UC Santa Cruz, nor had I ever heard of a banana slug.  "It's the t-shirt John Travolta wears in pulp fiction.  You know, he puts it on when he goes to clean out the car."  You could tell dad was thrilled with this amazing find - it was a steal at $45.  (My dad was not especially fond of this movie - he just stumbled across the auction and thought it would be cool to have.)   A few weeks later, when dad got the shirt in the mail, it was tiny, a miniature shirt, possibly 3T.  Dad tried to play off the purchase, claiming he had acquired it for his grandson Cole, but I actually think he bought the thing without even reading the description of the item.  Had dad bought the shirt for Cole, though, I wouldn't have been surprised - dad frequently used ebay to buy gifts for those he loved (his giftgiving being a topic for another day, another post).

Dad bought so much stuff off of Ebay that UPS visited the house on an almost daily basis.  One day, when I arrived at the house, I noticed he had taped a sign to the door that read something like, "UPS and FedEx - Ok to drop off."  In all fairness to dad, many of his purchases were airplane related and would serve some useful purpose.  But that still doesn't change the fact that he got so many packages he couldn't even be home often enough to receive them.

But Dad also did his fair share of selling on Ebay, too.  At least, I know his intention was to sell all of the strange collectibles I had acquired over the years  (including the aforementioned Medieval Barbie), which were collecting dust in his storage building.  Dad's main point of interest as an Ebay seller was my pig collection (during my teenage years, I used to collect pigs, an obsession with no traceable origin).  I had pig figurines, pig wind chimes, pig picture frames, pig books, pig stuffed animals.  The seasoned Ebay users among my readers might recognize the potential here: Pig Lot!  Dad packed up all the pigs and posted a detailed description of the collection.  But even after a second attempt, the pig collection stayed unpurchased.

 Of all the posts so far, this is the one that makes me imagine dad most vividly and miss him most dearly. Dad's love of Ebay captures so well the things that made him such an endearing, lovable man: he was funny and kind and smart (a mind full of trivia is a mind that  enjoys Ebay).  Honestly, to this day, I do not know exactly why he bought that ball bearing (did he have a purpose for it?  Was it just cool?), but I wish I were holding it now, sitting on the couch across from him, smiling in wonder.