"Looking Out" a story you guys will enjoy!

[Vindoggie]

Looking Out
A story by Vincent LeVine

It’s late on a school night and while my wife and kids lie in their beds asleep, I sign in… VINDOGGIE- that’s my alter ego. I haven’t left the country in over 30 years, but Vindoggie dashes around the globe meeting people from around the world. Yeah, that’s right, I’m on Ebay where I can get lost in the jungle of strange, unique and sometimes bizarre items people put up for auction. I buy and I sell, sometimes the same item! I’m interested in everything and anything. I recently bought a hand-painted coffee mug that has a baseball glove, a ball, and the upper extremity of a voluptuous woman shaped into it, and it was only ten dollars shipped to my doorstep. There were no other bidders. I told my three boys I bought it because the mug had all of Daddy’s favorite things. When my 14 year old has his friends over he slides it out into clear view, repeating my reason. I consider it a novelty item, harmless in fact. Who knows, maybe a future family heirloom? Over the years I’ve won bicycles, motorcycles, books, baseball bats and gloves, some rare and exotic coffee mugs, and a whole host of other items that would take too long to mention. I’ve sold and shipped bicycles, antique telephones, and baseball gloves to people all over the world. I shipped a Cannondale bicycle frame to a fellow in Moscow, and a Klein to a guy in Japan. It’s all great fun. On this night my obsession has me in the category of Baseball Gloves, more specifically, Mitts. My pulse quickens as I scroll down to a guy living in a small town near Seattle who has a Smokey Burgess autograph model with no ink, in usable or displayable condition. He’s got feedback of over 100 positives and in reading the comments, I see that everyone seems pretty happy with this guy. No, I quickly decide, this mitt is not the one. With a click of my waiting mouse I continue my search, hoping I will stumble across the perfect catcher’s mitt.

It was back in 1976, I had just purchased a cherry 1963 sun-faded, light blue, 4-door Chevy Impala from a very old man whose decision to stop driving was not an option. His last name was Tate. The car was parked beside his small, white ranch house, on a quiet side street not far from Lake Massapoag in Sharon, MA. With the for-sale sign he purchased at the local hardware store carefully taped to the inside of the dusty windshield, the car caught my eye while I jogged by, and so I circled back later that afternoon to get a better look. He told me he had used the car daily, the longest drive being a weekly run to Mattapan to pick up his favorite newspaper, The Jewish Advocate, about 26 miles roundtrip. He claimed that nobody had ever sat in the back seat, a fact that absolutely sold me, and all my testosterone, on this particular car…

I made the car purchase at a time in my life when I was going through serious changes. My parents had recently sold our house and moved to Miami, 1500 miles away. There were no longer any free meals or any willing women jumping through hoops to do my laundry. I had just turned 20 and had no immediate plans for the future. After dropping out of college a year earlier and spending some time living with a friend in South Florida, safe from the New England winter, I moved back up North and lived in my Uncle’s basement in Needham, MA, sharing the space with my cousin’s two untamed dogs, Sheba and Mishma. When that arrangement didn’t work out, I moved into my best friend’s basement and lived there until his father discovered his two boys keeping illegal substance, my apparent bad influence to blame… From there I took myself and all my worldly possessions, which amounted to very little, to a boarding house owned by a guy I had worked with while still in high school at a garage called Cook Brother’s Getty on route one in Walpole. Dick had once been a crackerjack auto mechanic who drag-raced at Epping, New Hampshire, driving and wrenching his Ford Shelby to many impressive victories. At the time he was fast approaching forty years of age, stood about six foot tall, lanky, with a mid section that was very capable of liquid storage. He wore mirrored, aviator sunglasses, had some color from the sun on his face during the summer months, and struggled to keep his thinning, light brown hair under control. He spoke through thin lips, displayed a wise-guy smile, and had a good size helping of the devil peering out through his light blue eyes. He was a character who had “been there, done thatâ€