In response to fewer and fewer requests, I thought I'd add an anecdote or three to the already tedious tirade of adventures in the collecting trade. I'm told that in the previous article on collecting, I'd left out the best, or worst, experiences and while I hate to dredge up the reeky events of my past, others seem to delight in my misadventures. So here we go again.

As all good capitalists know, nothing is free, rarely plain and never simple. Attending a convention in Miami back in the '70's sometime, Mary Madison's skill at collecting as well as the quality of her specimens impressed me then as now with the possibilities of the Buttonwood found in such profusion. In the Florida Keys, I was told throughout the brackish backwater somewhere "south of Homestead." Buy a specimen, Moi? Not while a breath wheezes through my body.

At this point I must add two other factors: I had bought two of Brussel Martin's elms without, of all things, wire scars; the other concerns my money box which I had left on the table in my hotel room when I checked out.

Ruth Smith, now Bolster, a gal from the Cleveland club, and I started out. In my pinched, greedy, ferret-like eyes, I saw the buttonwood of all buttonwoods gracing a prominent spot in the home of say, the Council General from Japan. It wasn't and still isn't the ownership; it is the hunt, the chase, the pain, cost and even failure that is so desirable.

We stopped for gas and to water the "Brusselelms." A half hour later I asked Ruth if she had put the elms back in the van; what do you mean, no?! (expletive deleted) Back I went to the gas station; the elms were no where in sight. Why is it whenever I meet difficulty, it appears in the shape of a tobacco-chewing, sweating local who looks like a candidate for a "support your local sheriff " poster? He suggested the trees had not been seen but that I could get a search warrant from his brother-in-law, Harley, but it wouldn't do any good. Already the collecting trip had taken on the tones dangerous, both over and under.

I suspect bonsai collecting progressed to that hallowed state shared by fish tales, buck fever accounts and shaggy dog stories. Collecting brings out the PT Barnum in us all. The story goes that the really good specimens are just along the roadside waiting to be liberated; or, in the case of the buttonwood, they are growing in a coral outcropping in the first inlet left of the abandoned Stuckey's store. You won't need boots at low tide. And not having my moon-rising and falling schedule, waders wouldn't have helped.

Ruth and I dug, chipped, ripped, tore and cussed and finally got several serpentine sticks with leaf, a bonsai: hardly. In collecting, the thought always occurs; if I only had a four wheel drive truck, a helicopter, a dune buggy, a swamp buggy or common sense, I'd have succeeded. Now I know why all the other collectors sell their trees for such high prices. Any price is cheaper than my agony.

To end this tale of collecting woe on a more positive note, remember the money box left in the hotel? When panic over my forgetting the money box had subsided to the point that I could get my breath, I snapped into action, called the hotel and had the sense to say I had left it, described it, and to lock all doors until I arrived. Sure enough the desk clerk had it, still locked with my receipts inside along with a gold tree I'd bought from Lee Roberts and two black opals I had traded some tools for with an Aussie who had a cummerbund lined with dozens of other opals.

Sometime in that ghastly moment just before sleep, and the truth becomes mixed with a slurry of reality and mini-dreams, I think I should call my collecting experiences, The Old Man And The Tree.