| We forked over $50 per person to gain early admission to the Coconut Grove show which claimed to have 700 booths in their advertising. Early on I found a postcard dealer who had a half inch stack of corkscrew cards. Recently I haven't found very many corkscrew cards I don't already own - to my surprise there were three in this lot that I didn't have. |    |
| An hour later I found the turkey and rabbit
shown at left and right. These are silver bottle stoppers with Christofle
trademarks. The cork is secured by a worm. We had lunch than spent a couple more non-rewarding hours at the show. The day was topped off by a great Stone Crab dinner at The Crab House in Miami. |
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| Thursday morning we went to the pool and had a visit from my friend Ross. He told me about a gift he had squirreled away some time ago. It was a battery operated corkscrew. I had heard of this Meyer Wine Key but had not had the opportunity to get one. Within a few minutes we made a trade. |  |
| Thursday afternoon we went to a mall show at
Aventura Mall and found nothing. In the evening we saw Ken Hark's collection
followed by dinner at 15th St. Fisheries in Fort Lauderdale. Friday was the beginning of the 800 booth Miami Beach show. There I found a Converse patent with advertising for Holihan Bros. of Lawrence, Massachusetts on the sheath. With brain cells dying on a daily basis, I had forgotten until I returned home that I already had one. |
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| After a several hours of meandering through
the show, we found Howard and Sheila. He asked me if I had seen the cane
corkscrews. I had not. We went to see it. In addition to two rather interesting
but not overly exciting cane corkscrews, the dealer had what I felt was the
finest cane corkscrew I had ever seen. A monkey in jockey uniform is perched at
the top of the cane. He unthreads and a worm is pulled out perpendicular to the
cane (just like a roundlet). He is than threaded back on to serve as the
handle. Obviously, you turn the bottle and not the handle to turn the worm into
the cork. I took my entire life savings and bought it! That evening we celebrated my purchase at Spoleto's Italian Bistro in Aventura. |
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| After pool time on Saturday, we decided to
scout the shops in Dania. We didn't see many corkscrews (I think
Alf Erickson buys them all),
but I managed to pick up a couple of things. In Dania, I found the blue cat,
the Jones Beach horse head, the wood carved donkey, and the Austrian Hagenauer
two finger pull with two drunken sailors. The knives I had purchased the day
before at the Miami Beach show. Our final evening found us eating duck at the Tivoli Restaurant in North Miami Beach. |
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| ...and what did Howard find?: Howard was sad. |
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