Accidental Collector
Road kill is a lousy way to start a collection. Just ask Carol Black, who was driving a lonely road in Guam two years ago when she ran smack-dab into this undeniable fact. Like the giant bullfrog she hit, Black never had a chance.
Once friends and colleagues learned of her rental-car collision with an amphibian the size of a house cat, a link was forged, one that has frogged, uh, dogged her ever since. Now people give Black frogs on every occasion. Stuffed frogs, ceramic frogs, pottery frogs. Frog jewelry, frog picture frames, frog fridge magnets.
On that rain-slick Guam road, the Huntington Beach HMO executive unwittingly swerved into the collector Twilight Zone. It’s a world where visitors arrive seeking a simple, pleasant piece of kitsch but end up watching in horror as their collections, thanks to well-meaning but misguided gift givers, spiral out of control.
Some accidental collectors, like Black, are left asking, “How did I get here?” For a few, it seems as if there’s no escape.
“I’ve told the frog-in-Guam story a lot, trying to hint that this isn’t a collection I started myself,” Black said. “But it’s hard for people. They have the spirit of wanting to give you something, and you don’t want to be a humbug. It just gets to be a little much.”
Lois Berger knows the feeling. Sixteen years ago, she started collecting antique flower blocks--glass, ceramic or porcelain pieces that fit in the bottom of vases to secure stems. The blocks are also known as frogs, which was all friends needed to hear before unleashing upon her a plague of frogs of the “ribet” kind. When Berger and her husband, Joe, bought a house on the Colorado River 2 1/2 years ago, they boxed up more than a thousand frogs. There were 20 Kermits alone.
“I like getting them, but I must admit that most of them . . . are still in boxes,” said Lois Berger, a semiretired real estate agent with an office in Fullerton. “Of course, we’ve gotten about 50 more since we moved. I can’t keep them from coming in. I tell people I only want the really cute ones now.”
Deb Shrider started collecting vintage clothing 15 years ago but quickly narrowed her focus to attire of the ‘20s. It seemed as if everyone she knew had something they were eager to give her. Suddenly she had more clothes than closet space. Especially hats. Pillbox hats, summer hats, veiled hats.
“It definitely takes on a life of its own,” said Shrider, a Brea freelance writer. “I appreciate the contributions, but I must have 50 hats now. I just put 20 [up for auction] on EBay.”
Lois Davis, a kindergarten teacher at Las Lomas School in La Habra, offers insight into the mind of the giver: Her best friend collected turtles . . . until she called a moratorium. It didn’t take.
“We heard her, but we all thought, ‘She’ll want this one,’ ” Davis said. “We go on vacation, and we need an excuse to shop. That’s what friends are for.”
And sisters, too, apparently. Any time her sister, Anita, gives her a gift, Ronny Cyr of Santa Ana knows exactly what to expect: cows, cows and more cows.
For Christmas, she got Cow Tails candy, a stuffed cow and a key ring that moos.
“I don’t even know how it got started,” Cyr said, “but I know I don’t need cows. I have them coming out of the woodwork.”
Like Shrider’s hats and the frogs of Berger and Black, the parade of cows shows no signs of stopping. If Cyr had it to do over, knowing as she now does just how binding a collection can be, she might have chosen differently.
“Sometimes,” she said, “I wish I had started collecting diamonds.”