worked down from there. I found the reels first. I lifted up one that I had only dreamed of buying, excited just to be holding the real thing in my hand. "How much do you want for this?" "Oh God, I don't know what anything is worth. The insurance company just wants some money back as quickly as possible. I don't know what I'm going to do with all this. I don't have the time to list all this stuff and look up prices and then sell it on an open market. Just see if there's anything you want and make me a reasonable offer." K. I began to wonder what I had ever done to deserve this, then remembered that there really is no justice in this world, thank god. There was only so much time, with the woman standing over me, longing to get back to a warm bed herself, so I quickly set myself some rules. I would take only those things I actually needed, or would use, or could reasonably dream of using. That limited it somewhat. I kept the Billy Pate Bonefish reel securely in my hand. I found among the rods a Sage 9', 9#, III RP rod, a fancy model Regal vice, four or five top grade hackle necks, two fly lines, and enough smaller stuff to make one double arm load. Now for a price. This would have to be tricky. I didn't want to look greedy, make her suspicious. What the hell, Christmas was a week away. I gave a quick thanks to the nefarious miscreants, a.k.a. Santa Claus, probably now cooling their heels in the county jail. "How about $150 for this? "O.K." Such moments stick in your mind. It took me about a week to get back to Ira "Hi." I quickly introduced myself over the phone. The old man spoke slowly with a gravelly voice, wrinkled and burnt with time. He confirmed that he had a large and valuable fly collection, "every fly you could think of" and "some other stuff". We made a date for the next afternoon at lunch time. "Just call me 'Shorty'. The next day I drove past his house, small, boxy, and many times over-painted, spotted the address
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