Reamers, also known to many as orange juice squeezers or juicers, are one of the fastest growing collectibles in America today. The main reason for this is time and efficiency. They have been replaced by electric juicers which perform the function of squeezing juice faster, and frozen concentrate which makes providing juice to a busy family in today's society an easier task.

The reamers were invented over 200 years ago out of necessity when it was discovered that citrus provided a cure for diseases like scurvy. The first reamers were all producted in Europe. Major china companies such as Bayreuth, Miessen, Royal Rudolstadt and Limoges produced reamers for some of the finer tables in Europe.

The first reamer was patented in the United States around 1867, after the Civil War. It was a hand held reamer. Next came the one piece reamer with a small saucer and a cone that was meant to fit on top of a glass. These were quite messy as they slid and slipped off of the glass. In the 1880's a glass rim was added to the bottom of the saucer to help keep the reamer on the glass. Around the same time, wooden squeezers with a press action were also being used. Two-piece sets with measuring pitcher bottoms and separate reamer tops did not come along until the mid 1920's.

The biggest boom for reamers came in 1907 when a a co-op named the "California Fruit Growers Exchange" was formed. This co-op marketed the name Sunkist to sell fruit to the east coast. Sunkist reamers were produced as a promotional item. However, not until 1916 when the "Drink an Orange" campaign was launched, were reamers marketed to the masses.

It all started in 1956 when the walk-in cooler in the now defunct Haberman's Royal Dairy here sprang a grease leak. To keep the grease from dripping on his clean floor, Haberman went over to Wilkinson's service station and bought an oil rag for 8 cents. After that it was one oil rag after another.

"I kept exchangin' dirty oil rags for clean ones at Wilkinson's," he says. "Pretty soon, I decided I needed more than one rag. I guess it was when I had about nine oil rags that it suddenly occurred to me to collect them. Pretty soon, I was watchin' for discarded oil rags all the time — you can find them almost anywhere. When I'd find one, I'd take it back to Tama and exchange it for a clean, new one."

There is little rhyme or reason to Haberman's method. For example, he quickly discarded the idea of keeping dirty oil rags because his wife, Eleanor, 52, would have none of it.

"I don't even care much for his CLEAN oil rags," she said last week. "In fact, I think the whole idea is pretty stupid. It gets pretty nerve-racking when we're out on a trip and he keeps stopping the car every time he sees a dirty old oil rags. But I guess as long as he keeps them in a neat pile and out of my way, it's all right."...

"People come to my basement," Haberman says, "Look at my pile of rags and just stand there laughing. I know they're probably laughing at me, but I don't care. Really, I don't. They don't understand. I just laugh along with them. But, all the time, I know I've done something no one else has.

"It's important for a man to accomplish something. For me, it's collecting oil rags. I happen to enjoy doing it."

Davis, 83, who uses the title "Elephant Biographer," lives alone in a six-room house surrounded by mementoes of circuses and of elephants he has known, loved and pulled hair from. There are statues of elephants, elephant-shaped lamps, pieces of ivory, elephant bull hooks, even a tooth garnered in 1933 from an elephant named "Vera."...

But the elephant hairs make up the bulk of the collection of elephantiana. The longest one is 13 inches, the shortest, plucked from a 200 pound baby elephant, is one and one-half inches long. They include colors ranging from black to white with a few red chin whiskers.

Most of them were plucked from elephant tails — some were cut from the more belligerent behemoths. Every zoo in the nation is represented, except the Bronx Zoo in New York...

Davis started his unusual hobby as an elephantphile in 1928. He asked a circus elephant trainer to suggest something he could collect from or about elephants and the trainer suggested hair. Davis, a retired optometrist, says his collection "took my mind off business."

he has $1.7 million in available credit and since he is only using one card, his utilization rate (credit used divided by total credit) is probably less than 1% or way below the 30% that is the generally accepted figure that you want to be below.

Girls who are named Dorothy, she says, are supposed to have interesting things happen to them or do interesting things. She says that girls named Mary run a close second.