First off, I'm a collector of a lot of different items, but historic maps, I consider my primary obsession.

I got my start at the University of Arkansas when I was working on my Master Thesis preparing a series of surface geologic maps of the Keefer Mountain Area of Madison County, Arkansas. My map exposure continued when I started working for EXXON after graduating. I was assigned to their Kingsville, Texas, Office on the King Ranch, where, as a large part of my job, it was to make subsurface geologic maps in order to pick drilling locations to develop a large oil field. That's what an Oil and Gas Exploration Geologist does.

It seems to me that was a beginning of my fascination with maps, and it led to a collecting fetish that over my traveling across this country and living in Libya, where, as a base, I bought some of my best maps by traveling back and forth from there to the States via Europe on Vacation. It seems I have been attracted to maps not only from my work as a geologist, but my collective nature spurred me on, and being a geologist making maps to find oil strengthen the attraction to other maps, especially historic maps.

Some of my favorite map shopping places are The Map House in London, which is actually my favorite place to buy maps, but New York and........

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