By JEFF KLINKENBERG, St. Petersburg Times

On a recent Monday night, one running shoe vanished quietly from the deck of the home I was renting in North Carolina. On Tuesday morning, the other went missing. They were old shoes, and very smelly, but still. My wife had banned the foul footwear from the house. Who'd want them?

Here is what Woo wants.

He wants to go fishing, catch something beautiful and primitive, snap a good photograph, drive to his gallery, stand before the easel, study the photo, paint something nice.

Woo wants to paint the tarpon, capture the utter wildness, the silver-dollar scales, the great maw of a jaw and the enormous eye that sees everything vital in its universe.

TAMPA, Fla. - I don't scare easily. I pick up snakes, wade among alligators and eat lunch at rural diners where the best thing on the menu is lima-bean stew. Yet I was afraid to ask Cheri Irwin, who once owned the most famous derriere in America, about her tan line.

TERRA CEIA, Fla. - On a Sunday when world attention was riveted on the Super Bowl, Curtis D. Hemmel was occupied with the usual primal matters. The football game meant nothing to him because of what was happening behind his house.

He was watching clams have sex.

CITRA, Fla. - They arrive in the rain to buy oranges, bags of them, and maybe a quart of juice, fresh-squeezed. At North Florida's last honest-to-God citrus stand, they drive up in cars bearing license plates from Delaware, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other Yankee states where orange-laden trees are only a winter's dream.

Serafim Da Conceicao, a serious man for serious times, talks to his tomato plants. Tomato plants are temperamental. The slightest thing -- too much sun, too little sun, too dry, too wet, nematodes in the soil, aphids on the leaves -- throws them off. Tomato plants, the prima donnas in any Florida garden, pitch a tantrum and wilt.

BUSHNELL, Fla. -- In an economic recession such as the one Florida is experiencing, it helps to be good at a lot of things, just in case. Vince Denimarck's job skills include drafting, design, carpentry, wiring, plumbing, laying tile, hanging paper and roofing. He knows how to build stone fences and is proud of his Italian cooking.