MEXICO CITY – Every afternoon, Gustavo Hernandez puts a sign on his old station wagon, parks at a busy intersection and waits for customers in need of what he calls “a bit of Irish luck.”
Hernandez has no connection to Ireland, though he does have reddish whiskers. Still, he sells thousands of four-leaf clovers, potted in little planters, to Mexicans hedging their bets on love, looking for jobs or just hoping for a little change of fortune.
“Everyone needs good luck,” said Hernandez, who also refers to his merchandise as “the flower of St. Patrick.”
Every March 17 is a showcase day for the three-leaf shamrock, a traditional symbol of Ireland. The Irish and people of Irish descent all over the world adorn their homes and clothes with shamrocks as a proud sign of their heritage.
But even in countries where the shamrock has little meaning, its four-leaf cousin, a horticultural anomaly, is becoming a symbol of good luck and a growing industry. From Hernandez’s tailgate business to online retailers that reach around the globe, commerce in the four-leaf clover is booming, and not just in March.
“People see them and think to themselves: ‘I could use a little luck!’” said Robert Harris, owner of the Luck Factory, an online business based in New York that ships out key chains, cuff links and other items decorated with four-leaf clovers. Recently, he said, customers have been ordering clover items to send to U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
Candy Smith, who runs an online business in Scranton, Pa., sells thousands of packets of shamrock seeds from Ireland, as well as jewelry and other items decorated with four-leaf clovers. She said real estate agents buy them hoping for sales, travel agencies order them in bulk and brides clamor for them.
The clover’s mystique, Smith said, comes from its rarity. She estimated that for every field of 10,000 three-leaf clovers, there might be only one clover of the four-leaf variety.
Ed Martin, a retiree in Alaska, hopes to soon become the world record holder for collecting real four-leaf clovers. Martin, 73, a retired heavy machine operator, said he tooled around the United States in a motor home for years, picking the clovers to give away.
“I always got a smile,” he said. Several years ago, Martin decided to get serious about collecting, and he said he now has about 80,000 four-leaves pressed into plastic sheeting. Officials in his small Alaskan town of Soldotna are preparing the paperwork to nominate him for a Guinness World Record.
The current record holder is a Pennsylvania prison inmate, George Kaminski. While locked up on a kidnapping conviction for the past 25 years, Kaminski has gathered 72,927 four-leaf clovers. He found them, one at a time, hidden in the grass of prison yards.
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