They came out of the closet as boys – lugging canisters, hugging uprights and bugging parents to buy them their own Hoover Dial-a-matics.

Today, they are grown men – still so enthralled by their passion for vacuum cleaners that they forget to eat dinner when they sit down to talk Shop Vac.

Tom Gasko was 3 when he was swept away by the sight of his aunt vacuuming pine needles from beneath the Christmas tree with her Electrolux. When he was 4, Gasko got hold of a screwdriver and took the machine apart. At 6, he volunteered to repair a neighbor's colicky canister model.

"And she gave me $1," he recalls.

Eureka! A career path was blazed.

At 35, Gasko owns the Vac Shac, a shop and informal vacuum museum in Festus, Mo. He also is president of the Vacuum Cleaner Collectors Club, which boasts more than 100 members nationwide, all of them infatuated since childhood with carpet sweepers.

Stan Kann, a 62-year-old Los Angeles musician, was 6 when he was mesmerized by the vroom of the electric broom.

"I would wait until I heard a neighbor turn on the vacuum," he recalls. "Then I'd knock on the door and ask if I could come inside and watch."

Mike Hayes is the sweet talker of the group. A 50-year-old X-ray technician from Greenfield, Ohio, Hayes schmoozed a secretary into letting the group view the vintage vacuums in Hoover's gym-size vault during a field trip to North Canton, Ohio.

Last year's convention was in Cleveland, where Royal, Kirby and Filter-Queen all have headquarters. This year's confab will be in Lenoir, N.C., where collector Clay Floyd runs Professional Vacuum, a sales and repair center.

Floyd, 50, learned to read by scrutinizing the print on his mother's vacuum bag.

"It said: 'The Hoover. It beats as it sweeps as it cleans. Empty after each use,' " he recalls.

Through the club, Floyd and Gasko became best friends, gabbing long distance about vacuums for up to six hours.

"We both like Rainbows," Gasko says. "The day we met we talked for nine hours straight. We didn't even eat dinner.

Gasko wistfully recalls the vacuum cleaners of bygone days: Cadillac and Lincoln, Maytag and Western Electric, Health-More and Premiere.

It all began in 1869 with the Whirlwind, a wooden, crank-operated carpet sweeper. In 1926, Hoover introduced the revolutionary beater bar.

"Each machine has a uniqueness," Gasko says, "just like human beings."

His collection includes a snub-nosed 1917 Apex, whose cord is screwed into a light-bulb socket.

"It has the original bag," Gasko says.

But his most venerated vacuum is a sleek and sculpted 1921 Air-Way.

"It's so graceful," Gasko sighs. "It looks like a grasshopper."

Some aficionados fear their collections won't be appreciated after they die. Fortunately, a new generation of vacuum visionaries is humming.

The youngest member of the club is 14-year-old Fred Stachnik of Glendale, Wis. Fred was not yet 3 when his parents taped an episode of This Old House demonstrating the installation of a central vacuum system. He wept when his mother accidentally erased it.

The next fall, Fred trick-or-treated as a Hoover Convertible upright, a brush attachment glued to his head.

By the time he was 10, Fred was a celebrity. Like dust bunnies, he popped up everywhere – sharing vacuum maintenance tips with David Letterman and Maury Povich.

"Jay Leno treated me like royalty," Fred says.

Vacuuming in Fred's footsteps is 3-year-old Hayden English of Nashville. Hayden gave up his diapers when his mother promised him a Hoover Wind-Tunnel in exchange for going two weeks without an "accident." Hayden now naps with the upright beside his bed.

"He wants to sleep with it, but we won't allow it," says his mother, Kim English.

His favorite outing is visiting vacuum sales centers.

"The guy at the Hoover store says kids come in all the time," English notes. "And it's boys, every time."

All this worries child psychologist Robert Butterworth, who says kids need to make a clean break with their carpet sweepers.

"A vacuum cleaner is one of the few machines infants are afraid of because it makes things disappear." he says. "If you can master the vacuum cleaner, you have power. You don't get that with toasters and blenders."

Butterworth is fearful boys who are bewitched by Dirt Devils will be spurned by peers who trade baseball cards and surf the Net. To confirm this suspicion, Butterworth asked his 12-year-old son, Anton, to poll his friends on the hobby.

"'Weird' and 'strange' were the predominant words," Butterworth notes. "And we live in Los Angeles."

In the suburbs of Milwaukee, young Fred cheerfully pastes a snapshot of a Hoover steam vac in his scrapbook. He cleans carpets for his mother and grandmother. Occasionally, he'll bring a friend home to see the 70-plus vacuums neatly lined up in the basement.

He has no regrets about selling his Nintendo to buy a re-conditioned Hoover Elite. And he has no intention of pulling the plug on his collection.

"David Letterman told me he'd found from personal experience that girls really dig guys with vacuum cleaners," Fred says.