Cane Collection #1of2

Do you know the difference between a cane and a walking stick? Answer, “Twenty years.” When I first thought of that answer, 20 years was correct, but by now who knows how many years, or maybe months, or days, or minutes the answer might be today. I now use a “sympathy stick.” Doors are sometimes opened, and if the traffic light changes while I am in the middle of the street, I can limp with the best of them.

In the city of Palma on the Mediterranean island of Majorca, Spain I bought an excellent addition to my walking stick collection. It has what appears to be a bone or an animal-horn handle (it’s probably plastic, but bone or horn sounds better), on a bamboo stick. I bought a walking stick with a sharp metal point in Innsbruck, Austria, and another nice stick in Fussen, Germany, next to Mad King Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein Castle.

In Nürnberg, Germany, I bought a cane that later was wrapped and mailed home. A few weeks later Cousin Toni got it back in two pieces. They must have backed a mail truck over it. It has been glued together, and is displayed in the collection.

I bought a nice cane in the store at the entrance to the Haut Koenigsbourg Castle, perched high on a hill in France. A cane was purchased in Gstaad, Switzerland, and another in Italy, but we don’t remember the name of the city or town.

Near Copenhagen, Denmark, we found a cane that is a “natural piece” of wood, complete with knots and small twists and turns. In Lourdes, France, I paid $5 or so for a nice cane for the collection. We wonder if it had been thrown away by someone who no longer needed it after their visit to Lourdes.

At a streetside flea market just a few blocks from the prison site in Spandau, Germany, I bought a beautiful cane with a 2 1/2 inch braided silver wire decoration. We met an elderly gentleman in Strasbourg, France, who had the same cane, but with a smaller wire decoration (3/4 inch). He was 94 years old, his cane had belonged to his grandfather, and he “knew” it was very old and very valuable. Later that year we saw another very old man in Halle, Germany, and his cane was the same, with the smaller silver wire decoration, in the plaid pattern.

As we were boarding the plane in Frankfurt, Germany, for our trip home that year, they thought the cane meant I was handicapped. They told me to board early, and let Emmy take care of the luggage. Boy, was that tempting.