Cane Collection #2of2

In Zagreb, Yugoslavia, at the Nama Department Store, I bought an excellent cane for about $2.50. Later as I thought about it, I couldn’t believe I didn’t buy a dozen to give as gifts. On our first trip to Poland, we spent money for nothing except campsites, food, gasoline, and a cane for my collection. As we walked near the beautiful City Hall in Alsfeld, Germany, at noon one day, I found a nice cane with metal decor, for my collection.

In an antique store in Doksany, near Prague, Czech Republic, I found a flail, an unusual addition for the cane collection. Our dictionary says, “A manual threshing device consisting of a long wooden handle or staff and a shorter, free-swinging stick attached to its end.” A few days later, in Plzen, we bought another flail. One long handle has a rusty metal hinge-attachment, the other a smooth bent wooden attachment. In each case a leather thong connects the hinge on the long handle, with a wide leather strap attached to the short stick. An elderly Czech insisted the flails were at least 200 years old, and when I displayed them to a group of people in a campsite in France, a couple of elderly men insisted that was true.

We found a beautiful cane made of nearly black rosewood, with a silver tip on the handle, near Carcassonne, France.

At a flea market in a small town near Frankfurt, Germany, I bought a very nice cane, but I left it in a bank in Split, Yugoslavia later that year. We were too far away to go back for it, by the time I remembered.

When people ask where I got one very nice cane, I always say, “Across the street from McDonald’s.” Then I quickly add, “… in Prague, near the end of the Charles Bridge,” not far from the US Embassy, at that time the home of Madam Shirley Temple Black, US Ambassador to the Czech Republic.

In Paris, as usual, we parked in an unusual place for lunch — in the employee parking lot, at the west legs of the Eiffel Tower. In the weeds outside our window I retrieved a three-feet long heavy copper pipe, with a bend in the middle, a spigot on one end, and a threaded fitting on the other. It’s not quite a cane, but we have been assured it was part of a Paris fountain.

Since they knew of my collection, one year Emmy’s Cousins presented me with the canes of several Cousins who had died. Cousin Maria was kind enough to give us Cousin Hugo’s favorite cane; Cousin Ida donated Cousin Josef’s walking stick; and Cousin Ida’s sister gave us a cane she had used for several years. Cousin Victor died in the early 1960’s, and I received his cane, that had been in Cousin Toni’s hat-rack/umbrella stand, just inside her front door, ever since his death.

Another story about that hat-rack. On our second visit to Europe I bought a hat that I guess would be called a "Fedora," except the brim was much narrower than the hats you see on the old movies. Since Toni lived in that house by herself, she was very happy that I hung that hat on her hat rack, just inside the door, so that to anyone who came to the door and looked, it appeared that a man lived there also. I was happy to accommodate her, but 15 years or so later, after she had died, I did bring the hat home with me.