Sticks Are For Walking - Part 1

Lynn Hoggard - PL

               You’ll never find one of Lynn Hoggard’s walking sticks in a flea market, craft show or church bazaar. UNLESS a shopper is using one—a gift from him--to get around.

                Hoggard, a retired band director who is a bassist in all the musicals presented by Benton’s Royal Players, creates walking sticks as a hobby. He began collecting interesting sticks around 1984 while working as an appraiser.

“I was working at Conway in a little subdivision,” he said. "The fence row had been cut off. I had to walk down the row to measure the property, and I ran across this stick. It had vines all over it, but it seemed about the right length, so I threw it in the truck thinking it would make an interesting walking stick.”

                Before he began working on it, however, he found a different project.

                “A cherry tree had died in our back yard and when I pulled it up, the root came out, too. The root had an interesting shape, so I whittled on it, cut the extra length off, rejoined and sanded it. I began to see a bird’s head, so I kept whittling until I was satisfied with it. It’s kind of ugly, but it’s my first one, so I’ll keep it.”

                After retrieving that first vine-covered stick in Conway, Hoggard began looking for sticks. Several years ago, he would walk from his Benton home in Hidden Valley toward Saline River’s Lyle Park, then up the hill. That was before the hill became bedrock for an upscale subdivision.

                “Once when I was walking, I came upon a really long piece that I looked at for about five minutes, wondering. I finally walked away. It was trash, really ugly, a piece of cut timber the subdivision people had pushed to the side. I went on about a mile before going back. In the distance, I saw two boys walking, and when I got back, the stick was gone. They had picked it up, but then decided they didn’t want it either. They threw it about twenty yards away. I had a little trouble finding it, but when I did, I thought that if they were interested enough to pick it up, then I was taking it home.

                “I cut out a section of it, sanded it down partially to get all the crustiness off, then I stained it and added a coat of lacquer.”

                Gnarled and thick, the deep ebony-colored wood with its cedar-red highlights is both functional and beautiful. Surrounded by two dozen other sticks of varying lengths, girths and designs, Hoggard discussed his hobby.

                “I’ve always been interested in the way wood looks when it is finished.” Picking up a delicate stick and turning it in his hands, he continued. “For instance, this wood glows when you catch light just right; it actually glows down in there. You can see the satiny insides.”

TO BE CONTINUED

PL