THE WOODEN CANDY CANE (2025-29)

Old Clairton Road in Pleasant Hills PA is older than America itself. It may be lore, but the road in front of my childhood home was said to have been a pre-Revolutionary War road. My sisters and I used to throw our small bodies into the grass that rolled down into our front yard, our eyes focusing just above our imaginary rifles, pretending to hide from the Redcoat soldiers galloping toward Fort Pitt where the three rivers in Pittsburgh converge.

Pleasant Hills is the perfect name for that sleepy little town. We knew each rolling hill threaded with ribbons of sidewalk between our house and Pleasant Hills Elementary School. Even now, in my wrinkled old body, I can close my eyes, slow my breath, and transport myself to the daily journey my pale little girl legs took along Old Clairton Road.

It is Saturday morning. The forsythia is in bloom, and trees are greening. An early spring breeze carries the faint sweet fragrance of newborn hyacinth. School is closed for the weekend, but the Public Library is open, and that is where I am headed when a thin hand- lettered poster, taped to the stop sign on the corner of Old Clairton and East Bruceton Road, catches my eye.  

GARAGE SALE!

Being a kid, old enough to read but innocent enough to wonder why someone would be selling only their garage, I turn down East Bruceton Road to take a look. Little do I know that such a sign will have a magnetic effect on me the rest of my life. 

I don't know why I have such a vivid memory of that particular afternoon. I recall the cement driveway, the card tables and wooden picnic table in the garage, the woman sitting in her blue woven lawn chair with a cigar box of cash in her lap. The garage sat tucked in under the house.  I tiptoed into that space, wondering if I was allowed to be there, following the other people who parked and just walked in. Knick-knacks, books, old linens and winter coats shared tables with a boxed hibachi and an old oil lantern. Each item had a little colored dot with a price handwritten on it. These were the days when a penny was still worth something. I had a dime in my pocket. 

I walked away with a small extra thick paperback book of Archie comics and an old wooden walking cane. I don't believe I even went to the library that day. Instead I concocted a plan as I made my way back up the hill to our house. The wooden cane went down to the back room in our basement, hidden, at least partially, under my shirt so no one would see it. The book went  up to the bedroom I shared with my sister, where I spent the afternoon with Archie, Reggie, Veronica, Betty and Jughead.

My plan for the wooden cane was to turn it into a candy cane as a Christmas gift for my mom. Had I been aware of my ADHD as a child I might have made myself do it while I was thinking of it. It wasn't until well after Thanksgiving that I remembered the cane. I found a gallon of old cream colored wall paint on the storage room shelf and set to work. First I tried to wing-it, swirling red paint up the wooden shaft, then adding white between, ending up with smeared wobbly uneven pink. I wiped off as much as I could while the paint was still wet. Proud of myself for figuring out that I could use masking tape to spiral up the crook I tried again a few days later. It took an unusual amount of self discipline to let the paint dry. 

What I imagined

The next week, when I removed the tape, I saw the the paint had bled under the part I had masked off. I don't remember where I would have found that red paint, but I do recall how the drips showed through. It would take multiple layers to cover my mistakes. I just couldn't be still long enough to do it right.

I was running out of time. Christmas was coming, and paint was slow to dry in the cold windowless room in the deepest part of our basement. I spent more time back in that chilly room than my mother wanted, I suppose, because she started to notice I had disappeared to the basement too often.

"What are you up to down there?" she asked, more than once. 

"Nothing."

One word answers rarely worked for our mother.

Two "nothing's" brought on a warning.

Three got me a whoopin'.

Still, I would not tell her what I was up to. I had imagined the big old candy cane next to our fireplace in every future Christmas. I would put my own stamp on the charm. There was a sense of warm anticipation in our home at Christmastime. Mom was happy. Mom could be creative. She lit the candles and let the logs in the fireplace burn. Our living room smelled of cedar roping and freshly cut blue spruce. The lamplight reflected off glass Christmas bulbs and metal icicles. In those days there was so much less available to us. No Amazon. No Target or Walmart or Costco. Magical oversized items were found only in the colorful display windows downtown at Kaufmanns, Gimbels or Hornes. 

In the end, I could not get the edges crisp on my painted giant candy cane. I wept in the back room, ran my fingers over the flawed piece, then took a square of large grit sandpaper to it, hoping I could turn it back into a  useful walking cane.

I don't even remember if I told Mom what I was making there in the back room of our basement in Pleasant Hills. I think I didn't want her to feel bad for spanking me. In my mother's defence, back before parents were judged by each other for their abilities in mindful parenthood, spanking was the most proven form of discipline. 

I don't know why or how, but that half-stripped almost "candy" cane ended up following me into adulthood. I can't remember if I told Mom about it. I suppose it stood as a reminder of one of my first independent moves. It represented the discovery of the concept of thrifting, which has stuck with me ever since, and the prospect of making something new out of something old. Top that off with the joy of creating something for someone I loved, which required sacrifice, and even a little pain and disappointment. It joined so many other almost forgotten experiences that wove into the fiber of who I have become. I guess its a microcosm of life, that wooden candy cane I once tried, but failed, to make.