Recently Josie has been pretending to ride her walking stick (and also a black cane she calls The Hammer.) So I decided to make a little stick horse/hobby horse for her.
I drew a pattern, unearthed some pretty material a friend gave me about twenty years ago, realized that the edging on a pillow case that had just developed a hole would make a nice mane, and looked around for a stick.
John found one that seemed a little too heavy and then he produced this little stick. It's been sitting in the stoneware churn where we keep all the various walking sticks ever since I brought it, along with several others, back from my grandparents' house in Tampa -- over thirty years ago.
Memory being what it is, I don't know if I previously noticed the inscription on the cane -- Lookout Mountain. But this time I did -- and I suddenly remembered that my grandparents had gone to Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain as a part of their honeymoon back in 1914. A little silver spoon that was a souvenir of Lookout Mountain was the sugar spoon in use at their house.
So, I suspect that this cane was likely another souvenir from that honeymoon.
Back then, a walking stick was not an aid for the aged but an accessory for the fashionable young man -- and, in my memory, my grandfather always carried a walking stick -- though he didn't actually need one till he was up in his eighties.
But just to make sure I remembered correctly about the wedding trip. I rousted out my grandmother's wedding book .
Over a hundred years ago . . .
Details preserved -- a description of her going-away outfit, along with swatches of the material . . .
The wedding journey itinerary -- in my grandmother's hand. (My grandfather told me about the huge trunk she had to contain her finery and the hassle involved in getting it from the train to the hotel. And, yes, I have that very trunk. Her wedding dress is in it.)
And, indeed, they were in Chattanooga 'for some time' . . . I like to believe that on a trip to Lookout Mountain, he bought the silver spoon for her and she reciprocated by buying him this cane.
And I think they would both be pleased to think that their great-great granddaughter will take journeys of her own on that same little walking stick.