Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 17, 1994 TAG: 9411170050
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SALLY HARRIS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: RINER LENGTH: Medium
Because he "never was much for just sitting around not doing anything," Wood, who is known by his middle name, started carrying home pieces of trees and carving on them. The result is some 20-plus walking sticks, two plaques and two mallets, each with Wood's creative marks on them.
"He just starts with a blank piece of wood, and whatever comes out, comes out," said his wife, Helen.
The things that emerge from the raw materials to adorn the walking sticks range from snakes and an insignia from a Canadian stamp to a lattice-like design. One elaborate walking stick got its theme from the Bible. On it, Eve and the devil, in the form of a snake, illustrate the verse that says a woman's heel will bruise the devil's head and his head will bruise her heel.
One stick has a dog's head; another, a baboon. There's a snake, an Indian head and the imprint of a honeysuckle vine that wound its way around the tree.
"I had a snake's head on another one, and my wife said I had too many snakes, so I took it off," Wood said, rubbing a nub on one of the sticks to show where the banished snake had been. But the shape of a walking stick limits the things that fit on it, he said, and snakes fit best of all.
The inspiration for the top of one walking stick came when Wood was in the mountains and saw a mother and baby owl sitting on a tree branch. "She had already torn the nest down and was going to kick the little one off," he said. "It was about 5 feet up."
Wood did a little carving before he retired in 1980, but most of his walking sticks have been created since then. Even his occupation fits his name: He did carpentry work most of his life for various firms. At one point, Snyder-Hunt "borrowed" him from another company to do trim work temporarily, and he stayed for nearly 11 years.
After he retired (he was still serving as an associate minister for the Little White Church in Check until respiratory problems interfered), the hobby gave him something to do while his wife was working as a nurse. He would pick up a piece of wood or cut a tree or salvage a stump, or someone would unearth a huge root with a bulldozer, and he would begin.
He might whittle by hand with a regular pocket knife, he might use a drill, he might employ a rasp. Once he had the shape, he might use an engraving needle to cut designs in it, then paint each thin line with hobby paint before varnishing the whole piece. If he wanted a lighter stick, like the one he made for a woman with Lou Gehrig's disease, he might cut sections out with a quarter-inch chisel. "You have to do a little at a time," he said. "If you aim to do a whole lot at a time, you take the strength out of the piece."
Wood might finish off the work with jeweled eyes for a snake or doll eyes for Eve or little green eyes for a dog. The entire process could take up to a year of his spare time.
Although he has made a few other things, such as a CD case and a bird feeder, he mostly made walking sticks until he had to stop because of health problems. "Uphill," he said, "a walking stick is the same as having a railing to hold to. It's better to walk with than a cane."
He knows. He has tried out all of his walking sticks, usually on trips to Myrtle Beach twice a year. The couple have made many friends - from California, Tennessee and even Canada - who visit them. And this is the first year in five that Raymond Wood hasn't had a birthday party at the beach. After they had stayed at the Stardust Hotel a couple of years, the people there brought strawberry pie from Shoney's for him and some friends on his birthday, starting a tradition.
The walking sticks make good conversation pieces, on trips or at home. Once at the beach, a young man who had torn his Achilles' tendon traded a knife for the walking stick Wood was using. Wood recently saw in a magazine that the knife is worth $299. "He told me his wife gave $150 for it in Italy," Wood said.
"We've wondered many times where that cane went to," Helen Wood said.
Wood lets few of the walking sticks go. He never sells them, although out West such items bring up to $800, he said. "People would laugh at you around here," he said.
He gave one to a friend whose husband had a deteriorating spine so she could give it to him for Christmas. He gave another to a young man who wanted it for his grandfather.
"One man insisted I make a will that he would get one of these canes after I died," Wood said with a laugh.
The interest in his craft surprises Wood, who simply wanted to fill the hours with his hobby.
"A young man in my office said he wished he had the time to sit around with Raymond and learn how to do that," Helen Wood said.
"Someone said this is a dying art," Wood said. "You don't see it much anymore."
by CNB