PONTOTOC, Miss. (AP) - One of Billy Rodgers’ buddies cut a bunch of crape myrtle sticks and another had a load of hickory. Both batches ended up at his place.
“I’m pretty well known in north Mississippi as the ’Walking Stick Man,’” the 69-year-old Pontotoc resident said.
His path toward the nickname began in 2009, when he had to spend far more time with doctors than he would’ve preferred.
“I had open-heart surgery. I had gallbladder surgery,” he said. “I almost died.”
During recovery, he grew tired of sitting around and looking at the same four walls.
“As I got back on my feet, I told Rhonda, ’I’ve got to have something to do,’” he said, referring to his wife.
The answer came during a hunting trip with his family. His Uncle Ken Rodgers saw on old stick on the ground, picked it up and used it all day. When the hunting trip was done, Uncle Ken left the stick behind.
Rodgers got an idea.
“I found that stick and fixed it up and made a hiking stick out of it,” he said. “I sanded it and put a piece of leather through it. It shined up real pretty.”
When he finished with it, Rodgers dropped by his uncle’s house and presented him with the stick.
“He saw that thing. His eyes got that big,” Rodgers said with his fingers making circles around his eyes. “He said, ’What did you do? You got this thing looking good.’ He used it a year or two before he died.”
That first stick was proof of concept, so Rodgers had a hobby to keep him busy, but it’s grown into something more. He charges between $30 and $75 for his hiking sticks and walking canes, and the cost increases for special orders.
He’s shipped his creations as far away as California, though most of his customers are in Mississippi and the southeastern states.
“This guy who lives in Georgia, he went to three different colleges. He had three different mascots to put on,” Rodgers said. “I shipped it to him.”
Other customers live within easy walking distance.
“One guy in town has a big family. They all went to different schools, different colleges,” Rodgers said. “He got started buying sticks from me.”
John Schubert, 90, said he bought 10 to 12 for his children and grandchildren. After taking care of them, he picked out a stick for himself.
“I had to have a Mississippi State one, you know,” Schubert said. “I think he does a great job. These are not cheaply made sticks.”
Rodgers is a University of Mississippi fan, but he understands the need to be flexible for his customers. Besides, he collects the sticks, sands them down, puts on handles and adds three layers of oil-based polyurethane coating, but he’s usually not responsible for applying the mascots.
Early on, Sonny Bumphis of Pontotoc did the carving with a paring knife. After some health problems, Bumphis decided to pull back and focus on his own work.
Another Pontotoc resident, Jane Sipes, has taken on the job of painting sticks and canes for Rodgers.
“She’s got two for me right now,” he said. “She’s doing one for the bulldogs and one for Ole Miss.”
Rodgers keeps a constant lookout for high-quality raw material. During a hunting trip, he found a vine-covered limb and had to have it.
He and Bumphis combined their talents to turn it into a snake. It’s stored in a collector’s case, along with Uncle Ken’s stick and one Rodgers made for his late father, Henry Clay Rodgers.
“I’ve made them out of cedar, bodock, sweet gum, hickory, sassafras,” he said. “A friend brought me a bunch of crape myrtle. I’ve got to let it alone and age it. It has to dry, but it hardens and makes a dynamic walking stick.”
His personal favorite was made from a piece of bodock wood, and it was elaborately decked out in Ole Miss red and blue.
“This was the root. I dug it out of the ground,” he said. “I about killed myself digging that out of the ground. I chopped and I hacked and I cut and I chopped and I cut, but I got it out.”
He carried it to a Rebels game and walked by a row of fraternity members who took an immediate interest.
“One of them said, ’Where did you get this stick?’ I said, ’I made it,’” Rodgers recalled. “He took it to look at. The next thing I know, it was going down the row.”
Not to be crass, but Rodgers had left his seat in the stands for a specific reason. He had another place he very much needed to go at that point in time.
“They offered to hold the stick for me until I got back. I said, ’No, you won’t,’” he reported. “They passed it back to me.”
When he first started his hobby, he worked in a shop behind his house, but then got smart and moved his operation to the garage, where a window unit provides heat in the winter and blessed cold in the summer.
“I used to be out working at 9:30 or 10 o’clock in the morning, and I’d be out there until 9 o’clock,” he said. “The time would fly by. I couldn’t stop, but I’ve learned to cut it off. Now, I probably spend eight hours a day in here.”
It doesn’t take too long for the dust to get out of control, but it’s engrossing work that engages his mind, as he comes up with new approaches.
He’s got one with a wooden corncob on top, and another has a small rolling pin that he bought at an antiques shop. He buys old porcelain and glass doorknobs to use as handles.
“Definitely, there’s an art to it,” he said. “I get a lot of comments on my sticks from people. ’How do you come up with your ideas?’ I just sit around and think.”
He used to pack a black trailer full of his wares and travel to different festivals, but that’s gotten hard on his back. These days, he hands out BC Sticks business cards whenever his Ole Miss bodock root starts a conversation.
His hobby keeps the “Walking Stick Man” busy and focused, and that’s exactly what he’d wanted in those stir-crazy days of 2009.
“It gives me something to do,” he said. “It also keeps me out of Rhonda’s hair, and her out of my hair, what’s left of it.”
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Information from: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, https://djournal.com
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