One day when I stopped by to visit, I noticed Dad was limping a little, and using a cane. A sore foot, he said, nothing to worry about. I didn’t know he had a cane, and asked him about it. “I’ve had this cane for 80 years!” he chuckled. “There’s a story that goes with this cane.”
My dad is 98 now, and the other people in this story – the cane’s original owner and my dad’s classmate, Harry – are long gone. The statute of limitations has expired. My dad has given me permission to share this bit of history with you. Just follow me for the rest of the story.
It was winter in 1932, the depths of the Depression. Dad was a senior in a small high school in a little town in southern New Jersey. The seniors had scrimped and saved for a class trip to Washington, D.C. The school had arranged visits to the House and Senate and other highlights of the nation’s capital.
But a problem had arisen: the Senator who was in charge of permission for high school visits, Huey Long, had objected to the presence of the lone African American student, a nice kid named Harry Brokenbaugh. Harry wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the same hotel or to eat at restaurants with his classmates. Evidently Senator Long felt his mere presence, let alone his interest in voting or further education, would be inappropriate and disruptive.
My father was raised in an area founded by Quakers, including many of his own family, and he had both strong egalitarian views and a streak of just plain orneriness. This injustice galled him something fierce. But he kept his thoughts to himself, as their group was led through the Capitol and shown the chambers of the House and Senate, where they could see the Senators debating. On their way out, they walked through the Senate cloakroom. The tour guide showed them how each Senator had his own special place for leaving his coat and hat while he was on the floor of the Senate.
My father looked up and saw Senator Long’s name on one cubbyhole, and his overcoat – and his cane. He lagged behind the group, grabbed the cane, and stuffed it into his coat sleeve, and walked out of the cloakroom and out of the Capitol with Huey Long’s cane.
“This is the very same cane?” I asked. He showed me the initials, HL, carved in the cane. (You can see the cane, or its twin, in this photo of Senator Long. http://s3.amazonaws.com/... ) And he didn’t feel the least bit ashamed, even now, that he was walking around 80 years later leaning on the cane of that racist old Senator.