“Cane Man” Draws Loyal Customers in Pawleys Island
By Christina Lee Knauss
Thomas Williams knows how to look at a tree branch or another piece of wood, and see the creatures and the secrets living within it.
He gathers the wood himself on private land and from area forests after getting permission from the land holders, spends hours at his McClellanville home working on it, and then brings it to sell beside U.S. 17 in Pawleys Island.
Williams can be found day after day beside the road with rows of beautiful canes, walking sticks and staffs lined up on tables in front of his van. The canes and sticks range from simple but elegant one-color lacquered models made out of dogwood and oak to fanciful, intricate sticks carved with abstract patterns and the faces of animals such as snakes, birds and porpoises.
His familiarity with trees, how they grow and the secret patterns that lay in their branches came after 26½ years he spent working in forestry and logging in the area around the Francis Marion National Forest.
Williams said he lost that job after Hurricane Hugo came through in 1989 and laid many of the majestic trees in the Lowcountry flat.
"I lost my job and my home, and I needed a little bit more of income," he said on a recent afternoon, in between sales and working on one of his walking sticks. "My father was my starter. He was the one who showed me how to do this. And his grandfather knew how before him."
Over the ensuing 20 years, Williams has turned the talent he learned from his father into a successful business, one that helped support his two biological children and four that he and his wife adopted after Hugo.
Beside walking sticks, he also makes tables and lamps out of cypress knees, and does fanciful carvings of other Lowcountry animals, fish and seashells.
Williams and his brother "C.C." also make hand-tied nets out of intricately tied nylon cording, with lead weights along the bottom. The nets are meant for catching the bounty of the coastal waters.
"I make fish nets, shrimp net and then the poor man's net," Williams said. "You know what that is ... you throw it out and whatever is in that water is coming up with the net!"
Their style of hand-tying nets is a dying art along the coast, he said.
"These nets will last a lifetime if handled right," he said. "They can be passed down from generation to generation."
The walking sticks draw plenty of attention from passing cars. During the span of just under an hour, more than four cars stopped on a recent afternoon to check out his wares. A family from New Jersey got out of one, and a man purchased two smaller walking sticks while his wife checked out the taller staffs, appropriate for hiking.
A couple from Pawleys Island pulled up and instantly struck up a conversation with Williams. Barry Hartman said he had first purchased two of Wiliams' sticks a few years ago when he had to have surgery on both of his knees. One of the sticks was done in the form of two intertwined snakes. The sticks helped him not only to walk, but put him in a better frame of mind.
And they drew attention everywhere he went.
"I've been to San Francisco, Indiana to Texas and I've never seen walking sticks like he makes," Hartman said. "When I have those sticks with me, people stop me in the airport and ask where I got them."
He's become a collector of Williams' work, and stops by frequently to see what new creation catches his eye.
Williams sells his walking sticks and other crafts beside the road in Pawleys Island from May through November, and then moves to a site in Mount Pleasant from just after Christmas until May.
"I do real well over there, and I do well here," Williams said. "I've had people from all over the world, all nationalities stop by."
Then he paused.
"Well, I haven't had any pygmies buy one of my sticks," he said with a laugh.
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