NEIGHBORS : Cane Crazy : For 101 years, Sue Walker’s family has been stretching out the traditional red and white Christmas confections at home.
Admit it. You’ve never contemplated candy canes. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, just don’t tell Sue Walker of Westlake Village.
It was Walker’s great-great-grandmother who kicked off the family tradition of making candy canes at home. When the siblings gathered Sunday, it marked the 101st annual renewal of that tradition. “We’ve never missed a year,” Walker said. “Even during the Depression.”
Each year, the family--kids, in-laws and all--cook up 500 to 1,000 canes, at a rate of about 300 per hour.
So, what do they do with them all? Walker said the canes are given to charities, churches, senior centers and other worthy causes. The family produced an additional 1,000 canes this year to be used in a fund-raising promotion Friday at the Thousand Oaks Community Gallery.
Also, Walker said, children in the family have always found the canes useful for show-and-tell presentations at school. “You could make sure you were going to get an ‘A,’ ” she said. “It was always a unique report.”
Though times--and the family--have changed, the method of production has remained the same over the years. A wrought-iron hook they used last weekend to stretch the candy has been in the family for 75 years. And, Walker said, “the pans we use are old, old, old aluminum pans. Over the years, we’ve tried Corning Ware and some modern (products). . . . They don’t work.”
Closing candy cane comment: While the opportunity presented itself, I asked Walker to help me solve a lifelong dilemma: What’s the best way to eat a candy cane? Personally, I’ve always chosen to lick the candy until the point is dagger sharp. (Then, inevitably, it breaks off and spikes my tongue.)
Anyway, Walker said: “People all go at it differently. They suck. They crunch. . . . You have to eventually take a bite out of it.”
Got a problem? Call Roger Atkins of Thousand Oaks. He won’t solve it for you, but he will let you get it off your chest. Atkins set up a 24-hour phone line last month, (900) 740-9001, so people could yell at him for $2.95 per minute.
Why would he put himself through such abuse? He’s used to it.
“I spent so many years in telephone sales and the music business and trying to get books published. It was just constant rejection,” he said. “This is easier rejection. I didn’t do anything to these people, and I’m being paid for them to reject me.”
Atkins said the gripes pretty much have run the gamut. “They complain about the lousy job the basketball coach did at the Lakers game, problems with men, women, parents,” he said. “They’re angry at the world. They’re angry at Bush. They’re angry at the economy.”
Atkins warned that he’s not there to offer advice. “I’m not a qualified therapist. I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a psychiatrist,” he said.
“Basically, what I do is I will agree with them. I’m not here to tell anybody that they’re wrong.”
Best of all, he said, callers don’t have to feel guilty about complaining to him. “Somebody takes it out on me and they don’t have to think, ‘I shouldn’t have said this. I shouldn’t have said that. What’s he going to think about me now?’ ”
Most of the calls Atkins has received have been on the level. There is the occasional caller who thinks that the phone number is for a sex-talk service. But the oddest call to date? “It was a quarter to 11 at night and what they wanted was for me to cluck like a chicken,” he said. “Hey, for $2.95 a minute, I’ll cluck like a chicken.”
