The Art of Cherokee Living

The Art of Cherokee Living

I didn't ask his name.  As we played a gig on the Cherokee Courthouse Square last Saturday, this Stickball Stick maker unloaded his table and set up to demonstrate the art of taking a wooden branch and turning it into stickball sticks.  You can see from his powerful forearms that making sticks is not something one can do without physical conditioning.  It must also take learning, and listening to the wood-- the nature of the grain and its features.  As we sat and listened to Barbara McAllister and to the Cherokee Childrens' Choir, we watched him work.  With his bare hands, he bent and shaped the wooden frame to curve.  He used his thumbs and the strength of his fingers to teach the wood to fold over all the way against itself.  He used a baseball bat to formulate a uniform shape on the racket.  And that is why all stick ball sticks are about the size of a bat on the racket.