Americana & the U.S. • Racism and Civil Rights

In Spring of 1973, I and Tim Coil were retrieving from an abandoned building in New Hampshire, Ohio, any old items of value. I removed shelving to be used in my library behind my home. I was about to leave my house for second day of work with Tim, when Brad Daum came to my door excitedly telling me the story that, while driving on Highway 33 that morning, he’d seen a big black limo pull off the highway onto Boundary Road. Figuring they were lost, he drove back to help them. The limo had pulled off the road and three men in dark suits seemed to be burning something at the edge of a plowed field. When Brad stopped and got out, two of the men in a most menacing way told him they didn’t need any help, and insisted he leave! As Brad took note that the thing they were burning seemed to be a cane, before pulling away he noticed capital letters H H on the license plate. Brad said while driving to my house, he’d realized the H H was the insignia of Howard Hughes.

As Brad left for work, I loaded metal detector in car and drove to Boundary Road to see if we might find burnt evidence of this strange moment. Tim and I found tire tracks near the scattered burn site. Within a few minutes I looked back at Tim searching the ground where I had gotten another reading, and Tim was bending forward on his knees, entranced by something he held in his hand! When I walked over, in silence Tim held out in his hand a silver, engraved cane top.

The first piece of information in relation to this story came in 1974, when a man approached me after a Fort Wayne, Indiana speech. He introduced himself as a collector of historic canes and said my Hughes cane story reminded him of a 1973 cane auction in which two men in dark suits had approached auctioneer, had Hughes/Canary cane put up for sale, bought it and left. From window of auction house he saw them leave in a black limousine! Auctioneer and owner of sold cane led to no further information. This led to years of frustration from turning up nothing in relation to this mysterious S.A. Canary, either in Hughes aviation or film careers. I had learned from a Hughes expert that through 1970s Hughes’ paranoia had lead him to hire staff to hunt down and destroy evidence of his former relationships with certain people, which wasn’t easy since Hughes was prolific gift giver. Bringing up the cane story at every speech finally paid off when one night I received a phone call. Without introducing himselt, the voice said rapidly, unemotionally, “Canary was not his real name. He was Black and dropped his slave name. He was an ace pilot in French air force in WWI, with yellow canary on his plane. Hughes hated Blacks ‘cause someday might vote as block and be used in dictating American politics. But ‘cause of his aviation career, Hughes hired Canary as personal employee in 1920s. Hughes paranoia increased ’til believing Canary was spying on him for the N.A.A.C.P., fired him.” The voice hung up. (If anyone seeing this frame has any information about this story, please contact me through this web site!)