Editor’s Note: This column was previously published on Feb. 10, 1996.

EMMETT — John Sedlacek keeps an alligator chained up beside his driveway.

He has an octopus in his front yard.

The hood ornament on his Chrysler is a cow skull wearing sunglasses. The rest of the hood is festooned with toys, figurines of cartoon characters and makeshift monsters. A sign in the back window tells whoever cares to know that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me.”

“My brother thinks I’m weird, “ Sedlacek says. “Maybe I am. But if you can’t have fun, the heck with it.”

Sedlacek’s Emmett home could almost be a tourist attraction. From the display of old-time tools by the road out front to the hundreds of turkey-bone doodads that fill a hutch in the living room, his property is brimming with “stuff.” When it comes to making and collecting weird stuff, Sedlacek is to Emmett what Fred Sanford was to television.

Step inside. Make sure you don’t trip over the brightly painted milk cans or the wooden cowgirl (the alligator and octopus also are made of wood) on the front porch.

“It’s a log, “ he says of the alligator. “Its legs are limbs. I keep a chain on it so it won’t bite anybody. Come on in.”

Driftwood ducks line a shelf beside the entry. A wall on the left is lined with walking sticks.

Not ordinary walking sticks — very little in Sedlacek’s home could be called ordinary — but handmade, one-of-a-kind walking sticks and canes in myriad shapes and colors. Dozens more line walls and fill packing boxes in his garage. In all, he has about 300. He made them himself to fill idle hours during the years he was employed as a maintenance man at a Seattle cement plant.

“I lived in Emmett when I was a teenager, but ended up working in Seattle after I got out of the Army,” says Sedlacek, now 63. “When I retired last year, I moved back to Emmett because I always liked it here. Making canes and walking sticks was something I did to keep from going insane. You know how it rains in Seattle.”

He says it takes from two to three days to finish a cane or walking stick, working from eight to 10 hours a day, and it shows. Gnarled, looped, forked and twisted, they are carved, sanded and finished to become unusual conversation pieces, if not exactly works of art. No two are alike.

Sedlacek has forked walking sticks with shoes, from baby shoes to children’s cowboy boots, attached to the bottoms of their “legs.” He has canes and walking sticks with faces (including plastic eyes from hobby shops) on their handles. He has gaudy, brightly painted walking sticks trimmed with fur and costume jewelry.

“This one got me a standing ovation at a restaurant in Mazatlan,” he says. “Another time I was standing on a sidewalk in Reno, and so many people were staring at my cane that I went inside a club. Pretty soon a guy came in and I overheard him telling people he’d been driving along and saw a guy with a cane so weird he almost rear-ended the car ahead of him.”

Sedlacek doesn’t need a cane or a walking stick to get around. He takes them with him places because, “I got used to carrying them once I started making them.”

He started making them when he saw “some interesting looking sticks and just started fooling around. I’m not a carpenter; I can’t even pound a nail or saw a board off straight. But I had the day off, and it just sort of started from there.”

The same could be said of many of the things in his home, begun as time fillers and brought to life by imagination. Where most people see things as they are, Sedlacek sees what could be. Sanded and finished, a piece of driftwood becomes an octopus, a seal or an end table. A tree stump becomes a gorilla; a log can be anything from a shark to a coffee table.

“When I go fishing or hunting, I’m always looking for wood I can use,” he says. “If somebody cuts a tree down, I ask if I can have some of the limbs. ... I do as little carving as possible (with an old jackknife, its handle wrapped in electrical tape). I try to find things in nature that already have the right shapes.”

Where others see chicken or turkey bones, Sedlacek sees birds or monsters, or maybe just an interesting-looking doodad. He dries and paints them, sometimes adding plastic eyes or a sprinkling of glitter, and displays them in an oak and glass showcase in his living room.

He has a piece of plywood that became a buffalo, a root that became a centerpiece.

He has a turkey-tail mobile hanging above his kitchen sink, a bear-claw necklace around his neck. The necklace is decorated with beads and a plaster of Paris cow skull.

Sometimes he wears an 8-pound cowboy hat, liberally decorated with coins and bills. Its singular appearance gets looks wherever it goes.

“I want to change everything I see, “ Sedlacek says. “I’ve always been that way. I enjoy working with things and changing the way they look.

“I’ve heard people say they can’t stand it when they retire. I don’t have enough time to do all the things I want to do. When I get started on these things, I can’t put them down until they’re finished. It’s just something I love to do.

“We’re only here a short time. You might as well do what you enjoy.”

If you’ve got a favorite Tim column, send headline or key words to Niki Forbing-Orr at nforbing-orr@idahostatesman.com.