Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 2, 1993 TAG: 9302020014
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Madelyn Rosenberg
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
HER HOBBY MIGHT WIPE ANYONE OUT
Clara Cox, who is not nuts, has traveled some. Switzerland. France. Germany. Egypt.From these foreign countries, she has brought back, in the deep, dark pockets of her suitcase, something that symbolizes the heart of culture.
She has started a collection.
Surely, you can relate. Everybody collects something.
Coins, stamps, bugs, thimbles, refrigerator magnets.
Or dust on the top of a television set.
Clara Cox, who is communications manager for university outreach and international programs at Virginia Tech and who is not nuts, collects toilet paper.
She started her collection in college when she promised to bring her friend, Margaret Manning, a gift from each of the 13 countries she was visiting one summer.
Clara came back to the United States with a slightly warped sense of humor and 13 squares of toilet paper, each one marked in pen with the country and point of interest from whence it came.
"I honestly don't remember bringing Margaret anything else," Clara said in her long, Southern drawl. "She must have hated me."
Margaret, now a teacher at Pulaski County High School, saved those precious squares and gave them back to Clara a few years later in a pretty, flowered box.
"She said she thought it would mean a lot more to me," Clara said.
And, admittedly, the squares did bring back memories. A collection was born.
Clara started saving toilet paper from other rest areas of interest. She has a sheet from the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy and from Piz Gloria, a revolving restaurant once used in a James Bond movie.
For those of you who haven't traveled, Clara's collection can tell reams about the wealth or poverty of a country, and, quite possibly, explain why some nations have a reputation for being up tight.
She has squares from restrooms at the Charles de Gaulle Airport and from Tiberias, Israel, that are as thick and harsh as brown paper towels.
She has a sheet from the Grand Hotel in Rome that could as well be crepe paper.
From Les Invalides, where Napoleon is buried, she took a square of toilet paper so thin and sheer it feels more like tissue paper.
She has a piece from London that is marked in light-brown type with the words "Government Property."
She has a sheet from Tent City in Egypt and a light-blue sample from Beirut, where she got dysentery. ("Come to think of it," she said, "I'm surprised I managed to save a piece.")
As Clara traveled from one country to another on her way to a Baptist youth conference, she marked the difference in cuisine and comfort in her travel log.
"Soft bread and soft toilet paper," she wrote.
She has been to 48 of the 50 states, but she doesn't have a remembrance of every one. Her entire collection wouldn't make a full roll. "This is not an active hobby," she said. "I only take it if the toilet paper is different or the place is weird."
In fact, her only '90s sheet comes from a historic courthouse in Leadville, Col. "It's got to have character if I'm going to save it," she said. "I do not have a toilet-paper fixation."
Still, Clara once offered, when she was working with the library, to donate her souvenirs to "special collections." For some reason, she was turned down.
It was Matt Winston, who also works in Tech's public-information department, who said one day: "Ask Clara about toilet paper."
Clara recently bumped Matt from his office in Burruss Hall, leaving him without a private office. She suspects that's why he leaked the information.
"I hope I don't become the butt of a joke," she said, eyes sparkling. "And that no one takes a swipe at my integrity."
For the record, her "serious" collection is miniature bicycles.
But that's another story.
\ AUTHOR Madelyn Rosenberg, the Roanoke Times & World-News' higher-education reporter, is based in the New River Valley bureau.