It began as a casual pursuit. Bicycling through the city, Barnaby Wickham spotted a stray hubcap at the roadside in January. He stopped, scooped up the wheel cover, strapped it to his backpack and pedaled home. On his next bike ride, Wickham salvaged another hubcap. Then another. And another. Within weeks, the plastic spheres were stacked like pancakes in the garage at his residence in Northwood. And Wickham, 53, was still on the prowl.
What began as a passing fancy had become a passion. His wife seemed to take it in stride.
“Barnaby has always been a ‘project’ person; he’s very persistent,” Kate Wickham said. “There are worse addictions he could have. This one gets him out of the house and riding his bike.”
As his collection grew, Wickham’s wheels were turning. What might he do with the pile of discs? A Christmas wreath, his stash would be.
“In February, I googled ‘hubcap wreath’ and nothing came up, so I thought, ‘I’m doing something no one’s done before,’ ” he said. “Besides, what could be more Baltimore?”
An avid cyclist, he’d seen orphaned hubcaps on streets and median strips as he whizzed around town.
“I figured I could get 40 of them by year’s end, when I’m going to stop,” he said. Wickham reached that goal by March; to date, he has collected 330 hubcaps sturdy enough to make two huge and kitschy wreaths. The first, 17 feet in diameter, hangs outside his parent’s house in Glen Arm; the other, a 12-footer, is fastened to the sunroom outside his tudor-style home on a quiet street in north Baltimore.
“I’d wanted to hang it from the roof, so people could see it from miles away,” he said. His wife of 29 years demurred.
Strings of clear lights decorate Wickham’s wreath, a mélange of gleaming black and silver hubcaps bearing the emblems of all kinds of cars — Toyota, Ford, Honda, Nissan, Chevrolet and one Tesla. All are topped by a festive red bow fashioned from roof flashing he bought at Home Depot.
Wire ties attach the hubcaps to a framework of perforated and lightweight metal sheets. Wickham’s father, Jack, 88 and a mechanical engineer, helped design the wreaths, the largest of which took six weeks to complete; the smaller one, half that.
“They were a labor of love,” the son said.
When Wickham found the hubcaps, they were filthy, caked with road grime and oily dirt.
“I took a toilet brush, filled a recycling bin with soapy water and cleaned each of them up,” he said. “When washed, they’re kind of pretty.”
A marketing manager for an Annapolis electronics firm, Wickham cycles 60 miles weekly. Hubcaps are his latest find. In years past, the Boy’s Latin graduate has salvaged toys, balls, eyeglasses, cell phones and a wallet with $70 that he turned over to police. Also, countless gloves, hats and three bras, all of which were washed and donated to charity.
Hunting hubcaps, however, has become an obsession. Witness the handwritten list Wickham made, chronicling the date, make and locale of each find, from Northern Parkway to the Alameda, and from Loch Raven Boulevard to Cold Spring Lane. He has rescued hubcaps from roads in Fallston, Ellicott City and Brooklyn Park. One, he fished out of a tree.
Hot spots include Perring Parkway, near the Baltimore County line (“I’ve found more than 40 in that median strip”) and Russell Street, in the stretch between the Horseshoe Casino and Camden Yards.
“There are a lot of potholes there,” he said, “and people come off [Interstate] 95 spraying hubcaps in all directions.”
Having him scrounge along busy Russell Street scares the bejesus out of Kate Wickham.
“The rule is, he can only harvest hubcaps there before 7 a.m. on weekends,” she said. “We’re not dying over this.”
One rule Wickham made himself: He can only retrieve the hubcaps while biking. A purist, he decreed that collecting them by car doesn’t count. If, say, on a 5-mile bike trek, he finds more wheel covers than he can carry, he notes their whereabouts when he gets home. That list, he calls “Hubcaps in the Wild.”
Early on, friends heard of Wickham’s project and passed on sightings of their own. Even fellow congregants at Sunday church share tips on where he might find hubcaps.
“This has really been a collective effort since peoples’ imaginations got caught up in it,” he said.
Since their wreath was raised this month, neighbors have been supportive, Kate Wickham said:
“Baltimore is full of quirky people, which is why we live here. There are neighborhood bylaws [in Northwood], but fortunately, they were written in the 1930s. We can’t distill liquor in our garage, or keep pigs, but there’s nothing [in the regulations] about showing big wreaths made of hubcaps.”
The fate of the wreaths, after the holidays, is as yet undetermined.
“I’d like to give them to someone, perhaps a non-profit [organization] to hang outside its building, or a car dealership,” he said.
And Wickham’s next venture? After Christmas, can he go cold turkey?
“It’s going to be a problem to stop,” he said.
“I’m sure he’ll pivot to something else,” his wife said.
Have a news tip? Contact Mike Klingaman at jklingaman@baltsun.com.