I thought for sure I had heard most of the old New England newspaper stories worth knowing until recently, when I learned for the first time about the Boston Post canes.

It turns out, as a publicity scheme, the somewhat eccentric publisher of the now-defunct Boston Post, Edwin A. Grozier, in 1909 had manufactured and distributed around New England some 700 canes, made lavishly out of ebony from the Congo, with 14-carat gold knobs.

They were given to the selectman in all the towns — not cities — in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, for presentation to the oldest male resident. Upon his death, it would pass to the next oldest.

Women were included in 1930.

Some canes were lost, misplaced or maybe stolen over the years. Many towns now keep their canes in a vault or a town historical society museum and only give out replicas or citations noting that the person is the oldest in town.

On Block Island, in the town of New Shoreham, the tradition is going strong, though, and I invited myself, on a recent start-of-summer visit to the island, for a chat with 94-year-old Steve Robison, the newest keeper of the cane there. He doesn't seem to use it to get around, and retrieved it from a corner of the house.

I've known Robison and his family for a long time, but I was still surprised to learn he is the oldest person on the island. It doesn't seem that long ago that he was still walking from home to take regular ocean swims all year round.

He did remind me, though, in our chat about the cane, that in December and January, it was more like plunging and dunking than swimming.

When I caught up with Robison, he was out planting peas in his garden. Just a few days before, 18 loaves of his popular English muffin bread were snatched up at the annual Memorial Day fair at the Island Free Library, the usual sellout of Robison bread.

In learning about the Boston Post canes, I've read that over the years some recipients were a little spooked by the idea, as if it might jinx you. Some refused the cane because they didn't want people to know their age.

Robison's family did tell me he had some mixed feelings about it, especially since the last caretaker of the cane on the island, a friend of his who lived a short distance down the road, didn't have it more than a few months.

When I suggested to Robison he might have it a long time, he said: "I'll drink to that."

He adds that he still drinks but doesn't hold his liquor as well as he used to. His son gave him some non-alcoholic bourbon to make Manhattans, but there was still a lot left in the bottle he showed me.

"It wasn't very good," he said, smiling.

Robison did note that someone else he knew well also had Block Island's cane, Dr. Gilbert Gasner, who kept it a few years, taking custody at the age of 98 and caretaking it another half-year after turning 100.

One of the intentions Post publisher Grozier had for the canes was to generate interesting stories about people who live long lives and what their secrets to longevity might be.

So in the spirit of that community journalism, I asked Robison if he could share any insights about living well into old age.

It may not be so much genes in his case, his family said, since his parents did not live especially long lives. But he did have a few great aunts who lived into their 90s, at a time when life expectancy was shorter.

Robison said he stopped the regular swimming a few years ago, not so much because it was hard to swim but because a bout of sciatica made it more difficult to regularly walk to the beach. No routine has replaced it, he added.

"I should do more," he said.

He also eats generally what he pleases.

"I'm on what you call the seafood diet," he said. "If I see food, I eat it."

Robison, not his wife Nancy, is the principal house cook. She says she is his sous chef.

The Robisons raised their three children in North Kingstown on the mainland. Robison ran a textile mill in Providence.

They bought their home on Corn Neck Road on Block Island in 1973, when it was an unheated cottage. Nancy Robison is part of a prominent family on the island, the Littlefields, and the Robisons' house, to which they retired from the mainland, is next to her grandparents' 19th-century home.

A website, bostonpostcane.org, set up to track the original 700 canes, currently has reports from some 517 of the towns that first received them, noting whether the cane still is being used or has been lost.

Of the 19 towns in Rhode Island reporting on the website, many say the canes have gone missing. In most cases where there is still a cane, it is in storage or on display, and the oldest resident has a replica.

I have to say that when Robison let me hold his, it did seem like the impressive token of a great honor, like it might also have a little bit of magic to it.

I hope Robison will keep it a long time. Indeed, let's all drink to that. Manhattans all around.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com