This is one of many articles I have about Orlando Walkling, who was married to LaVerna B. Greathouse. I'll post the others soon.
From The Modesto Bee; March 19, 1961
“Dad” Has Never Stopped Working
By LaVerne Potts
Modestan Orlando (Dad) Walkling, 93, has packed a lot of living into his interesting life and is still going strong.
He is more active now than many men a third of his age and is busy tanning hides, making bull whips and rope, farming and doing custom plowing.
He attributes at least a part of his longevity to drinking large quantities of goat’s milk all his life. He does not drink intoxicating beverages and concerning smoking said:
“I wouldn’t put a cigarette in my mouth for all of California.”
Walkling, who lives at 634 Thrasher Avenue, was born in 1868 in Indian Territory in Oklahoma about half way between the present cities of McAlester and Oklahoma City. His mother was half Shawnee and his grandfather was full Shawnee.
Walkling’s Indian name is Skipo Kasite, meaning :to be a big chief”. He, his mother and his two sisters lived with his grandfather until he was 15 or 16 years old. The family home was a wigwam made out of elm bark and they moved often.
His mother had one small kettle in which she cooked and from which the family ate. Each had his own spoon.
He always has enjoyed good health and has not been seriously ill since he was a boy. Then he had been wading in a lake picking flowers to sell and thinks he had typhoid fever.
One big event which stands out in his early life is a trip he, his two sisters and his mother took while he was a small boy. With the children riding three ponies and his mother walking, they traveled from their home area down into Texas to within 32 miles of San Antonio. The round trip took about a year.
Where did he learn to make bull whips and rope? His mother taught her children to braid, make baskets and whips, rugs and lots of things. They even made their beds by weaving willow switches.
He secured his first real job when he was 16 by telling a surveying company that he was 20. He started as an ax man, clearing areas so they could be surveyed.
The survey party started in McAlester and he worked with them all the way to Amarillo, Texas, and ended up as head chainman.
“I was with them for about a year and a half,” explains Walkling. “I made the worst mistake of my life when I quit them. I got along fine. If I had stayed with them, I would have had a different life altogether.”
The surveyors had taught hi how to figure and it was with them he made his fisst rope. The company had a rope for use with a pile driver, but the rope wore out in a coupkle of days.
The Indians had some binder twine the government had sent to them for use with grain binders, but the Indians did not have enough grain to bother with. So Walkling took some of the twine and twisted a new rope using a wagon wheel.
BOUGHT HORSE, SADDLE
Later when the survey company was in between jobs and Walkling could not stand the delay he went to Denison, Texas, with a pocketful of $5 gold pieces, bi8d on a horse and saddle and won. Rather than wait a couple of weeks for the survey company to start work again, he rode to Coffee County, Kansas, and went to work for E. W. Barker, one of the largest cattle feeders in that state.
Walkling worked there until 1893 when the Cherokee Strip was opened to settlement. He quit the ranch and laid claim to 160 acres and set out 110 acres of fruit trees. His holdings grew until he had 1,000 acres of land in Oklahoma.
He explains:
“I had one of the biggest peach orchards in Oklahoma for a good many years. We shipped 55 railroad carloads of peaches one year and also canned 85,000 cans of peaches. WE had girls peeling them by hand. The tops of the cans were soldered by hand. We boarded all of those people.
At one time he had three small oil wells on some of his land in Creek County. He received never less than $10 and as high as $105 twice a month for 10 years from the well.
EIGHT FOSTER CHILDREN
He was married in 1896 and the couple lived together for 60 years and reared eight foster children. Of the eight, they legally adopted twins. They cared for all of the children until they finished their schooling.
The family was on the ranch for 30 years but moved to Perry, Oklahoma, to live while sending the children to school. In Perry, Walkling and his wife bought a store, meat market and hotel.
“We did a credit business, trusted everybody and ended dead broke,” said Walkling. “We came to California in 1942 entirely broke.”
As soon as he arrived here he started looking for a job. He was 76 years old and everywhere he asked he was told he was too old.
Then he went to a local meat plant, told them he was 72, and got a job. He worked there two years until he was injured on the killing floor.
A roller fell off a track, dropped about eight feet and hit him on the head. He awoke in a hospital with the first thought that a German bomb had blown up the meat department. He was in the hospital for 26 days and was not allowed to return to his job because of his age.
So Walkling started making rope and raising chickens, and “has gotten along fairly well ever since.”
WIFE BECAME ILL
While he worked in the meat plant, his wife worked in a local cannery. After they had been there about two and a half years, she became ill, was bedridden for two and a half years and then died.
Approximately three and a half years ago he married Mrs. Mary Hines, who then was about 68. Recently she has been quite ill.
After leaving the meat plant Walkling established Dad’s Poultry Market, 1329 Oregon Drive. He continued it for a while but now rents it out.
He farms a 110 by 208 lot and sells the crops. He also does tractor work for persons in the area.
TANS OWN SKINS
He makes his whips out of deer, calf and goat skins which he tans himself. He has sold 25 to 30 in the last two or three months, but says there is not as large a market for them as he would like.
Walkling has installed a “rope walk” in his back yard. He says the secret of making rope is to twist it very tight; that there is a lot to learn fro experience,
He recently sold $600 worth to a local man. He also sells a lot of hard twisted lariats to rodeo performers, and stock men who want a hard twisted rope which is stiff so the loop will stay when it is thrown.
In his spare time he has enjoyed carving and painting as hobbies.