Wells Fargo's got nothing on Walter
COMMENTARY: JOHN KELSO

The ride's rough, but it's colorful and cheap.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

With gas prices hitting a new record Monday in Austin of an average $3.03 a gallon, Walter Yates has inadvertently come up with a colorful travel alternative.

Walter, 82, who lives in Williamson County, has built his own stagecoach at home by hand. Cool. We already knew Williamson County was a little old-fashioned, right?

Seriously, Walter is good with tools. And he likes to collect old stuff, like wheels for stagecoaches. He says his stagecoach is an exact replica of an 1852-vintage Wells Fargo model.

"In 1852, Wells Fargo ordered 11 of these things," Walter said as he showed off his red stagecoach with big yellow wheels. "It cost $1,100 for one of these coaches ready to go."

Sounds like a good deal to me. Hey, it costs almost that much to fill up an Acura.

Walter's just one of those old guys who likes to build things. About 10 years ago he built a helicopter in his yard that actually flew. And now he's put something together that gets miles per gallop instead of miles per gallon. Is this timely, or what?

"I've got a little Subaru Baja; I filled it up the other day: $40," Walter said. "I don't know what these people do who have these gas guzzlers, or fill up and have to go to work every day." Walter is real proud of his new ride. He put leather upholstery in it and equipped it with kerosene lamps. So not only is it good-looking, you don't have to stand in line at a convenience store and fork over a bank payment to keep the thing going.

And if you parked it at the mall, it would be easy to find.

"If you set it beside one that was 150 years old, I don't think you could tell the difference," said Walter, who figures he's got $15,000 invested in his stagecoach.

No, he's not going to drive it around town. He plans to use it in parades. He's even looking for a team of two horses for a Fourth of July parade in Breakaway Park, the development he lives in near Cedar Park.

So if you've got two horses you want to loan to Walter, contact me at the number or e-mail address listed at the end of this column and I'll tell him. But they can't be just any old horses.

"You have to have horses that are trained to pull a wagon," Walter said. "If you use just regular horses, they'll wreck it."

This homemade stagecoach has been a long time coming. Walter started working on it in the big shed behind his house in 2004. He figures he'll have it finished by the Fourth of July. It would have been done quicker, if not for the five bypass operations that put Walter in the hospital for six months.

But he stuck with it.

"I knew someday I'd do this," said Walter, who has been collecting stagecoach wheels and other parts for about 30 years. "I almost waited too long."

He says it's the hardest job he's ever done even harder than the helicopter. When you're building a stagecoach, who do you call for tech support?

"You can't get any plans on one of those things," Walter said. He visited museums in Oregon, New Mexico and Colorado that had stagecoaches so he could take photos and measurements.

So it wouldn't be a great thing to drive to the store for a quart of milk. The ride's a little rough. The shocks are a couple of thick straps made from leather that came from bulls killed in Mexican bullfights, Walter said. Those had to be special-ordered.

"It has to be really thick leather; a regular steer hide wouldn't work," he said. Plus, you can't take it on the interstate without getting pulled over by the police. On the other hand, it'll ride eight or nine folks.

"And if they're little kids, you might get 10 in there," Walter said. Sounds great for carpooling.

Go ahead and laugh. But next time you're shelling out $50 to fill 'er up, remember you heard it here first.

Find this article at: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/05/22/22kelso.html

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