| Summary: | Flip Of Coin Made Walden Sourdough; He's Going Back. Flip of Coin Made Walden Sourdough; He's Going Back Forty years ago Arthur T. Walden was discovering that he was a poor farmer. He was healthy, 25 years old, and ambitious, but the New Hampshire acres he was cultivating didn't seem to cooperate with him. So one day he pulled out a 25-cent piece. "I'm going to get out of here." himself. "Heads I go to Alaska. Talls I go to South Africa." He flipped. And So to Alaska The coin spun into his palm. It came down heads, and a few weeks later he was in Seattle. He was in Seattle again today, a grizzled, strong old man, heading for Alaska again, and marveling at the things that have happened to the city since he last saw it when he left the North in 1902. He is 65 years old now, but the prospect of knocking about the North again dismayed him not at all. In 1928 he went to Little America with Admiral Byrd, as head freighter and dog handler of the famed Antarctic expedition, anrl ho doesn't think he has aged much since. Eskimos to Be Recruited Walden, who arrived in Seattle yesterday by Northwest Airlines from Boston with Sheldon Fairbanks, head of the Campbell Fairbanks Expositions, Inc., will recruit Eskimos to handle kyaks in eastern sportsmen's shows. "When I first came to Seattle," he said at the Roosevelt Hotel, "I don't think there was a paved street in town. They hadn't even bothered to take the stumps out of some streets and had built plank trestle along, so the doors of houses and stores were above the street level in some places, and below it in others." Staked to Dog Team "One of the first things I did in Alaska was discover that I wasn't as good a poker player as I thought I was. After that a man named ARTHUR T. WALDEN He learned aboni poker m Alaska Healey staked me to a team and grub and I began freighting. The gold rush came along, and I paid off my debts. I left in 1902, and that was the last time I'd seen Seattle. "The Antarctic? It's a good place for freighting with dogs. It's so level around Little America that I used to pull a ton of supplies with one team." Walden, who lives now in Wonalancet, N. H., is the author of three outdoor books, "A Dog Puncher on the Yukon," "Harness and Pack:" and "Leading a Dog's Life."
|
|---|