Skiatook Statuary In Business 50 Years

It is not rare, but it is unusual for someone to keep his business rolling along successfully for 50 years. But that's the story of Skiatook Statuary, home of concrete figures from small garden frogs to a 6-foot Bigfoot.

Chet Reyckert gave us a tour of his Skiatook Statuary where there are acres and acres of concrete figures everywhere you look. 

"As far as keeping an inventory and computerized and everything - it would be a nightmare," said business owner Chester Reyckert. 

So if he's running low on, say, gnomes, they just get out the mold, pour the concrete and make some more.  So how do you get into the statuary business?

"I was working for the newspaper," Reyckert said.

He was a pressman, and needed some stuff for his yard, so he got a side gig making statuary in his garage. Fifty years later he's got five acres of the stuff. There are birds and benches, cowboys and Indians, saints and sinners. He has animals large and small, and his customers are retailers and wholesalers all over this part of the country.

"It's let me do a lot of things and enjoy a lot of things," he said.

In recent years, he says one of the big sellers is Bigfoot. You know, Sasquatch. He's got a bunch of them. 
 
"From a little 24-inch one to the 6 and 1/2-foot one," said Chester Reyckert, Skiatook Statuary owner.

Bigfoot has become big bidness. Any regrets about leaving the newspaper 50 years ago?

"Oh man, no - no way," he said.

I'm glad, because where else could I get a 10-ton hippopotamus?