Description

Rating: Not rated

Tags: Biography, Lang:en

Summary

At the age of nine Claude began a new chapter in a life full of exploits as his family trekked
from Wise County to Greer County Texas to homestead, unaware that sixty years later this
same event would open another chapter of his life. C. L. Fallwell the Old Man from the Country
is a humorous and autobiographical look at a “go getter” of a man full of adventure and stories
to tell. With stories spanning a lifetime he narrates chapter after chapter of frontier-living
around the turn of the century.

Claude’s boyhood experiences include river crossings, bull-fights, homesteading north of
Mangum, Oklahoma, ranching, farming, Indian encounters, school teachers, hunting, being
“man of the house” and running away from home. In his teen years he goes “up the trail” on
cattle drives and is “promoted” to camp cook when the boys are fed up with the old cookie.
While spending long months away from home, he prepares an unprecedented variety of chuck
including both traditional meals such as SOB stew as well as the unexpected such as iced
layer-cakes and various pies. In addition to feeding as many as one hundred cowpokes at a
time, he acts as doctor, nurse, veterinarian and even host for visiting wives. After months on
the drive, he is afforded the opportunity to visit Kansas City where he finds just the thing he
needs to woo his girl back home.

Always ready for an adventure, Claude moves his wife and new-born son to New Mexico where
he homesteads, opens a store, and is vehemently accused of robbing the train mail car. As if to
remove any doubt, he soon becomes a lawman and witnesses a sad story of jealousy and
betrayal which leaves a broken family. Later, with the economy failing and their land and
house repossessed, he moves to the Pacific Northwest to care for an acquaintance’s rural
property. After packing and selling what would not fit in three steamer trunks, the family of
five boards the train for Portland, Oregon, and then a steamer down the coast to Myrtle Point,
where they lived for several years. Claude encounters wildlife of all kinds while living, hunting
and fishing in rural Oregon. Never content to stay in one place or do one thing too long, he
moves to Montana to run a grocery store, Idaho to work on a fruit farm, and finally back to
Oregon a second time as a preacher.

Years later, Claude starts his last great adventure by opening a grocery store in La Grande,
Oregon. As he is a natural spell-binding story-teller, he is easily convinced to use serial stories
about the Old Man from the Country to advertise the Half Way Market in the local paper. As he
recounts his life each week in the classified section, he quickly gains a following and enjoys a
moment of fame and generosity. Gathered here are the delightful autobiographical tales of C. L.
Fallwell the Old Man from the Country.

**

About the Author

Dwayne Towell has degrees in Computer Science and Software Engineering, but interests that are considerably more eclectic. After graduation and marriage, he spent fifteen years in Portland, Oregon, as a programmer, software architect and technical director for a game-oriented software development company, where he enjoyed both crafting and playing stories and puzzles his two children could enjoy. In 2003, he made a career change to college professor and has been teaching Computer Science at Abilene Christian University for the past eight years. When not engaging young minds in the intricacies of computation and software development, he spends time modeling with LEGO, enabling software entrepreneurs, playing board games, conquering video games and more recently exploring folk stories and the events surrounding them. Dwayne grew up hearing the stories of C. L. Fallwell read aloud by his mother as they travelled cross-country in a station wagon. His recent interest in history and these folk stories was fueled by a desire to preserve the stories in C. L. Fallwell the Old Man from the Country for future generations.