by Wesley E. Hall
Publication date: December 29, 2001
Retail price: $15.95
Autobiographical/trade paperback. Size: 6X9.
Length: 287 pages.
ISBN: 0-595-21275-1.
On-demand publishing (iUniverse).
Available: Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Borders, etc.Publisher's Synopsis:
Cain McGee, Junior G-Man is a biographical fiction comedy about a precocious kid growing up in the wild and woolly River Bend of Seminole County, Oklahoma, during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Elmo Hall tells his own story, how he became a published short story writer at the age of eleven and signed on as a correspondent at the Konawa Leader newspaper when he was twelve. At a time when no one he knew had any money, Elmo became a successful salesman of Grit newspapers, Collier's magazines, Garrett Snuff, and Cloverine Salve. From the sale of his mother's delicious turnover pies (his school lunch), he began a number of U. S. Mail Order businesses and became the youngest recipient of the Organizer's Award in the history of the BSA. He was the youngest of eleven children, the first in his family to complete Bugscuffle School (a first-through-eighth grade, one-room school). His beloved River Bend was a community without telephones and electricity and, consequently, radios and television sets and computers ("The list of what the Bend did not have would have filled a Sears and Roebuck catalog"), the most wonderful place in the world for an energetic boy.
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A Boy1s Life in the River Bend
My main nickname as a boy was G-Man,
but I thought of myself as dangerous Cain
McGee, fast-draw artist and bad guy. I was
the last of eleven children, and my father
gave up on his dream as a result of me. His
dream was to farm one hundred and sixty
acres from the front porch of our home,
using teams of mules and strong, obedient
sons.
My ambition, on the other hand, was to
explore every possible nook and cranny of
the River Bend, build forts and hideouts in
the Sand Canyons and the Willow Bottom,
and keep out of the way of grownups.
Farming did not appeal to me in the least.
Sleuthing, writing for the town newspaper,
collecting things, and selling Grit newspapers and Cloverine salve did.
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