[Falstaff]

Charles Albert Fallang, passed away last friday and those of us that knew him were grateful that he was finally at peace. He had survived his peers and nearly all his family, and told tales that cast long shadows down the road to the past. Grandpa sure was a colorful man, and his reputation for being a character can best be summed up in a few words, I won't use them, but I fondly recall the twilight years from when I knew him till now.
Grandpa was to the best of my knowlege an expert at so many things, never mastered but competent in all, he always surprised me with his ability to entertain, tell a joke, curse and bellow with righteous indignation. Like a preacher from a pulpit, he roused the deep emotional sentiment of the cowboys and the rowdy roughnecks he knew from Idaho to Canada, and Minnesota to Arizona. He never walked away from a good fight, and broke his hands and many hearts during his one hundred years on this earth, his true age we will never know, because he was born during hard times in Montana, low prices for crops and low prices for stock, his father kept them all together on a homestead on Otter Creek, in a town that his grandfather built called Melville.
He would have been a single man all his life, but took the hand of a woman 20 years his younger, and raised a family of four on the bleak prarie of Montana, miles up the Boulder road, from a little town of Big Timber. He grew up knowing hunger, hard work, and hard liquor.
I only knew the man that held me on his knee, whittled little animals out of white pine, and showed me the scars he took during WW2, hopping from island to island, as his squardron built runways for B29s that took off from Tinian Island. His marksmanship was well known, and he patiently tried to teach me how to kill varmits from extreme range with his scoped rifle and tripod. He told long stories about everything on his ranch, a modest 400 acre homestead on the Boulder river.
I loved the old man, and always knew him as a rodeo cowboy and a rancher, but I really never knew him, though I tried for many years.
My father and I spoke this afternoon, and he held a box in his lap, and removed the contents as he spoke to me from the ranch house...
Grandpa was a decorated combat veteran, a carpenter and a tail gunner in the Army Air Corp and flew 29 missions over Japan.
Grandpa was a moonshiner, a truckdriver and a ner do well, drank to much and often fought for pride and foolishness.
Grandpa probably fathered children up and down the highways of Montana before he married Grandma.
Grandpa was wild, undisciplined and hot tempered, and demonstrated his Scotch Irish, and Norwegian temperment when it suited him, and would have been killed in a bar fight long ago.
But he married my Grandmother, who took this man for better or worse and transformed his moonshining business into 400 acres of Timothy and Alfalfa and Hay, where he spent the remaining 60 years of his life, faithfully and honestly being the best man he could for his Alberta, his sweet little wife, my grandmother.
I remember the calm, insightful and sober man that was he, and find the tales of his exploits and colorful past, best left in the little cedar box, that remained under his bed for so long, I pray now under some elses bed.
I don't want to know more than I have heard, for I have listened and learned and loved about the old bear, those things I remember from my childhood around the corral, may he rest in peace.
Tommorow when they lay him finally to rest under the spreading boughs of a great Elm, and lower him into the hard rocky earth of Montana, I pray he finds his maker on good terms, and joins those that loved him, and knew him, and never outlived him.
He joins them all, his kith and kin, the last of those that carved the wilderness into shapes that I recognise and till now took for granted.
May he rest in peace, and know that he was loved, embraced, and remembered fondly by all of us.
Goodby Grandpa, tonight we Fallangs raise a glass of scotch, light a cigar, and remember the tales we heard in our youth, we honor you and embrace the truth, and sing the songs you sung by the anvil, the forge, and the barn, we will take the old copper still into town and turn it into the pioneer museum, and finally close a chapter in your life, and ours as well....
For those of you lucky enough to have known your Grandparents, embrace them in life, and embrace their memories when they pass. All of them are blessings in their own measure.

[Dyre Straits]

You are so right, Jeff.

I was blessed with 5 Grandparents: Those from my blood parents and one Grandma from my Step Father.

The memories and lessons I learned from them are as priceless as the breath we breathe. Their legacy is our present and what we learned from them to pass to our own children is their future.

All of mine have gone and now reside only in memories.

My thoughts to you and yours.

[Falstaff]

I dont drink anymore, but tommorow, I will hold some irish whiskey, say a prayer for those that came before me, and those that go across the vapor into oblivion, into history, in the footsteps of their forefathers, and imagine, and hope that I might make this world a better place, like my grandfather did for me....God bless them all...

[Vampyromaniac]

sorry jeff
great words as always

[kinetic]

Having recently lost my last Grandparent those words are very poignant Jeff! Thank you!

[Mac Daddy]

Nicely written Jeff.
I have already sent my best wishes to you and your family on a personal basis several days ago.
But its still nice to see this tribute to your grandfather here on DH..

I don't think I will ever see 100 years .. but if I do I hope I can enjoy as many of the experiences your grandfather did. Quite a man

[toddsmack2k]

I am sorry to hear this Jeff. You have my thoughts and prayers. For me I always remember what I had with them and not that they are gone. Sorely missed but dearly remembered.

[Falstaff]

His eulogy has been told and retold many times, and people he knew and their children emerged from the shadows as they shovelled the soil into the ground. I took some time and found all my pictures and looked at them very long and hard and tried to imagine a rowdy, hard drinking man,but I just couldn't for the life of me see that in him, perhaps Alberta, my grandmother really kept the cork on the bottle and kept him in the light. I discovered he was an artist as well, with many bronze castings that I will have to bring back from Montana, He told many tales that never seem worthy of anything more than pure skepticism, and now I am finding that they were all true. I hope I live as long as he....I think when they finally took his guns and his truck and his wood shop away from him he ceased to be a part of his world, and that ultimately did him in. I will make a journey to the plains of Montana and stand under that Elm and pay my respects to a great man, a great friend, and a great cowboy........thanx for your kind words all of you.