C. L. Lawson was born May 26, 1942, in rural Bell County to the greatest parents who ever lived. His dad was a sharecropper and Baptist preacher. His mother was a fine Christian woman. He remembers the only time his mother went to the rodeo with him. They were going to visit kinfolks in Freeport and went to the rodeo at Simonton on the way. His bareback bronco did not buck very well so he did not place. Later in the car his mom said she was scared to death and that she was up there praying that the horse would not buck. He told her that she should have been praying for that horse to buck.
He knew Bill Southerland all his life. When he was fifteen, he started working for him. Bill ran cows, sheep and goats. Every day after work, they would go to the cow lot where they had built a bucking chute and ride cows until dark. Bill and C. L. became close friends and he introduced C. L. to rodeo. They started going to bull riding jack pots at Logan Huffman’s place and the story continues. Once he started getting on bulls and bucking horses, it got in his blood. He started competing at twenty to thirty rodeos a year when he was 18. He decided bareback riding appealed to him more when he found out he did not ride bulls too good and horses did not hook him in the ass when he got off. He was pretty successful riding bareback horses. One of his biggest thrills was winning Rock Springs and placing at two other rodeos on July Fourth weekend. A thousand dollars was a pretty good week in 1971.
Some of his best friends he has ever known he met rodeoing. Bill was a big influence on him. He had some pretty wild times traveling with Crazy Dave for a few years. He met the love of his life, Marva, in 1970 and after a whirlwind courtship, they were married in 1974, the same year he quit competing. They have a daughter, a son and three grandsons.
C. L. loves rodeo and met a lot of great, life-long friends through rodeo. He is not sure if those that rodeo today experience the same closeness and friendship he did in his era. He hopes that for their sake, they do.
