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"...Five pence in my
pocket, -- Cold winds swept the green mountains of Bartow County, Georgia, the day
that Charles Arthur Floyd came into this world on February 3, 1904. He was
the fourth of an eventual eight children born to Walter Lee Floyd and Minnie
(Echols), a hard-working farming couple whose combined familial roots went
back many decades in Southern tradition. There wasn't a pampered one among
the Floyd siblings – Carl Bradley, Rossie Ruth,
Ruby Mae, Charles, Emma, Lucille, Edward and Mary Delta; they were expected
to pitch in with the farmwork and housecleaning
chores and, before sunset, learn the Bible as taught by mother Minnie. Young
Charlie tended to his tasks without argument. He showed a good nature and
often told jokes and pulled pranks on his brothers and sisters, tricks to
lighten the workload. Photo: Walter Floyd Family with
Charlie on right in front of Minnie "Everybody was Baptist and yellowdog
Democrat," says Michael Wallis, author of Pretty Boy – The Life and
Times of Charles Arthur Floyd. In a Biography television special
on Floyd's life, Wallis explains that the children of these rural Baptists
were taken "to the revivals where they got long doses of the Old
Testament, fear of the Lord, and they sung hymns until they lost their
voices. And they were there long into the night under the brush harbor." Walter Floyd, industrious and always on the lookout for ways to make extra
income for his growing family, heard that there was good money to make in the
cotton fields in Oklahoma, which was recently admitted to the Union. In 1911,
he packed brood and bundle and headed west to Sequoyah County at the southern
foothills of the lush, verdant Cookson Hills. From
their little wooden abode on the outskirts of the town Hanson, the Floyds, as
a tenant farming family, rented land and produced cotton, corn and other crops.
Never-tiring Papa Walter took odd jobs in the off-season for the county and
it wasn't long before the Floyds were one of the most prosperous families in
the area, one of the few to be able to afford an automobile. A description of tenant farming, written by journalist Burton Rascoe in 1923, pretty much describes the Floyd family's
business: "A tenant farmer has his own team and implements, cows, hogs
and chickens; he undertakes to till the land, pay for the extra farm labor,
and market the crops. If he does not rent outright he pays over to the
landlord a stated share of the gross proceeds on the farm for the year." Teenage Choc Floyd In custom and habit, the Cookson Hills had
changed little since their days when Oklahoma was the Choctaw Indian
Territory. Inhabitants made do and, when they couldn't, they knew other
means. Often, families made moonshine, illegal liquor produced by homemade
stills in their barns, corncribs and basements. This they drank instead of
paying the high prices of established distillers. "Runnin'
likker" became a phrase and a by-living, and
the Floyd neighbors were not averse to taking up the trade. Nor were the Floyds,
whose teenage sons, including Charley, helped peddle it between the little
smoky hamlets that dotted the bluish mountainsides. The country folk didn't
see it as law-breaking; it was a way to earn extra income, a way to clothe
and shoe the young'uns, to pay the rent, the bills.
In The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd, Jeffery S. King states that
the "Cookson Hills (were) four hundred square
miles with only a few poor roads and underbrush, so thick that a man could
walk within thirty feet of someone without seeing someone or being
seen...Everyone there was suspicious of the law and of strangers, and lawmen
there got little aid." The Floyd family moved to nearby Akins about 1915, where the soil provided
better crop growth. Here, they raised most of their own food such as
potatoes, apples and peaches; they raised and canned their own vegetables.
"They cured their own meat, produced lard, made corn meal, and raised
sorghum for molasses," adds King. "Walter made enough money to buy
a truck and earned extra income by hauling freight between Sallisaw and
Akins. Finally, he opened a general store in Akins." Schooling was a luxury for the children of Cookson
Hills families. There was too much work to do at home, and fathers saw a
boy's apprenticeship on the farm as a much more practical way of preparing
for manhood than readin', writin'
and 'rithmetic. The Floyd kids graduated from the
sixth grade, and that was, for that time and place, considered an essentially
good education. At that point, Charley and the others were expected to leave
the confines of the schoolhouse and learn the real basics of earning
dollars the hard but honest way. Charley was a good boy. Neighbors liked him, Akins liked him. They called
him Choc, after the popular local Choctaw Beer, for which, early in his
teens, he displayed a liking. He could usually be seen, when not on his
parent's farm at work, hanging on the walk beyond the family store. His pals
mirrored him, Huckleberry Finns who dreamed of adventure beyond the mountain
ridges where, they learned in Geography class, another world existed. They
doted on tales of exciting people like Jesse James, the Younger Brothers and
the Coles, outlaws who had used the Cookson Hills
as their hideout. The boys knew, had heard tales, of the many caves in the
hillsides that these legendary figures had used to store their bank-robbing
booty. Of course, rumors dripped of buried treasure. Cookson Hills' most famous desperado was Henry
Starr, a cowpoke turned roustabout just before the turn of the century.
Starr, according to Michael Wallis, "graduated from horse theft to train
and bank robbery during his more than thirty years on the outlaw
trail...Because of pardons, one from President Theodore Roosevelt, court
dismissals and some lucky breaks, Starr waltzed away from the hangman's noose
at Fort Smith and elsewhere. He used his Winchester to shoot his way out of
several confrontations with law officers." And he had his good side.
Being a gentleman who never bothered ladies or working men, Starr, says Wallis,
"was the classic social bandit – at least in the minds of the
public." As a boy, Choc would often sit on the front stoop of the Floyd home and,
at twilight, while the thrush birds sang from the trees over the porch, dream
of far-away places. He would be, for a moment or two, on a saddle, six-gun in
hand, riding to that twilight, to a destiny. Biographers all agree that it
was Starr whom Choc would later emulate – and his modus operandi imitate. Hero of the Cookson
Hills and Choc's boyhood hero, Henry Starr Choc rarely got into trouble. Once, he stole cookies from J.H. Harkrider's Grocery in Sallisaw. When caught eating the
box of cookies in the alley behind the store, Choc immediately confessed.
But, at age 15 things began to change. That year, 1919, he had gone off to
harvest fields in Kansas and Oklahoma with a paid work crew. On the surface,
it afforded an adolescent like Choc a good opportunity to learn the prime
elements of a useful trade, simultaneously learning the rules of hard work.
Unfortunately, these traveling work crews were often peopled by drifters who
joined them to earn a buck between seasons of carousing. Some of them were on
the lam from the law. From these vagabonds, Choc was brimmed with colorful
tales of fun and frolic, of getting money the easy way, of debauchery. To a
teenager, these men were the voice of life's experience, the men who could
work magic without bothering their time executing the essential trade of the
tricks. From these men, he learned how to fight and kick and gouge – and win
the KO. His older sister, Rossie Ruth, summarized:
"That's when my brother met the wrong kind of men. They changed his way
of thinking and doing." Back in the Cooksons after the harvest, Choc's familiar habits of fishing and mild fanfare turned
to loafing at Sallisaw's billiards parlors and music halls. Once
mild-mannered, he no longer walked away from a fight; he often generated one.
On a mid-May evening in 1922, Choc and a friend, Harold Franks, broke into
the Akins post office and made off with the only money the two inexperienced
crooks could find -- $3.50 cents worth the dimes left on a counter. A meager
take notwithstanding, robbing a government post office was a federal offense
and, when arrested, Choc got off only because witnesses failed to appear in
court. They were neighbors of the Floyds and, it is assumed, felt sorry for
the boy. After all, every boy sows his wild oats. Choc seemed to straighten out after the near-mishap and went to work,
first at a farm in Muskogee, then on an oil field, then eventually on a
cotton plantation where the work was cruel but the pay was a little better
than his previous employment. At nights, he would relax at a pie supper,
dance at the usual evening socials in town, or play baseball with friends. He
was quickly becoming a favorite with the young women who liked his sturdy
frame, crop of dark brown wavy hair, glinting eyes, dimples and sense of
humor. He recognized their attraction and, with a wink and grin, played the
charmer to the hilt. In many ways, he was more intelligent than most of the other young men who
attended the male/female functions in Akins or Sallisaw. His manner was more
aggressive and his way of speaking at times almost erudite. Choc, the ladies
noticed, showed a certain ambition and determination. He would frequently
vocalize his dreams to move out of the hills and scout the world. But it was not yet time to move on. A local girl from Bixby had captured Choc's heart in early 1924; by June they were married.
Ruby Hargraves was 16, Choc 20 years old. Part
Cherokee, she was tall, lean, very pretty, very dark, and in complement to
her husband's fair good looks. They bought a two-room house in Akins and a
son followed in December. Choc hoped to name him Jack Dempsey Floyd after the
well-known heavyweight boxer of the day, but Ruby, less a sports fan,
compromised with Charles Dempsey Floyd. Papa didn't argue. During these months, Choc toiled in the fields of neighboring cotton
farms. Picking "Old King Cotton" – as the South called it – was
grueling labor. "Cotton was not only king," Michael Wallis asserts,
"but it was a tyrant...Harvesting was unquestionably one of the most
arduous of all the step in the process...A typical day in the cotton patch
lasted twelve hours. It was strenuous work, pulling the bolls of cotton off
the stalks and putting them inside the long cotton duck sacks. Most of the
time, workers were so thirsty, it felt as if they had cotton stuffed in their
mouths. Rest stops for a dipper of water or to wring out a sweat-soaked
bandana were few and far between. The continuous act of picking the delicate
fibers from the thorny pod was tedious. It also hurt like the dickens. By
day's end, the cotton burrs had chewed through the work gloves of those lucky
enough to have a pair and slit open their fingers and palms." Choc wanted more out of life than this. He remembered what he learned from
the smart guys on the work tour, the ones who taught him to look for easier
routes through life. At harvest, Choc met 19-year-old John Hilderbrand, a thief who carried two guns and was hiding
out from the police. Hilderbrand fancied himself to
look like matinee idol Rudolph Valentino and referred to himself as "The
Sheik". He boasted to Choc how he had just robbed an electrical
manufacturing company in St. Louis of $1,900 and would like to commit more
such thefts, with Choc's help. "I know joints,
ripe for the pickin'," he gleamed. "And
you could send your wife and kid more dough than you've ever dreamed of,
Choc." In August, 1925, Choc kissed his wife and boy, promised to return shortly,
and lit out for the Mecca on the Mississippi, St. Louis. There, the partners
went straight to work. By the end of August, they had robbed a half-dozen
food stores and a series of service stations, netting about $565. It was
small change, maybe, but Floyd found the experiences thrilling and unlike
anything else he had ever done. And, like them rascals on the harvest field
had told him – and as Hilderbrand had confirmed –
it was all so easy. Sometime in the first few days of September, a friend of Hilderbrand's, a roamer and two-bit hoodlum called Joe Hlavatry, telephoned the former to forewarn him of a
large payroll delivery that Kroger's Food Store headquarters was expecting
during the evening of Friday, September 11. For the tip-off, Hlavatry asked that he be included in the holdup. The
other agreed. On the scheduled morning, Choc, Hilderbrand and
the recruit stole a Cadillac and parked it unobtrusively down the alley, katty-corner from the Kroger building. Noon came and
went, and Choc figured that their contact had erred. But, a few minutes
before 1 p.m., an armored vehicle drew alongside the dock. The spies watched
the guard unload satchels of money from the back. They waited until the cargo was unloaded and stacked on a wheel cart.
Keeping their revolvers in the deep recesses of their trench coat pockets,
they entered the busy office building and approached the cashier's office.
Without hesitation, guns drawn now, the trio leaped over the counter and
crashed into the back room to intercept the transferring of money. "Hands up!" Hilderbrand cried.
"All we want is the money." Whereupon Choc and Hlavatry
grabbed the sacks of money and, with Hilderbrand,
disappeared from the quarters and out of sight. Writer Jeffery S. King calls
it a "quick, professional robbery" that grossed $11,500 in payroll
cash. But, the thieves showed their naivete several
days later when they bought an expensive new Studebaker and decided to cruise
the streets of Fort Smith, Arkansas, showing off. Suspicious police detained
them, questioned them and recognized Hilderbrand
who was wanted for earlier crimes. Under interrogation, Hilderbrand
and Hlavatry confessed to the Kroger heist and
implicated Choc. Jurors at their November trial found all three guilty of the Kroger
robbery. Choc and Hlavatry received five years
imprisonment and Hilderbrand, who had been
convicted of additional crimes, to eight years. From the start, newspapers loved the expedient drama of the heist,
perpetrated by three no-names. Reporters followed the subsequent arrest and
trial with lively prose. In need of a good story, they hit it from every
angle. In truth, the story wasn't without its colorful tidbits. For instance,
when the payroll master first described the three unidentified hoods to the
police, he referred to Choc as "a mere boy – a pretty boy with apple
cheeks." Columnists found their cue and when a real name was at last
applied to those "apple cheeks," they would savor the moniker
"Pretty Boy" Floyd over and over again. Much to Choc's chagrin – he hated its effeminate
sound – the name had a lilt to it. It had longevity. CHAPTERS |
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