Pretty Boy Floyd

As a Mainer who lived “away” in Oklahoma for more than 30 years, I believe I can help date the lettering on the old tombstone found in the basement of the courthouse. Prominently centered at the top of the stone are the words “Pretty Boy Floyd,” with “Redmond” less prominent, off to one side. This would suggest that while the stone may date from 1874, the painted words must be from later than the 1930s, when Oklahoman Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd robbed banks in several Midwestern states.

The writing probably dates from after 1940, when fellow Oklahoman Woody Guthrie, author of “This Land Is Your Land,” recorded his famous song, “Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd.” Floyd was something of a folk hero, almost a mythic figure, in Depression-era Oklahoma and beyond. Not to condone in any way armed robbery, but Floyd’s supposed practice of sharing with the very poor farmers of Oklahoma the fruits of his bank robberies made him something of an American Robin Hood.

Some of Guthrie’s lyrics retain a remarkable relevance today, with our epidemic of foreclosures resulting from predatory lending. He establishes Floyd as a Robin Hood figure in these lines: “Some tell of a stranger who came to beg a meal/And underneath his napkin left a thousand dollar bill/And many a starving farmer the same old story told/Of how an outlaw paid their mortgage and saved their little home.”

And at the end of the song, Guthrie evokes again the populist sentiments that may have motivated the Bangor gravestone painter: “As through this life I’ve rambled I’ve seen lots of funny men/Some will rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen/And as through this life you ramble, and as through this life you roam/You won’t ever see an outlaw drive a family from their home.”

David Gross

Hampden