The Great Depression; Interview with Charles "Jack" Dempsey Floyd. Part 2

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

OK. Can you tell me about...

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Now, we were talking about my father, and what, what reason he went into crime. What I, you know, what I believe, and what I've heard from a lot of the friends and people I've talked to, I heard he was an ambitious type person, and he wanted more than he had. He liked to have the nicer things in life, you know, like cars and homes and stuff everybody'd like to have. But he wasn't making much money. He was working in the wheat harvest up through Kansas. You know, the, there would be crews that would go with the combines and thrashing machines and stuff, you know, and they'd just go through the farmlands and work, and they worked for a wage that wasn't too much. Anyhow, somehow he got involved with some people that, a person, I think one person worked at a store, and then another person, and those three of them planned to rob and get the payroll for a large department store. In those days they didn't use checks to pay, they used cash in pay envelopes. So they, they robbed, got quite a bit of cash, I think, seems to me like $11000 or something, which was a tremendous amount of money in those days. And my father and his friend both spent too much money, bought new cars, went home with a lot of new clothes and everything, which stuck out like a sore thumb, you know. So he got caught and went to prison. And in those days, there wasn't much programs for rehabilitating prisoners and such. And I understand he tried to go to work with his brother, and he got laid off from a job in the oil field because they heard he was an ex-convict. And I'm not sure, but maybe he just decided, \"Well, if they're not going to give me a chance, I'll just do what I've done before,\" and he just got started and, and it never stopped.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

Was he angry about anything? Was he angry about banks? Was he angry at the oil companies because they kind of turned him out?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

I don't know. I never did—see, I was pretty small. I was only ten years old when my father got killed. And the short time I spent with him, the most time I ever spent with him was six months, and I was only about six then, for any length of time. And he wouldn't ever really get into talking. I was a little young to, for him to explain things to me like that. But I just think he just got started, and it snowballed, and he figured there was no other way out, because he tried to get work and everything when he first got out of prison and it didn't work out. And he just, it came easy for him, I guess you might say that, you know. He, he was at large about eight years, I guess, and robbed numerous banks. And I guess it just became easy enough he decided he'd go ahead and do it.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

There's, there's stories about your dad robbing the Sallisaw bank, which was actually a town your father was sort of from, where lots of people knew him. Would you tell me the story about how he did that?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Well, I've heard the stories that, that this bank had taken his grandfather's money, which he had in the bank, and my grandfather asked the banker the day before the bank went, went bad if his money was still safe, and he told him it was. And then evidently the bank started up again. And so my, my father went to his grandfather and told him, he says, \"Grandpa,\" he said, \"I want you to sit across the street over there at the depot, and watch. I'm going to rob the bank here today.\" So he robbed the bank and the next time he saw his grandpa he says, \"Grandpa, did you, did you see me rob the bank?\" And he says, \"No, it was nice and warm. I went to sleep and missed the whole thing.\"

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

So what did the other folks in Sallisaw feel about this kind of like local boy, someone they all knew, coming into town and robbing a bank?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Well, it's just like most of the people in those days, they were, they were on my father's side, you know. They felt he was striking back for the little person or something, and I don't think it bothered them at all. I think they was kind of proud that he did it.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

That's amazing, that's amazing. Did you have a sense that your dad's kind of escapades and activities were exaggerated by the press? Did they kind of get...?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Well, they got, they, they went overboard on it sometimes. I know I've read stories where they, where he was a mad dog killer, and all that kind of thing. He wasn't that type of person. He never really hurt anybody in the banks that he robbed. During the robbery, he never went in and shot people or beat them over the head with a pistol, like Bonnie and Clyde were really like that, you know. They were a sadistic type person. He wasn't that kind of person. The people that really knew my father would tell you he was really a nice person to be around, and he was a lot of fun. He was laughing, joking, keeping people laughing.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

He, I've read, again, stories about your dad sort of having to write to the editors of the newspapers saying, \"Hey, I, I didn't rob that bank, I wasn't there, I wasn't—\" Do, do you remember any cases like that, where he?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Well just, just things that I've read about my father doing, but I'm not sure that it happened that way.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

OK. I know that you and your mother sometimes, sometimes I think while your dad was still alive, actually, would go out and give talks in, in movie theaters about—

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Yeah, we were on like a vaudeville circuit.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

Could you say, \"My mother\"?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

My mother and I were on, like we went to different theaters, and we'd go on stage in between the movies and talk. I'd go out and introduce my mother, and she'd come out and talk about how terrible it was to, to live with the thought of her husband being killed everyday, and the life of crime. You know, we never had any money. He'd send us money sometimes, but really it was a, it was a terrible thing. And I really enjoyed that because we went to the nicest hotels and ate the nicest food, had good clothes and everything, and so it was kind of a fun thing for me.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

What, did people ask you questions? I was curious what they were interested in, what they wanted to hear about?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Same thing that you want to hear about. They wanted to know about what kind of person my father was, you know. And kids were just, they idolized him, you know. Kids my age were, they treated me like I was a movie star's son or something, you know, because he was really a hero for the common people. In the Midwestern state, he was the only outlaw that I've ever heard of that people wanted him to stay at large and not get killed or caught or anything.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

Yeah, one other thing. I, I'm curious about your dad's, your dad's got two different nicknames, and I'm curious about both of them. What do you know about the name Pretty Boy Floyd, and did he, did your father like that name?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

No, he didn't like that name, and nobody that really knew him called him that. It was mainly the—

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

Could you, I'm sorry, could you say, you know, \"No one that really knew him called him Pretty Boy Floyd\"? Because, again, they're going to cut out my question.

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Yeah. Well nobody, that really knew my father and really was a friend of his ever called him Pretty Boy Floyd. It was the newspapers and, and police and everything that—it was a colorful name, and it stuck with him, and it just became like a Robin Hood or something like that, you know. But he didn't really like the name.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

And your dad did have a kind of family nickname, which was Chalk, and I wondered if you could kind of tell me, you know, what that comes from?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Well, my father had a nickname, Chalk, which was the name for uncured whiskey that the stills used to make, you know, and they'd bury these, these barrels of whiskey until they got ripe or cured or something. They were, in one state they were in what they called chalk beer. And he and he friends used to raid these places and get this chalk beer and drink it and have a good time on it and go to the dances and everything. And he liked it so well they nicknamed him after it.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

And do you, do you have memories of, was moonshine, I know it was Prohibition days during this, this time, do you remember the people in your family or people in the area you came from in Oklahoma making moonshine? And—

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Well, I never, I never remember any of our family that, that really had whiskey, what they called whiskey stills, and made moonshine. But I know they were in the mountains and in the area where my father used to live. But nobody of my family that I can remember ever... I didn't know about it if they did.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

OK. Let's cut for a second.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

OK. Go ahead and tell me more about your dad, and like his humor and his warmth.

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

There's a story that I like. When I was born, I was born in my aunt's house, my mother's aunt. And it was during the winter time, it was in December. And after I was born, in a few hours or so, after I was clean up and everything, my father took me into, and went to the mirror with me and held me up to the side of his face and said, \"Oh, look. He looks just like me.\" And you know how kids will do their hands like this [gestures], I had big hands, and he, and he said, \"Look!\" I was doing my hands like that [gestures], you know, and he said, \"Look! He's going to be a fighter. We're going to call him Jack Dempsey.\" But my mother wouldn't go for it. She went for part of the name. But that was, I thought that was kind of nice that he did that.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

Did you grow up with this sense that, that, sort of an ambivalent feeling about your dad? Did you know that he was doing something wrong? That—

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Oh yeah. I knew from the very start that he was a wanted person. And when I first started school, I knew he was wanted, because they entered me in school under a fictitious name. And I was, I was protective as a child could be of his father, you know. But I enjoyed being with him, and we did a lot of fun things. And he kept us laughing a lot. He would tease my mother about everything. I know one time I came home from school, and my mother was always afraid that I was going to be kidnapped, for some reason or another. But anyhow, I passed...these larger boys had a, had a pulley and thing up in one tree, and went to down another, and you'd get in this bucket and ride from one tree down to the other, kind of like a carnival ride or something. So it was fascinating fun, and I stayed after dark. When I went home, my mother was just scared to death, and when I finally got home, she told my father, says, \"You know you've never given him a whipping.\" She says, \"It's your turn to discipline him.\" And it'd been raining that day, and I had a raincoat on. So he said, \"OK, I'll whip him.\" So he took my in the bathroom, and he said, \"You take that raincoat off, and put it over the toilet stool.\" He said, \"Every time I hit it with a belt, you yell.\" So he was beating the raincoat and I was yelling, and my mother was trying to break the door down. She said, \"I didn't tell you to kill him.\" She said, \"I just told you to give him a spanking.\" But he never hit me, never in his life did he ever hit me any, any way like that.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

What was it like when he came to visit?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

It was like Christmas time, or something, you know. It was a special occasion when he came around. Everybody was proud that, to see him, and you, he'd always bring gifts and bring the kids money, and bring me a dog or some kind of a gift. And everybody was just really happy to see him. And usually my grandmother would cook him a nice meal, you know, which he always loved her cooking, her biscuits, and stuff like that. And it was just a good time when he was around.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

Woody Guthrie wrote a song about your dad. Do you remember that song?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Yeah, I remember it. The first time I ever heard the song about my father, my daughter was singing it. I had never heard it when I was a kid, because we never had a record player and didn't have a radio very much of the time when I was a kid, and I had never heard it. And it was on the Joan Baez album. I bought my daughter a guitar for her birthday when she was about twelve years old.

[wild audio]

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

And she was playing this song and singing that. I said, "Where did you hear that song?" She said, "Well, it's on that album, Joan Baez album." And, you know, there's a couple of sayings in there that are used quite a bit, and nobody seems to know where they came from. Like, and he says, "Through this life you'll wander/Through this life you'll roam/You'll never see an outlaw drive a family from their home." Well, Woody Guthrie was trying to say the banks were driving people from their homes, but the outlaws were trying to help them. And another famous saying or cliché, or whatever you want call it, was, "Through, in this life you'll meet a lot of strange men/Some will rob you with a six-gun/Some will rob you with a fountain pen." And that's still true today. The guys who go to the liquor store and hold up with a, with a gun get five years, and maybe someone in a bank will embezzle $1000000, and their looked up like they're a hero.

[production discussion]

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

So you yourself actually got in the middle of this kind of escaping from the police. Can you tell me any stories about that?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Well, my mother and father and I were living Tulsa one time. We'd lived there I guess two or three months, or something. And somehow the police got information that that's where my father was staying or something, and they raided the, the house. But, evidently, my father had a friend somewhere that told him the police were coming. And when they got there, my father and George Birdwell, at the time he was a partner with my father, they were gone. And I remember seeing the police come through the house and go in the back and look everywhere, everything. But my father and George were already gone. But, you know, it was quite an experience, quite an experience for a kid to go through something like that.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

Did Sheriff Cotton, is that the, I mean, Ruth was remembering one of the, the lawmen who, who would often come out to, I guess, the house that she lived in looking for your dad. Do you, do you remember that? Do you remember him coming?

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

I remember that name, but I don't ever remember seeing him. He probably came to their—they lived down in Haskell. It might have been a sheriff down there. A lot of the sheriffs and police officers would've liked to have been able to capture my father. It'd be a pretty good feather in their cap or something, you know. So they, they, they kept surveillance a lot on places they knew my father would frequent. Like he'd go to Ruth's father and mother, my aunt and uncle. He'd go there a lot because he liked them, and they'd treat him real well and everything. He liked to be around the kids.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

Did you have a sense that there was sort of like a network of people that were protecting your dad and passing information on to keep him, keep him safe? And—

CHARLES DEMPSEY FLOYD:

Well, I think it was everybody, really. There was very few people that would say something that they would think that would hurt my father and endanger him or something. I think just, just the everyday people would do that. I know my father has went to strange people and they, they would hide him out and stuff, you know. He'd even tell them who he was. And I just think it was a general thing. It wasn't just a certain group. It was just practically everybody except the police, maybe, or the bankers.

[production discussion]

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

OK. Your dad had a real sense of humor?

Yeah, my father had a nice sense of humor. He'd always keep people laughing and everything. And for the short time that I really, really got be with him, I got to know him pretty well, and he was always kidding around with my mother and everything, you know, keeping her laughing. He'd cook for us and do different things like that. I remember one time he took me fishing. So we went up in the mountains somewhere, and to a lake, and we couldn't get the fish to bite. It was a very clear lake and we could see them. And he said, "You know what we ought to do?" Said, "We ought to shoot those fish. We can't catch them." So he let me shoot the gun in, in the water like we're going to shoot a fish, you know. But we didn't get one, but we, you know, it's just something he thought I'd like to do. It was a lot of fun.

TERRY KAY ROCKEFELLER:

I think I'm done. Yeah, cut.