Pretty Boy

Typically, Charles Arthur Floyd is described as a handsome, ruthless bank robber. Many claimed he was a depression-era Robin Hood. This is debatable, but it’s true he gave away large portions of his “earnings” to friends, family and even acquaintances – those who sheltered him, poor Oklahoma farmers and others like him, struggling to get along during hard times. Pretty Boy was, by birth, a farmer, at a time when the land wasn’t providing sustenance. He was a dreamer and a self-starter. And if we grant that his chosen “field” was bank-robbery, then, within his field he was an exemplary American – innovative, talented, a risk-taker with vision. Of course the banks were not looked on kindly by the majority of Americans, especially in poor rural Oklahoma, and thus Floyd’s folk-hero status increased with each daring, seemingly impossible robbery and near capture followed by incredible escape. And as his infamy grew, his freedom shrank, at the hands of the young
J. Edgar Hoover.