Monday Meandering -

I first posted this story about a distant relative back in 2013. I ran across it recently doing some family research and thought I should remind the grandchildren that every family has a skeleton in the closet. Here's ours.

There is a distant relative in our family tree with an interesting, if dubious, set of associated facts. This relative:

• was mentioned by name in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath
• had a ballad written about him by Woody Guthrie that has been recorded by Bob Dylan, The Byrds and Joan Baez, among others
• has been the subject of a number of books, including one co-written by Larry McMurtry
• has been portrayed in movies by John Erickson (1960), Robert Conrad (1965), Fabian (1970), Steve Kanalay (1973), Martin Sheen (1974), Bo Hopkins (1975) and Channing Tatum (2009)
• was named Public Enemy Number One by J. Edgar Hoover

Let me clear. Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, though a fifth cousin of my mother, therefore my fifth cousin,  another generation removed, didn't come to many family reunions in his day. He was busy with other activities, namely robbing banks and running from the cops.

The genealogical record says Floyd was born on February 3, 1904 in Bartow County, Georgia. He grew up in Oklahoma after moving there with his family from Georgia in 1911, and spent considerable time in nearby Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri. The Wikipedia record has more: he was first arrested at age 18 after he stole $3.50 in coins from a local post office. Three years later he was arrested for a payroll robbery on September 16, 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri and was sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served three and a half.

Entering into partnerships with more established criminals in the Kansas City underworld, he committed a series of bank robberies over the next several years; it was during this period that he acquired the nickname "Pretty Boy," a name he hated. During the period from 1929 to 1933, he was involved in or accused of a number of robberies and shootings, including the "Kansas City Massacre," a gunfight in which four policemen perished.

This brought the focus of J Edger Hoover and the FBI on Floyd, though historians doubt that Floyd was actually involved in this event. Floyd himself denied it to his dying breath, and even sent a postcard to the Kansas City police which read: "Dear Sirs- I- Charles Floyd- want it made known that I did not participate in the massacre of officers at Kansas City. Charles Floyd"

Floyd's life of crime came to a predictable end in a corn field near East Liverpool, Ohio, while being pursued by local law officers and FBI agents led by Melvin Purvis, famous for his dogged pursuit of Baby Face Nelson and Charles Dillon. The genealogical record simply states that he died October 22, 1934 and was buried in in Akins, Oklahoma. It does not state that it was one of the most well-attended funerals ever in the state of Oklahoma.

So how does the son of share-croppers Walter Lee and Minnie (Echols) Floyd, raised in the Cookson Hills of Oklahoma, go from callus-fingered cotton picker to trigger-fingered desperado and something of a folk hero, remembered in legend and in song? I suggest that his story has been told well by others, and I refer you to:

• McMurtry, Larry and Ossana, Diana, "Pretty Boy Floyd," Simon & Schuster; (a fictionalized version)
• Michael Wallis, "Pretty Boy, the Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd" St. Martin's Press, New York, 1992
• Merle Clayton "Union Station Massacre" 1975 BM Bobbs Merrill

By the way, attribution for the photo above reads: "This image or file is a work of a Federal Bureau of Investigation employee, taken or made during the course of an employee's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain." How's that for permission to re-post?

Monday Meanderings - 2.18.2019

Something new at our house!



Okay, the clock is not new. In fact the clock is older than I am. I posted about it before, and my efforts to get this family heirloom running reliably. After a lot of research, I took a chance on a clock repair service in Illinois that entailed removing the works from the clock proper, carefully packing it for shipping and sending it off to be rebuilt.

The repair took about twice as long as advertised, but this week the clock returned home, and I was able to re-install it in the case and once again our house is filled with the Westminster chimes every fifteen minutes.

It's a lot quieter than it was; before, the gears would grind and the mechanism would whir and the parts would click while pealing out the time. Now it just goes ding, dong, ding dong at the appointed intervals. You can't even hear the ticking of the clock - which I rather miss, actually.

Good news. The inter-neighbor war appears to have ended peacefully. The stakes in the ground that we mistook for a possible battlement (or at least a fence) is to mark the positioning of a hedge and a scattering of trees. Not ominous at all.

Saw an item in SXSW news about about some company introducing a mobile Alexis. This robot-like device is designed to follow you about and act as your personal AI assistant. I commented to Barb, "Why would anyone want Alexia following you around?" Her response was, "Well, maybe she could tell you what you went in there for."

And speaking of SXSW - that annual event that requires Austin residents to detour by way of Oklahoma City if our destination is south of downtown - what do you get when you combine thousands of electric scooters and thousands of event-goers who end up at the same event? A Bird nest.

And how do locals feel about the 100,000 visitors to SXSW?

Monday Meanderings - 3.11.2019

Tax Tales

For the first time since Barb and I married and began filing joint tax returns, it appears that the best deal for us will be to take the standard deduction. The itemized deductions, thanks to a delusional tax overhaul that began changing the landscape in 2018, just aren't what they used to be.

I prided myself in my diligence for scraping up every deduction that we were entitled to. We kept logs of charitable mileage; every trip to Learning Ally, every trip to teach an ESL class. We logged every item that went to Goodwill, church pantry and Coats for Kids, among others, along with the dollars contributed, of course.

We recorded all medical mileage. Every. Last. Trip. We even kept up with the parking garage charges. Who does that? I faithfully took the 15% depletion allowance for our oil bidness - along with the Stephens County tax assessment, of course. We were thorough. And it was for naught.

Oh, I know that the Individual Standard Deductions were raised substantially, off-setting the loss of other deductions. And keeping up with all those details was a pain. But it was a good pain, knowing that I was squeezing every penny I could from the IRS.

So can I stop recording all that detail? Will the tax reform be reformed and re-reformed? Probably. And it is a lot of trouble. But...

Figuring out this years taxes reminded me that I went through a lot of old, old tax returns a while back. Returns that we as far back as 1965, 3 years after we married.

We were living in the house we bought from the suddenly unemployed HSU football coach. I had been working for Fidelity, but in the summer went to work for a film company that split off (and quickly went broke). Barb worked for AISD, subbing and as a teacher. We made $9,713 between us. We paid Dr Steckler (in advance) $175 for "complete OB care." We borrowed the money.And, we got a much-needed $295 back from the IRS.

1966 - Back at Fidelity, I made $8,300 and listed Rob as a dependent for the first time. Big expense that year was Hendrick Hospital - $258.85!  Got a whopping $419 refund.

1967 - Barb is listed as a homemaker, but income is up to $9,846. Expenses included payments to Sears and to repay government loans. First Schedule C for a side-line tape duplicating business that grossed  $2,738; got $269 back from IRS.

1968 - Two dependents, $400 back. Schedule C showed $2,628 gross, $782 profit,

1969 - Fidelity has become Hallmark, salary up to $10,800. Profit from tape duplication up to $1,131. $286 refund

1970 - Big year. Address change to Kamar Lane in Austin. $794 profit on Schedule C. Still paying off government loans. $400 refund.

1971 - Living on Dryfield. Owed IRS $115 (only $175 duplicating business) but got a notice of an error in our favor and got back whopping $47. A note said there was a $50 Christmas bonus.

1972 - Barbara is teaching with Mrs. Streety at North West Child Development. Total income $12,900; got back 184.95 (and, after filing 1040X to account for a missed loan origination fee, another $51). Doctor bills indicate that this was the year of my appendectomy.

1973 - Living on August Dr; $15,365 income. $21 profit from tape duplicating. Why bother? Barb got a 1099 from Sweet Publishing for editing work. Expenses include Capitol Medical Clinic, which is still our primary physician's office. $237 return.

1974 - $16,528 wages include Brentwood Christian School, Sweet Co, and NW Child Development for Barb. Schedule C had a $112 loss.

1975 - $398 refund on income of 17,500. No schedule C. Got $150 for expenses representing Sweet Company at ACU Bible Teacher's Workshop (our vacation). Drove 262 miles delivering Meals on Wheels and 331 miles "driving volunteers to do yard work for sick church worker." Hmmm.

1976 - $286 refund on $18,000 income; includes Barb teaching at Brentwood and working at Sweet.

1977 - Owed $283 on $24,500 income. That's what happens when you make the big bucks.

1978 - $385 refund on $26,000 income. Phew! Barb had income both from Brentwood Christian School and from Sweet.

1979 - $833 refund on $25,800 income; expenses include allergy shots.

1980 - Big year - $865 return on $32,600 income. Deductions include UT classes and Austin Public Library card fee (we weren't in the city limits yet).

1981 - Owed $137 on $34,321; W2s from 1st Presbyterian Day School and NPC. Expenses include Spanish lessons and UT classes. New schedule C for "DP Consulting" grossing $1,944.

1982 - At bedtime on April 14, Barbara casually remarked, "Oh by the way. We owe the IRS $2,300," whereupon she turned off the light and promptly went to sleep. I, however, did not. Where, oh where was I going to come up with $2,300? In the morning!

It was a big year - $48,600 income, including $11,300 for my consulting and a W2 from UT for a class Barb taught. Expenses included mileage, etc. for soccer coaching.

And that's the 1040 story of the first 20 years of our filing jointly.

Monday Meanderings - 3.4.10`9

Random bits and pieces

The car wars - the neighbor parking his car in front of the other neighbor's house (and our driveway) seems to have taken a strange twist. The parked car has been absent for more than a week now, so I wondered if there had been a truce.

Then this weekend we saw a series of stakes and markers placed every few feet in a line between the two houses. A fence? But then we saw that the stakes were also placed in a row across the car-parker's front lawn, Fencing in the house from the street? Who does that? A barricade? A moat? Gun turrets? This is getting weird.

I'm not even going to talk about the weird weather. OK, I'll just say it's weird. They say the bluebonnets - which are showing up in abundance now will survive this freeze, but the Fredricksburg peaches may not. Bummer.

I was searching old blog posts foe a specific item yesterday, and after opening up a series of posts to see if I had found what I was looking for, I was struck by how many items I have written and completely forgotten about. Sort of like not having to buy new books because after a few months I can just reread the old books, having completely forgotten what happened. Makes me wonder if I need to continue writing new posts. I'll just start again from the beginning and hope that your memory is as bad as mine!

And I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did run across a YouTube video of Elvis, along with Scotty and Bill, performing in the high school auditorium on April 13, 1955. I was there - and backstage during the concert, so maybe you can pick me out of the folks that get shown for a fraction of a second. If you can, let me know which one I am.