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BOLEY SIGN
I doubt tat 4200 people still live here. There aren't enough street corners for that many people to hang out on. COMING HOME
Day 29: May 27, 2013 I finished my cold pizza breakfast and then paid a visit up Hwy 62 to the little town of Boley, OK. Boley was incorporated in 1905 on land belonging to the Creek Nation as an all-black community capable of self-government. Oklahoma boasted of about two dozen such communities. It is still an all-black community but it seems to have fallen on hard times. All of the nice old brick buildings that used to house thriving hubs of industry are closed down and boarded up. The only places open are a liquor store and the post office. A few of its good citizens were found lounging on a street corner and all of them were already drunk by 9am. In more prosperous days Boley had a stout bank. It was a Farmers and Merchants Bank ably managed by David J. Turner. In 1932 Turner was deeply concerned about the possibility of a robbery at his bank. He took the precaution of installing an alarm system in the bank that was wired to a loudly shrieking siren and connected to several nearby business establishments and to
BOLEY
This is the bank where George Birdwell was killed whining like a little girl. The getaway diver, Charles Glass parked the Buick on the wrong side of he street about were the white paint stops. Birdwell died about where the flower pot sits. Patterson was badly wounded from numerous gunshots and was captured o the sidewalk. Apparently he survived his many injuries. the Masonic Hall across the street where a cache of firearms was being held in readiness. Boley also had a sheriff, Langston McCormick, who was just as stout as the bank was, but far more dangerous; all six foot seven inches of him. Pretty Boy Floyd and his pal, George Birdwell had already knocked over banks in the nearby communities of Castle, Paden, Prague, and Henrietta. Birdwell wanted to hit the bank in Boley too, but Pretty Boy did not care to join that effort. He was more attuned to the temper of those all black communities than Birdwell was. Birdwell thought that robbing a “nigra bank” would be easy and fun and he gathered in a couple of other criminals to help him pull it off. One of them was a hardened thug named Champ Patterson, and the other was a local Boley gambler named Charles Glass. On the day before Thanksgiving in 1932 George Birdwell attempted to rob that bank. When Birdwell and Patterson entered the bank President Turner himself went to the teller window to help him with the transaction. Birdwell pulled his gun, announced the robbery, and demanded the cash. When the alarm sounded he cursed and shot Turner four times at point blank range through the chest and then was hit himself with a bullet through his neck. He dropped to the floor whining like a little girl and quickly bled out. Patterson went out in a hail of flying lead and never even made it to the getaway car. Glass had not yet been hit, but he had parked the car facing the wrong direction and had to turn around. He was shot through the neck and killed just like Birdwell was. Sadly Turner survived the robbery but died in the doctor’s car on the way to the hospital in Okemah. Patterson survived long enough to rat Birdwell out. Pretty Boy continued his errant ways until 1934 when he was gunned down by a posse in an Ohio cornfield. Without Birdwell to help him Pretty Boy was pretty much just a petty thief. Turner was buried in Boley on November 28 in a funeral attended by 5000 friends. When Pretty Boy died he had a bigger funeral. Seems odd, doesn’t it?
After my short visit with the drunken people in Boley I drove up through Prague and then down to Shawnee to get my Jeep serviced. Prague was the boyhood home of Jim Thorpe. Shawnee is where the tornado hit the previous evening. I expected to see nothing but hail damaged vehicles all over the lot at that dealership but did not see a single cracked window or dent. That part of town was badly shaken but unscathed. About three miles to west where the storm crossed the highway destruction to the trees was astonishing. Later in the afternoon an ever bigger tornado destroyed Moore, OK and brushed up against both Prague and Boley. I doubt that the storm chasers would have stayed a second night in Okemah. I spent the night at a Sleep Inn over in Amarillo, TX and had supper at the Hofbrau Steakhouse. They had really good black eyed peas there as a side dish to a main course of smoked sirloin. I never heard of smoked sirloin before. It wasn’t very good. I dipped it in juice from the beans.
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