Cornfield of Dreams

July 18-19, 2017

I was starting to feel a little sedentary, so it was time to hit the road for a few days.

For a long time, it has been on my list to visit the road in eastern Ohio where the FBI killed Pretty Boy Floyd.

A trip a year and a half ago to West Virginia with a short stretch in Ohio had brought me within ten miles of the exact spot, but I didn’t know it at the time. 

Maybe I’ve talked too often about coming back. It has become a kind of running joke with Joanna.

Anyhow, that’s how I have wound up at a Quality Inn franchise in a small town with the improbable name of Calcutta, Ohio, where I’m writing this.

Who names a town Calcutta? And why? 

I’ve never been to the original, so I can’t be sure all the stories are true, but it has a world-class reputation for crime, squalor, and disease. 

Maybe it was an effort to ward off the Evil Eye.

But let me begin at the start. Joanna took a pass on this run, so I left La Quinta in Fairfield by myself a little before 11 and took one of my favorite roads west, Interstate 80. 

I always get a kick out of the Delaware Water Gap. You see it first from a rise on the highway, two mountain shoulders against the sky. Then you pass through it some minutes later, the layers of stone, the cliffs, the river, the forest. 

Traffic was flowing well and got me past Stroudsburg by noon.

Around two, I was starting to feel hungry so I left the highway at Bloomsburg. This is a charming old town where Joanna and I stayed on our way back from the Wild West tour last summer.

My stop here became part one of what turned out to be the Day of Two Denny’s.

The first place to eat that I saw in Bloomsburg is the Turkey Hill Brewing Co. But the pub doesn’t open till four.

The next was a Denny’s franchise, next to the Bloomsburg visitor center.

Stand-up comics sometimes make fun of Denny’s, but I had no complaints about this one. They had seven-grain toast to go with my poached eggs and the coffee was good. 

An hour or so after that, I left the highway again to explore. Maybe a small town where I could take a stroll.

There were a couple of very small towns, a dozen or so houses with no sidewalks. I could imagine the unease of the residents if they saw me walking there. 

What is this guy doing? Casing the place?

So that was a bust. 

There were signs showing horses and buggies, and I passed a few places that were clearly Amish—people in 19th century clothes and no power lines to the property.

There was a lot of horse shit on the road, but no horses pulling buggies.

On the way back to the interstate, a sign pointed to Ravensburg State Park.

So I turned left onto 880 north. 

The park was shady and had a rapid rocky stream, a mill dam, and some mosquitoes that got fed.

The rocks were covered with moss so thick that grass and small bushes had taken root in it.

On the way back to the car, I passed a man talking into a cell phone. Then I realized he was talking to me.

Do you have a vehicle here?

Yes.

Can you help me? My car is stuck.

I don’t think I can do that, but my cell phone is in the car. If there’s a signal we can call for help.

Like a dummy, I had forgotten that he was already talking on a phone.

I already have somebody coming, he said.

OK.

By the time I passed his car, about 50 or 100 yards into the park, I saw what had happened.

The tire marks in the gravel road made a tight U-turn to put one front wheel of his Mustang over a ditch with the axle resting on the top of a concrete abutment.

How can you do that without practice? 

The rescue truck pulled up as I walked past.

By the time I was driving back in my car, the Mustang was out of the ditch and apparently undamaged, because he drove off. 

To my relief, he turned right and my route went left. I did not want to share the same road with this guy.

It was about four or so that I made it to one of my favorite stops in Pennsylvania, Clearfield, which is where the other Denny’s is.

This bar is like an oasis in central Pennsylvania. They have, I dunno, two or three dozen, maybe a thousand taps.

They also have elk burgers. Which are delicious. The meat can have an almost sweet edge, so a little pepper and mustard are good additions, along with the standard tomato catsup. A bitter ale goes well with it.

I had several IPAs, including one from Neshaminy Creek Brewing that was very good.

The next morning, I didn’t stop for long anywhere on the way from Clearfield to East Liverpool, Ohio. The route was I-80 west to I-79 south to Pennsylvania Route 68 West.

It gets tricky when you get off the interstate system out here. Highway markers are few and far between.

I lost the road at one point, and then found it again, but didn’t know it. I got turned around and started to follow signs for 68 east but didn't see any in the opposite direction for 68 west. Lucky for me, a local policeman was coming into a convenience store as I was leaving. 

Later, there was a section of the route that was shared by two highways. One, Pennsylvania 168, was well marked. No signs, though for 68. 

I turned the car around and started to see signs for 68 east. So I turned around again.

The last part of this route follows the west bank of the Ohio River. There is a huge power plant (not sure if it’s in Pa. or Ohio) with five massive cooling towers sending up steam.

If they named Calcutta as a diversion to ward hexes away, it may have worked. The tiny town (a few more than 3,000 souls) is fairly prosperous looking. There are some apparently solvent strip malls, and the houses are in good shape.

That’s in sharp contrast to its neighbor, East Liverpool, which has seen better days and is struggling to hang on. There are abandoned properties and others that look abandoned but are still occupied.

Although it’s in Calcutta, the hotel’s mailing address is East Liverpool 

I needed to find St. Clair Avenue, where the hotel is. It seems that there isn’t a legible street sign in East Liverpool. Most have been stolen, and most of those left have lost their lettering.

AAA came to my rescue yet again. I stumbled on a Triple-A office, where I got not only instructions to find St. Clair, but also road maps to add to my collection.

I passed the Quality Inn in Calcutta and went in search of Sprucevale Road, which is the destination of this trip.

I couldn't find it, so I came back, checked in, and booted up.

You take take Ohio 170, which is the main road in town, to Calcutta Smith Ferry Road, where you take a left and then the first right onto Sprucevale. Thank you, Google Maps.

I didn’t expect to find anything specific. But at least if I drove the full length of the road I could say I passed the place.

I passed a curious looking sign on the way up the road, but couldn’t get a good look at it because there was a car right behind me.

I got to the Y-Inn, a bar at the fork created by the far end of Sprucevale, where it meets Highway 7.

I turned around another time this day and went back down Sprucevale. I took a small diversion at a little crossroads village called Clarkson on a road going to Pancake. 

Not a good idea, so I decided to return to Plan A. I’m glad I did, because this time I could see that curious sign, which was headlined “Death of Pretty Boy Floyd.”

Damn it. I found it.

The place is still a field. It is used by the Beaver Creek Modelers, and has the look of an area for flying model airplanes.

Floyd was declared Public Enemy Number 1 after Dillinger was killed. He was hiding out in Buffalo with an associate named Richetti, when he decided they might be safer in Oklahoma, Floyd's home turf. 

On the way west, he ran into dense fog in eastern Ohio and his car hit a pole near East Liverpool. He and Richetti were traveling with two women, who were sent to town to get a tow truck while the men waited with the car.

They were spotted by a driver who informed the police. 

There was a gun fight in which an officer was wounded. Richetti was captured. Floyd ran into the woods and got away.

Melvin Purvis, who had led the effort that killed Dillinger, showed up. After three days of wandering on foot, Floyd went to a farmhouse and asked a lady to use the phone. He said that he had been out hunting and had become lost. He was wearing a suit and city dress shoes.

The lady called the cops.

It’s unclear what happened next and who did it. Floyd was indeed wounded in a cornfield, perhaps by a sharpshooter, and Purvis may have ordered an FBI agent to murder Floyd.

One account describes Purvis asking Floyd a question and getting “fuck you” as an answer.

Hoping, but not really expecting to find a marker, I had to celebrate. I drove back to the Y-Inn. 

This too was a stroke of luck. Wednesday is chicken and biscuits day. They had Stella Artois on tap. It’s a lager, not an ale, but it’s Belgian and has more going for it than Bud.

It was a great place. Everybody at the bar was talking to everybody else. They were all regulars, it seems.

The guy doing most of the talking was Travis, who was sitting around the corner of the bar from me.

Eventually he asked where I was from and I told him. Then explained that I was there because of Pretty Boy Floyd.

Oh, a historian.

Sort of. Especially gangsters.

I thought you’d be here for the Great Trail.

The what?

It’s an old Indian Trail. He told me where to find a marker for that: left onto the Clarkson-Pancake Road to Route 170. The Clarkson-Pancake Road follows part of the old trail.

I had actually been on part of that road. Maybe it was the Great Spirit that caused me to turn at Clarkson.

Anyhow, I took the road again later. An auto body shop sits on the site of an old tavern on the trail.

It was a short drive back to Calcutta. The Sheetz convenience store next to the hotel has pints of Stone IPA, so I am well taken care of.

Good night, everybody, and may you all find the cornfield of your dreams.

Harry