Al Conklin, Age 95, Recalls "Hitchhiking Chicken" and "Pretty Boy" Floyd
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Al Conklin in his park ranger's uniform with his infant son, Gary, in 1935.
Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd in a wanted poster from the 1930s. The amount of $4,000 in the 1930s would be about $75,000 today.
The ranger at Bay City State Park heard loud talking and laughing coming from the large wall tent.
It was after 11 p.m. on a sultry summer night in Depression-wracked 1934. The park was full of campers, many from New York and other eastern states, escaping the heat of the cities and jobless woes. The previous year the Bay City State Park had seen more than a million visitors.
The ranger, Alton Conklin, 25-year-old son of a railroad man, grasped his blackjack firmly andrapped on the side tent pole.
"What's going on in here; do you guys have booze in this tent? The rules are that there is no noise after 11."
Conklin, a sturdy six footer, was strictly enforcing the rules laid down by Bill Richter, park superintendent. "Don't you guys know the rules," he barked at the rowdy pair. "Hey, that's a pretty nice car you have there," remarked Conklin, pointing to the shiny new roadster that stood out among the motley battered vehicles driven by mostpark patrons. "Yeah, we're just trying it out," said one of the visitors sheepishly. "Don't worry, we'll be quiet after this."
The next day the noisy campers were gone but when Conklin arrived on the job at noon two State Police detectives, Harry Biggs and Russ Aldrich were there to greet him. "Did you have a run in with a couple of rough customers last night?" Biggs asked, noting that the pair had disappeared. "Yup, sure did. They were making so much noise after the curfew I had to make them shush up." The rules also dictated that any camper leaving the park could not return after 11 p.m.
"Well, you had no way of knowing but you were taking your life in your hands with those birds," said the short, broad-faced Aldrich, later to become a well-known justice of the peace. "We heard they were in town and we've been tracking them.
One of them was Pretty Boy Floyd." The camper was a notorious gangster on the loose but was soon shot by police near East Liverpool, Ohio, after a bank robbery. Floyd and his accomplice, Adam Richetti, were hunted by police all over the country for 17 months in 1933-34. Mr. Conklin considers himself lucky not to have been killed by the desperadoes. There were no news reports of the close call or the fact that the criminals had been through Bay City.
In 1929, Mr. Conklin went to the scene of a sensational double murder on a farm at Euclid and North Street (now Wilder) where a crank named Isaac Craven had beheaded a farm couple named Cady. Craven, upset because the Cady's cows constantly trampled his garden, walked to the police station downtown to turn himself in for the gruesome murders. He and a pal followed a large Lincoln amublance to the Cady farm but couldn't see much. Mr. Conklin recalled as a boy walking and talking with the eccentric Craven, who seemed OK but a little odd because he muttered to himself continually.
Mr. Conklin made national news when he told Bay City Times reporter Bob Hostetler about the chicken who rode a truck axle from Bay Port to Hemlock. Mr. Conklin, by then promoted from park ranger to motor carrier officer and weighmaster for this area, saw the truck go by with a flapping white bird underneath. He pulled the truck over. "Anything wrong, officer?" the driver queried. "Nope, everything's OK except I wanted to tell you about the chicken riding on your axle." The pair observed the bird and decided to let it ride and see what happened. The chicken hung on until the driver got home. The story made the Associated Press wire and was seen by one of Conklin's relatives, who called from California. The story was headlined "The Hitch-Hiking Chicken." Ever alert for more news, Mr. Hostetler told Mr. Conklin: "If you get any more stories like that one tell me first, OK?"
A motor carrier officer for 37 years until his retirement at age 63, Mr. Conklin came into contact with lots of crime stories because his office was at the Bay City State Police Post.
On one trip with a trooper, Mr. Conklin visited Marquette Prison where a guard pointed out a famous Bay City criminal, Steve Madaj, serving double life terms for the 1916 murder of lumber baron Franklin Parker. Some years earlier Madaj had broken out of Marquette, hopped a freight train to Chicago, hooked up with mobsters who gave him a car and was at large for 18 months before being recaptured. While at large he allegedly murdered a Munger farmer, Henry Nellett, and robbed a bank on 22nd Street. Madaj later told a friend he came back from Chicago to Bay City to visit a girl he knew who worked in a cigar factory.
Madaj was freed by Gov. John B. Swainson in 1962, returned to Bay City, married and lived here 17 years until his death in 1979. He is buried in Elm Lawn Cemetery.
He also recalled visiting Lansing with State Senator Joseph Coumans and witnessing lobbyists offering bribes from fancy ties to $500 bills for support of various legislative initiatives. (The $500 bill series 1934 featured a picture of John Marshall and was phased out in the 1940s.)
Mr. Conklin recalled that his father, a lumberjack in the Boyne City area, got a job with the railroad and moved to Bay City where he and his mother lived in theClifton House, a hotel at Midland Street and Marquette Avenue. A train went off the track and the locomotive went right into the bar of the Clifton House, he recalled. A photograph of the mishap was in the newspaper.
Mr. Conklin, a member of the Masonic order, discovered the neglected grave of a prominent Mason, Gen. Benjamin Partridge, about eight years ago. The grave, in Elm Lawn Cemetery, was cleaned up and the Masons collected funds to erect an appropriate monument listing the accomplishments of the Civil War hero. "He was shot right through the chin at Gettysburg," said Mr. Conklin. The Masons gather at Partridge's grave the day after Memorial Day every year to give tribute to the hero, a former Bay County sheriff and founder of the Bay County Fair and Youth Exposition.###
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