National Affairs: He Left His Dear Old Mother

He was riding on the highway,

To see about some grain,

When they shot him down from ambush,

Carl Shelton was his name.

Thus another U.S. badman was sentimentally memorialized last week in a ballad freshly recorded for the jukebox trade. Carl Shelton, a country gunman like Jesse James, once held the rackets of all downstate Illinois in fief. His Prohibition Era battles with other gangs took a toll of more than 40 lives. He equipped his boys with dynamite, machine guns and a fleet of armored cars, once rented an airplane to bomb a...

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