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 rival’s stronghold. Grey-haired, and living in semi-retirement on a 4,000-acre farm near Fairfield, Ill., he was shot one morning last October as he drove to town in his jeep. Adds the ballad,* written by his gangster brother, Earl:

At the county seat of Fairfield

They could not find a bill,

But we all know that it’s not right

Our fellow man to kill;

They even shot him when he fell

And left him there to die;

Some day this mystery will be solved

In a courthouse in the sky.

He left his dear old mother

In sorrow there alone,

Living down near Merriam

In her little country home.

May the angels hover over her

For she hasn’t long to stay,

And I hope she meets her darling

In a better world some day.

* Copyright 1948 by Earl Shelton and Fred Henson.