Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Scattershooting While Wondering What Happened To Jelly Bryce.

I see that President Barky has unified the country. Did Bush ever tell the Donks not to listen to Air America?

So, Bob Woodward says that there are more scandals coming from the Barky Administration. Let's see, Rezko is cooperating with the prosecution, half of his election committee insiders are under subpoena, his Sec Treas is a tax cheat and his Attorney General didn't know about Marc Rich, even though he was the one ordering the Clinton Justice (heh) Dept. to get the money from one of Rich's companies. Gee. ya think, Woodward? Gawd, just the SecState will give us years of scandal fun.

I was looking at Ace of Spades, seeing what the Moronbloggers are up to and noticed that some clown playing Che Guevara had to leave the press conference because someone in the press crowd knew that Guevara was a murderous goon. Then came the update that Ashley Judd is finally glad to live in America, again. There sure are a lot of meatheads in Hollywood, no wonder the last movie I went to the theater to say was A Time To Kill.

I have been looking at the histories of a bunch of old lawmen and gunfighters. Delf "Jelly" Bryce joined the Oklahoma City Police Dept. in the late 1920s, 1927 I believe. He later joined the FBI, shortly after they were allowed to carry guns. Up until then all FBI Agents either had law degrees or accounting degrees. This changed after the Kansas City Massacre. Last I heard there were not very many gunmen on the faculties of law and accounting schools. So J. Edgar Hoover hired some gun fighting cops.

D. A. Bryce got his nickname, Jelly, after a bad guy he either captured or shot said something along the line of "I can't believe that jellybean got me." Jellybean was underworld argot for a fancy dresser. The name Jelly stuck. Up until fairly recently detectives were noted for being sharp dressers. Seems that it helped, criminals were intimidated and witnesses more willing to talk. Of course law enforcement saleries did't cover the cost of fine threads, and once taking a cup of coffee became graft, much less a tailor made suit, we lost that. Notice how crime has gone down? Anyway, Jelly Bryce shot nineteen bad guys in his career, very few, if any, survived. Life Magazine did a article on Jelly in 1945 with a stop-motion photography set of him drawing his .357 in two fifths of a second. Officers can't do that anymore, too many safety featers on their holsters.

Jelly died in his sleep after a long career. I doubt we would have gotten through the crime wave of the prohibition and depression years without these old gunfighting lawmen, who would now be in jail.

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