In two attempted robberies, his band of outlaws managed to get a few hundred dollars, mostly in change. He took up train robbery, at which he proved to be abysmal. Unfortunately, by the time he arrived, so had thousands of other ambitious dreamers,so he had to chase the almighty dollar in a less socially acceptable way. Despite being a trained plumber, he voyaged west across the country in the late 1800's to seek his fortune in the oil fields and mines of the Great Plains. But it was also hilarious, surprisingly poignant, beautifully-written, and a little heartbreaking.Įlmer McCurdy was a failure in the most American sense of the word. I picked this up because it was free and I thought it would be a quirky history book. Honk if you love first books that can cruise or race with full-throated elegance. Removing the jaw, the coroner pulled from the back of the mouth a single green corroded copper penny, dated 1924, and several ticket stubs, one that read "Louis Sonney's Museum of Crime, 524 South Main Street, Los Angeles." After all the careful speculation and surmise, after the body had been completely dismantled, the biggest clue to its identity came straight from the corpse's mouth.Praise for Mark "Mark Svenvold writes with the top down, and his sleek late-model imagination in fifth gear. The brain was mummified and like a rock, as were all the other organs….Late in the autopsy came the biggest surprise of all. The body looked like something pulled out of a peat bog, or an ice cave high in the Andes. Word soon got out about the fun-house mummy, about whom so little was known that the autopsy took on the character of an archaeological dig. From Elmer body was listed as "the Decedent," in official coroner's parlance Dead Body Case #7614812.
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