By John Andrews

History buffs in Minnehaha County will want to attend this month's meeting at the Old Courthouse Museum March 18 at 7 p.m. Emma Abbott, a recent graduate of Augustana College, will talk about John Dillinger and his brazen robbery of the Security National Bank on March 6, 1934.

We wrote about the robbery in our Jan/Feb 1993 issue, and told the story of a second, lesser known encounter that a Centerville man had with Public Enemy Number 1. Shortly after 10 a.m., on the morning of March 6, Dillinger and his gang entered the bank. They stashed $49,500 in sacks and made five bank employees stand on the running boards of their Packard as they escaped. A policeman managed to put a few bullets into the car's radiator, so they stole another and eventually got out of town. Lawmen lost their trail around Redwood Falls, Minn.

Dillinger also made an appearance in Centerville during that spring of 1934. Fred Mart recalled seeing him, Baby Face Nelson and a local banker playing cards in the back room of the Bloody Bucket on Main Street. Mart returned to town late one evening after working on a radio for a friend and decided to stop at the Bucket to visit his friend, Bert Hart, and get a midnight snack of some of Bert's famous baked beans. When Fred arrived, a nervous Bert urged him to stay, and led him to the back room. Nelson was engrossed in the card game, but after a while Fred remembered he noticed the stove and asked what was cooking. "Beans," Fred told him.

"Well, let's flavor them up!" Nelson shouted, and fired his gun into the stove.

Fred never did get his midnight snack. As Dillinger ushered him out the back door, he gently reminded Fred that if anyone asked, he had gone straight home that night.

Our article also indicated that local historians wanted to place a marker commemorating Dillinger's robbery at the site, but the building's owner protested. But a marker dedication is on the agenda at this month's historical society gathering.