Hijacking cars, robbing banks and
capturing imaginations of Americans dragged down by the Great Depression,
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow spent
years scaring many folks and killing more than a few. But before they
started terrorizing the nation, they were just two tumble-down almost-kids
who’d never known many good times between them and thought they’d found heaven
when they found each other.
Bonnie,
born in Rowena, ‘way out in West Texas, lost her dad when she was only four.
Her mom gathered up the brood and took them all to her mom in West Dallas’s
Cement City. Bonnie shone as a good little girl, loving to read and write
poetry; in 1922 she was the junior spelling champ of Dallas. The literary life
of her dreams never materialized. By the time she turned 16, tiny Bonnie—she never reached five
feet—was a married lady. Didn’t last long. Two years later, husband gone, soon
to end up in prison she was on her own. She waited tables, did what she could. She
truly hated one job as a housekeeper for an acquaintance suffering with a
broken arm. She wanted nothing but out until one day in January, 1930, a fellow
dropped by the house to pass the time. Out in the kitchen she found a dapper
guy with a dimple in his chin, and she knew she’d found her heaven.
If
Bonnie knew hard times, Clyde Barrow knew harder. He knew how to land on his
feet—usually running! Growing up in a squatters’ camp tent in a under the Oak
Cliff Viaduct in Dallas, clever Clyde knew he’d get out, didn’t much matter
how. Floyd Hamilton, who later went to Federal prison for harboring the duo,
commented, “Life was desperate enough in West Dallas before the Great
Depression, but after 1929, it was almost impossible to stay honest.”
Certainly, that was true for Clyde. At
seventeen he rented a car, but he “forgot” to return it. The beginning. Three
years later Clyde was on the lam when Bonnie found him in that kitchen.
Soon
after their meeting, he’d come a-courting at Bonnie’s mom’s house when the cops
nabbed him. Did Bonnie drop that bad boy? No way. On Valentine’s Day, she
penned a long letter to Clyde, now in the Waco jail.
Honey, I sure
wish I was with you tonight. Sugar, I never knew I really cared for you until
you got in jail.
He wasn’t in
jail long. Bonnie smuggled in a gun. Clyde with three other fellows broke out.
He wasn’t free for long. By midsummer he was in the state penitentiary system
where he stayed for two years. He managed to kill one person will he was in. Patient
Bonnie waited for her man. Clyde Barrow was paroled in February, 1932. In
April, he robbed his first bank. The spree began. The nation, fascinated and
frightened grabbed the papers to read about how the gang kidnaped the Chief of
Police in Electra only days before they robbed the train station in Grand
Prairie. Headlines screamed about
murders in Sherman and Grapevine.
Murders, shootings, robberies, more murders, more robberies until May, 1934
when the victims were Bonnie and Clyde, killed in ambush set up by a gang
member.
Newspaper
sales broke all records. Their families buried them both in Dallas, but they do
not lie together as they’d always promised each other. Clyde is in Western Heights Cemetery .Bonnie, whose burial was
almost delay when more than 20,000 folks tried to attend lies in Fishtrap Cemetery. The largest bouquet at her
service came from a group of Dallas news boys. In the day after her death,
they’d sold a record-breaking more than half a million newspapers, and they
loved her for it. .
But
let’s go back to that exciting day when Bonnie found Clyde in her friend’s
kitchen. What was the desperado cooking up? Every account of this fateful
afternoon have Clyde standing at the stove mixing up some hot chocolate. We don’t know his exact recipe but here’s one a tough guy like Clyde
might concoct. No measuring, just crumbling, pouring and pinching.
Clyde
Barrow’s “Tough Guy’s Hot Chocolate”
1 milk chocolate
candy bar, crumbled up (A standard Hershey works fine)
About a cup of
whole milk—either 2% or skim, makes it a little less wicked, but not nearly as
good
1 pinch pumpkin pie spice, or ground cinnamon
Place chocolate pieces in a saucepan over
medium-low heat; add milk and stir constantly until the chocolate is melted and
well blended. Whisk in spices or cinnamon. Remove from heat; put in a cup and
hand to your honey with a kiss.
Want
to learn more about Bonnie and Clyde. I recommend three books, and, of course,
the great movie with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. The books are Bonnie
and Clyde: the Lives Behind the Legend (Paul Schneider), American
Outlaws: The Lives and Legacies of Bonnie and Clyde (Charles River,
Editors), and The True Story of Bonnie and Clyde (Jan I. Fortune).