Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Whirlwind Romance



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).