Friday, August 22, 2003 :::
 
Bonnie and Clyde were meant for each other. And they clung to each other while they fought back against the elements. These elements were destitution and a government they took for its face value.

When on the lam, they found time to visit their Dallas-area families, risking capture more than once. Marie asserts that her brother and father had concocted their own signal to let the families know when the outlaws were in town: Clyde would pause the latest of his stolen automobiles in front of the Barrow service station and from the car toss a soda pop bottle containing directions to a place of rendezvous. "My mother would fix them something to eat," she adds.

In their getaway cars, Clyde and Bonnie habitually carried a Kodak box camera; they loved to pose in dramatic tableaux wielding shotguns and revolvers, self-parodying the gangster image they realized they had earned. More than that, they loved to pose together, embraced or kissing, having other gang members do the snapping. When they died, the police found an undeveloped roll of film under their car seat -- photos of them together, looking adventurous and deeply in love.

They knew they were going to die, maybe next week, maybe next month. Maybe in the morning. They never pretended they might be the only exception to the standard, "Crime doesn’t pay". But, because they knew their time was limited -- their crime spree lasted less than two years -- they decided to let all hell break loose in the meantime to whoop and holler it up till death do them part. Bonnie’s last request to her mother was, "Don’t bring me to a funeral parlor. Bring me home."
The last two years of their lives, once they met, were a whirly-gig. Never-ending highways burning in the Southwest sun; dusty backroads; the scorch of over-heated radiators; the burn of rubber; the stifled crampedness of one car after another; their only air the hot breeze they channeled through rolled-down car windows. Fast life. A die-young life. And they wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

Even more than their insurgence against their status in life was Bonnie and Clyde’s devotion to their own. With police and government detectives constantly on their trails, sometimes literally by inches, they time and time again risked their own lives to protect the other. Says Marie Barrow, Clyde’s sister, in Biography, "They never worried about anything else but each other."

On February 12, 1930, Clyde heard there were long-coated men with somber faces asking about him all over town. He confessed to Bonnie that they were possibly policemen wanting him for past crimes, especially within Waco County. He might have to leave town, he said, but would send her a post card notifying her of his whereabouts. She promised to wait for him. As long as it took.

Clyde and Bonnie had gone to town at daybreak and unless this day differed from the others, would be passing this point on their way back to the Methvin cabin around 9 a.m. Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn, who knew Barrow and Parker by sight, were posted nearest the road to avoid gunning down the wrong party. At fifteen minutes past nine Bob Alcorn pointed to a beige ‘34 Ford approaching from over the nearest hill. As it sped towards them, it seemed to slow down, its driver’s eyes on the abandoned truck. The current license plate on the car was an Arkansas one, 15-368.

"This is him," Hinton side-mouthed, and lifted his Browning automatic to his shoulder, the silhouette of Clyde Barrow’s head square in its sight. Each of the other officers was equipped with like weapons, loaded with five full rounds. They watched Clyde’s form bending forward, scanning the truck, then twisting sideways to look for its owner among the trees. Body movement bespoke curiosity. Beside him sat Bonnie; wearing a dress of red, her favorite color. Hinton heard Hamer, beside him, clear his throat.

But, Hamer chose not to call out a warning -- not to Bonnie and Clyde, who always escaped when given even the slightest advantage. There would be no advantage here. Instead in a voice audible only to those around him, void of drama, void of malice, Hamer ordered, "Shoot!

"In the book, Ambush, Hinton tells the rest: "...Bonnie screams, and I fire and everyone fires...My BAR spits out twenty shots in an instant, and a drumbeat of shells knifes through the steel body of the car, and glass is shattering. For a fleeting instant, the car seems to melt and hang in a kind of eerie and animated suspension, trying to move forward, spitting gravel at the wheels, but unable to break through the shield of withering gunfire...My ears are ringing, there is a spinning and reeling in my head from the cannonade of bullets and the clank of steel-jacketed metal tearing steel...." And when the firing subsided..."Clyde is slumped forward , the back of his head a mat of blood...I scramble over the hood of the car and throw open the door on Bonnie’s side. The impression will linger with me from this instant -- I see her falling out of the opened door, a beautiful and petite young girl...and I smell a light perfume against the burned-cordite smell of gunpowder..."


::: posted by Matt Dunegan at 12:05 PM

Wednesday, August 20, 2003 :::
 
There's work here to be done, and i'm the only one who sees it


::: posted by Matt Dunegan at 11:46 AM