My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (11 page)

However, the month began with headlines about German Jews fleeing their native country in the wake of Adolph Hitler’s elevation to dictator by the German Reichstag. On the fourth, the U.S. Navy dirigible
Akron
was destroyed in a storm at sea. Seventy-three sailors died. Three people drowned in a Dallas, Texas, spring flood. Dust storms raged in the Texas Panhandle throughout most of the month, particularly in and around the town of Pampa
.
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On the tenth, President Roosevelt introduced a plan that would evolve into the Tennessee Valley Authority, allowing the federal government for the first time to produce and sell a commodity—electricity—to the public. The TVA would eventually do what no private utility could, supply electricity even at a loss if necessary. Three days later Roosevelt proposed a federal home-loan department and received word that the House had passed his $2 billion farm relief bill. By the twentieth, cotton, grain, and livestock markets were on the rise
.
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In the movie houses, one could expect to see
Our Betters
with Constance Bennett and
Tiger Shark
with Edward G. Robinson
. The Lone Ranger
and
The Jimmy
Durante Show
were popular radio programs, and songs like “Paper Moon,” “Stormy Weather,” and Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” were hits
.

Jigsaw puzzles, mentioned by the author in her memoir, were rapidly becoming one of the most popular and inexpensive forms of home entertainment. Jigsaw-puzzle parties would remain a mainstay with Americans well into the 1940s
.
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Crime rose sharply in April. On the third, three well-dressed men with machine guns robbed the Adkins-Beck Packing Company of Dallas, Texas, of its $1,500 payroll. The robbery was nearly a duplicate of Clyde Barrow’s robbery of the Neuhoff Brothers Packing Company the year before. In fact, in a strange coincidence, one of the Adkins-Beck employees, Elsie Wullschleger, was working for Neuhoff when Barrow, along with Raymond Hamilton and Ross Dyer, robbed it on August 1, 1932. Despite the similarities, Wullschleger said the Adkins-Beck bandits were not the same men who robbed the Neuhoff brothers
.
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On the fourth, the notorious Barker-Karpis gang, including Frank Nash, robbed the First National Bank of Fairbury, Nebraska. Two local citizens and one of the bandits were wounded during a brief but furious gun battle. The bandit later died. Over $100,000 was stolen and never recovered. On the thirteenth, two men robbed the Union Savings Bank in St. Charles, Missouri. Later that very same day, in an unrelated incident, six officers converged on the suspicious occupants of a garage apartment in Joplin, Missouri
.
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M
ONDAY MORNING WE BEGAN
getting ready to go to Joplin. Buck went to Carl Beaty, who owned a garage and always had a number of used cars on hand. Buck had known Carl for years and felt he would give him a good price for the two Ford coupes if he traded them in for a bigger and better car.

In a couple of hours Buck and Carl drove a ‘29 Marmon sedan up to the Barrows’ filling station and called for me to look it over. I went out to see it. Buck seemed very pleased and asked me to get in and see how I liked it. We drove it around a few blocks, then came back. It looked good and the motor sounded like it was in perfect shape.

Buck said, “Well, Baby, how do you like it?” I told him I liked it fine and asked how much difference he would have to pay. He told me one hundred dollars and said he thought it was a good buy. But Carl did not care much about selling it because he liked the car and drove it quite a bit himself. But since it was for Buck, he would let him have it if we both liked it and wanted it, and we did.

Buck told me it had four good tires but the two spare tires, one on each side, weren’t very good. We would have to get at least one new spare in
case we should have a flat. Buck said he could sell it when we got back from Joplin, if we had to. So we made the trade and that afternoon Buck sent me to get the title transferred to us.
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Tuesday we started on our way to meet Clyde. When we drove away from the Barrow place, Mrs. Barrow was standing in the front door. We had promised we would be back in two weeks, but I felt as though I was leaving there forever and would never be free again to come and go as I wished. But I tried not to show my feelings because now Buck, the dog, and I were on our way to meet the brother Buck thought he must keep his promise to.

Everything seemed to be going nicely. The car was eating up the miles at a steady rate. But when we were only a few miles away from Sherman, Texas, the motor seemed to be running hot. We wondered if there was a leak in the radiator. We decided to stop at the first filling station we came to and have it taken care of. But soon the motor began to knock as if one of the rods was burned out. Buck had slowed down when he first noticed the motor getting hot. Now he pulled over and stopped to look at the motor and let it cool. He also wanted to check the oil. But there wasn’t any to check. The oil dipstick was dry.

We could not drive the car without oil, so Buck caught a ride to a filling station after waiting what seemed like hours for someone to stop. He came back with a gallon of oil and put it in. He started the motor but the knock was still there. We drove along slowly, about ten miles an hour, but before we got to the filling station, which was only a few miles away, the rod had almost gone through the motor. We could not get the car fixed in Sherman, so we had to retrace our steps all the way back to Dallas. Because we had to drive so slowly it took us several hours.

We went to Elvin Barrow, Buck’s oldest brother. Elvin worked in a garage and could get the parts needed for our car at a low price.
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That night Buck and Elvin worked on the car as much as they could and finished the job the next day. On Wednesday, we again left Dallas to meet Clyde and Bonnie. This time we made the trip fine except for a flat tire, which delayed us for a short time in some small town in Oklahoma.

We drove to Checotah, Oklahoma, and found what we thought was the tourist camp where Clyde told us to meet him. It was late. Buck looked at most of the cars still parked outside of their garages. The rest were already inside. Still, we did not see any that looked like Clyde’s Ford V-8 sedan. A few of the cabins had closed garages so we thought Clyde may be in one
of those, or maybe he and Bonnie had not arrived yet. Maybe they would arrive in the morning. We also thought they may have already been there and gone.

We were sure it was the right place because we saw no other tourist park in the area. But by Thursday morning, they still had not rented a cabin there. We decided we must be at the wrong place. If so, we knew there was probably another tourist camp very close because ours was near the place Clyde had mentioned and it was the only tourist camp we saw the night before.

Buck drove out to the highway to look for another park. In a few minutes he came back and told me he had found Clyde. I was hoping he would not, but Clyde was in another park only a couple of blocks away from the one we were in. Buck then remembered that Clyde had told him about a place with nice brick cabins and closed garages. We put our bags in the car and drove around to Clyde’s cabin.

They were just getting dressed when we arrived. All of them seemed very glad to see us. Inside, the cabin looked as if a cyclone had struck it. Clothes, guns, and luggage were scattered all over the small room. But Clyde and W. D. soon got everything together and in the car.

When they were ready to leave, Clyde told Buck to follow him into Muskogee, which was only about twelve miles away. But before we got to Muskogee, Clyde drove off the highway and stopped. We did the same. Clyde said he wanted Bonnie to ride with us, and for us to stop in Muskogee, and buy breakfast for the five of us. He and W. D. would be waiting a few miles outside of town. Bonnie got in.

When we got in to Muskogee, Buck drove through the main part of town. Bonnie said she felt kind of shaky riding through the busy part of any city. She and Clyde almost always tried to shun every town they could, and it had been a long time since she had ridden through the busy part of a town. It made her feel shaky, but Buck and I only laughed at her.

We stopped at a small cafe. I went in to get our breakfast, or rather lunch. It was that late. We found Clyde and W. D. parked a few miles out of town, just as Clyde had said. Bonnie got back in the car with Clyde. As she did so, she gave a sigh of relief. Clyde asked what was wrong. She told him she felt safer with him and told him how shaky she felt driving through Muskogee. Clyde only laughed and told her she would have to ride with us again before we got to Joplin. She said that would be okay.

We drove on until we found a good place to drive off the highway and eat. After we had unwrapped the food and made a table of the running
boards of the cars and begun to eat, Buck said to me, “Baby, this seems like old times, doesn’t it?” I laughingly told him it did, adding, “I may as well try to make the best of it since we had come this far, and just trust to fate that we will be back home in a couple of weeks as free as we were when we left. So why not try to be gay and happy for the moment?” I was happy just being with Buck because I loved him so. I would rather be dead than lose him or have to be separated from him again like I was the past fifteen months while he was in prison.

When we finished eating, Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D. got in their car. Buck and I got in ours. We drove to Vinita, Oklahoma. There Bonnie got back in the car with us. Clyde told us to stop at a Phillips filling station north of Joplin and get a cabin. Clyde and W. D. would meet us there that night or the next day. They had stopped at that particular tourist court before. The attendant, named Johnson, never seemed suspicious. Clyde said Mr. Johnson seemed like a fine fellow who would not ask any unnecessary questions. But Clyde warned us to be careful of the man who ran a grocery store near there. We would have to buy food from him or else drive into town to get what we needed. Clyde also told Buck that he would drive by the place when he and W. D. arrived, just in case something was wrong. Buck was to leave the cabin and walk along the highway when he saw Clyde’s car pass, or if he heard him blow the police siren he had in his car. Clyde would pick him up, and if everything was okay he would rent a cabin for Bonnie, W. D., and himself.

Late that afternoon Buck saw Clyde’s car pass. As planned, he walked out to the highway and in a few minutes returned with Clyde and W. D.

That night Clyde and I cooked supper. Buck helped too. He always seemed to think I was too small to do anything alone. He was always afraid I would cut my finger or burn myself with hot grease, so he was almost always fooling around and getting in my way. But I was already used to it.

Buck and Bonnie liked pickled pig’s feet and olives. Clyde and I could not see why. We certainly didn’t like that. Clyde liked french-fried potatoes and English peas cooked with a lot of cream and pepper.
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He ate them at almost every meal except breakfast. W. D., on the other hand, would eat most anything.

I enjoyed seeing Clyde, Bonnie, and W. D. eat. I felt so sorry for them because they could not always enjoy their food for fear the cops may run in on them at any time.
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I was glad to cook anything they wanted to eat. I hoped that Buck and I would never be like that again,
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that we would
always be free to enjoy our life together, just as we had planned. And I hoped our freedom and happiness would last for many years. But soon I would be living the same life that Bonnie and Clyde were living.

Clyde Barrow, 1933. “Clyde liked french-fried potatoes and English peas cooked with a lot of cream and pepper.” (Courtesy of L. J. Hinton)

That night (and for many nights thereafter) they did something I disliked very much. They sat up until two or three o’clock in the morning playing poker, cleaning their guns, and making so much noise that I was sure they could be heard for blocks. I told them they should not make so much noise, that it would make people suspicious. But I could not run their business and they did not seem to care what I thought about anything.

I did not know how to play cards, except for solitaire.
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I tried to learn, just to please Buck, but I seemed to be too dumb. Instead he would almost always have me sit beside him while he was playing. He said I was good luck to him. Even then, he would try to show me what every card meant and how to play them. But when I would try to play a hand without him showing me, I would forget everything. I wouldn’t know if I had won or lost, so I just stopped trying and simply sat beside him.

Sometimes I would get so sleepy. I couldn’t stay awake and would rest my head on his knees and soon fall asleep. Then when everyone finally decided to go to bed, he would pick me up and put me to bed like a baby.

Clyde could hardly get Bonnie or W. D. awake the next day. He worked with them for hours, or until he got mad because they would not get up. Then he would leave them alone.

W. D. almost always slept with Clyde and Bonnie. We used to laugh at him and tell him he was afraid to sleep alone. But he would take the teasing good-naturedly. He was always jolly and never seemed to have a serious thought. But I suppose he was like most kids his age, sixteen or seventeen years old; he thought he could get a thrill from most anything, even shooting at cops. But after a few battles, he saw it wasn’t fun. He also did not want to get any murder raps hung on him. I don’t know for sure if he ever killed anyone or not, but Clyde got as much thrill from shooting cops as the cops did shooting or killing thieves or gangsters.