My Life with Bonnie and Clyde (6 page)

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View from a Cell

P
EOPLE ONLY LIVE HAPPILY
ever after in fairy tales. In my case, it seems it was a crime to have ever met Buck Barrow. I was brought up by a kind, loving, law-abiding father, without the aid of a mother. But when I met Buck it was a case of true love from the first. I knew I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone before, more than I could ever love anyone else for the rest of my life. And he loved me the same, if it is possible for a man to love
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as a woman does. I don’t think I am the only woman who loved a man so much. But because I loved Marvin Buck Barrow, married him, was loyal and true to him, and to my marriage vows to the bitter end, I am now serving a ten-year sentence in prison.

I am not guilty of the crime charged to me. But I am guilty of loving my husband so much I couldn’t bear to have him leave me, not knowing what hour of the day or night I may receive word of him being riddled by bullets fired from some officer’s machine gun. I am asking all who may read this story, was that a crime? Even though I knew my life was in danger I went with him wherever he went. Rather than live without him, I chose to face death with him.

Blanche Caldwell Barrow in the Missouri State Penitentiary for Women, 1933. (Courtesy of Rhea Leen Linder)

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Marriage

Editor’s Note: 1929 and 1931

On Monday, November 11, 1929, the date Blanche Caldwell Callaway met Buck Barrow, the weather in Dallas, Texas, was cloudy and 72 degrees. It was Armistice Day (now Veterans Day), exactly eleven years after the close of what was then referred to as “the Great War”—World War I. At 11
A.M
., there was a moment of silence throughout the city to commemorate the event, commencing with a blast from a siren at the Adolphus Hotel on Commerce Street. Later a parade wound its way through the downtown streets and past a reviewing stand constructed on Harwood Street in front of city hall
.
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On Elm Street, theaters and vaudeville houses planned various patriotic programs. At the Melba Theater it was possible to view, among other things, a short motion picture documentary called
Over There Today,
which focused on the rebuilding and restoration campaign in France since the close of the war. At the Palace Theater, where Clyde Barrow once worked as an usher, the house organist, Billy Muth, was to play a medley of songs titled “Recollections of War,” followed by a program by the Highland Park High School band, fresh from its first-place triumph in a battle of the state’s best bands at the Texas State Fair the previous month. In addition, local NBC radio affiliate WFAA scheduled an American Legion Armistice Day program beginning at 10:40
A.M
.
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The Great War and its immediate legacy were still very much a part of the American psyche in 1929. The events in Dallas that day were not unlike those in most cities and communities across the United States. Indeed, so prominent were
the memories being honored that Armistice Day that there was no indication whatsoever in the news of those two days of economic doom that had passed so dramatically into history only a couple of weeks before—”Black Thursday” and the subsequent “Black Tuesday,” collectively marking the start of that difficult era called the Great Depression. Nevertheless, those two days only represented the most radical of the initial stock market losses
.
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Between the first week of September 1929 and Armistice Day, the stock market plunged 48 percent, and the worst was yet to come. Nevertheless, the average American could not imagine such news could affect them. This was especially true in Texas, where the events on Wall Street were viewed as extremely distant “northern” problems, nothing to concern Texans
.

On July 3, 1931, the day recently divorced Blanche Caldwell married Buck Barrow, the news in Texas was dominated by the ticker-tape parade for aviators Wiley Post and Harold Gatty held the day before in New York City following completion of the first ever around-the-world flight
.
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It served to divert attention for a while from the deepening economic crisis of the burgeoning depression
.

The Texas economy, although rather diversified, was still largely agricultural, producing timber, fruit, and livestock, as well as oil and gas, among other commodities. Despite this, the vast majority of the production force at the time was made up of sharecroppers and tenant farmers, most of whom had suffered the effects of dire poverty long before the crash of 1929. Between 1920 and 1930, many of these people had quit farming and moved to urban areas in hopes of finding a better life. Indeed, it was that very reality that drove Henry and Cumie Barrow, Buck’s parents, to abandon the unprofitable drudgery of working on someone else’s land and move to Dallas in 1921. Between 1920 and 1930 the population of Texas had risen 25 percent, but Dallas’s population almost doubled, largely due to this flight from agriculture. Nevertheless, for most of these economic refugees the relief would be short-lived. By 1931, Dallas and other Texas cities were beginning to feel the effects of the expanding recession
.
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President Herbert Hoover, initially supported by Texans (in 1928 Texas voted Republican in a presidential election for the first time), was by 1931 finding himself largely vilified, not only by Texans but across the nation for his apparent inaction with respect to the economy. “The economy is fundamentally sound,” said Hoover in October 1931. “The depression is just a passing incident in our national life.” Others, whether by way of diversion or out of utter ignorance, chimed in: “I don’t know anything about any depression. What depression?” announced banking mogul F. P. Morgan on returning from a European vacation. And industrialist Henry Ford said, “These are really good times!” By then,
however, unemployment stood at 8 million nationally and manufacturing had dropped 35 percent. Within a year, the latter would plunge another 25percent. But more immediate for Texans was that fact of sagging agricultural income, which for most farmers was never very good but had fallen 25 percent since October 1929 and would pass the 50 percent mark within a year. At a time when the average national income was a mere $1,500 annually, farm households subsisted on $167 a year
.
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Blanche Barrow in the United States

In Texas and across the nation anti-Hoover sentiment was increasing. Growing communities of homeless citizens began sprouting in most large urban areas. The cardboard and scrap-wood shelters of these displaced people came to be known as “Hoovervilles.” Likewise, the empty, out-turned pockets of the unemployed were called “Hoover flags,” newspapers used by transients as park bench covers were called “Hoover blankets,” and the various unsavory creatures snared and boiled for dinner, in lieu of anything better, were referred to as “Hoover hogs.” In Texas, some tagged armadillos “Hoover hogs” but usually the term described rats
.
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I
GOT A DIVORCE
from my first husband on June 5, 1931. On July 3, 1931, I married Marvin Ivan Buck Barrow at America, Oklahoma. We bought our marriage license at Idabel, Oklahoma, near where my father lived. Dad liked Buck, as did most everyone else who met him. Buck had many friends. Dad thought I would be happy. And I was. But it didn’t last. I was too happy for it to last.
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I did not know Buck was in trouble when I met him, but if I had known, it wouldn’t have kept me from loving him. So I married him and went with him to Jacksonville, Florida, for our honeymoon. Then I learned he was an escaped convict from the Texas state penitentiary at Huntsville, Texas. Of course, this cut me deeply and left me broken-hearted. It was more than I could understand. The man I loved so dearly was an escaped convict. But I loved this man who was hunted by officers of the law. I vowed he would never get in trouble again if I could help it. I begged him to reform. He said he loved me, as I did him. He said he wasn’t a criminal at heart. He told me he was tired of that kind of life and since he had met and married me he wished he were free from the sentence
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hanging over him. I told him that before we could become happy he must go back to prison and finish his sentence, which was four years for burglary. We couldn’t run from place to place hiding from the law. So I begged him to give himself up and go back to prison. I was sure he wouldn’t have to stay long.
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On December 27, 1931, after spending Christmas in Dallas, Texas, with Buck’s mother, we drove to Huntsville, Texas, where the main prison is
located. We drove up to the front of the building and sent for Warden W. W. Waid to come to the car. He did. Buck told him why he had come back, to give himself up and serve his time. Warden Waid was very kind to both of us and told us we had done the right thing. I was crying because I could hardly bear to leave Buck behind those cold-looking gray walls.
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It was like cutting my heart out with a knife to know I would be separated from him. I had sent the man I loved back to prison, which to me was almost as bad as sending him to his grave. Buck kissed me goodbye and walked up the stone steps behind the warden to his office, or wherever he needed to go to change into prison clothes and begin serving the rest of his sentence.

I hated to be away from him just a short time. I loved him so much. I knew every hour away from him would seem like years and I hardly knew how I could bear to send him back to that horrible place. But when he was free again we could be happy together for the rest of our lives. The happiness we dreamed of would be worth waiting for.

Buck’s mother, two of his sisters, and one of their husbands had gone with us.
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The sisters and husband wanted to go on one of the prison tours. Buck’s mother and I weren’t interested so we went to the visitors’ area and waited for Buck’s suit, the one he had worn to prison.

While we were there Buck came through dressed in white prison garb.
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He was with a guard. That was almost too much for me to bear. I was unable to control myself. I began screaming and crying. Buck just smiled when he passed me. I knew I was making it harder for him. But I couldn’t get myself under control. Several people were in the visitors’ area, waiting to visit someone. Everyone looked at me as if I had gone crazy. Someone asked what was wrong with me. Mrs. Barrow told them the man who had walked through with a guard was my husband. Then they seemed to understand.

I went back to Dallas to stay with Buck’s mother for a while. I cried all that day and night until I was sick from crying. Before returning to prison Buck had made his mother
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and his family promise they would take care of “his baby,” as he always called me. “Baby” was a pet name he had for me and I had always called him “Daddy.” This may sound silly and cheap to some people—he was only eight years older than me (I was twenty when we were married and he was twenty-eight). Still, he seemed to feel that since I was so much younger than him that he had to worry about me. He was so afraid something would happen to me if he wasn’t with me all the time, as if I were just a baby and needed someone to care for me.
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