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Driving
Around with
Bonnie and ClydeIntroducing
Traveling
History with Bonnie and Clyde:
A Road Tripper's Guide to
Gangster Sites
in Middle Americaby
Robin Cole-Jett |
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Even
if their only information comes from the venerable movie, most people know at
least something about Bonnie
Parker and Clyde Barrow. Theirs is a story that continues to fascinate, though
we’re not really sure why. Perhaps we’re curious about the love they had for each
other, which seemed to grow stronger as their lives on the run became bleaker.
Maybe we wish we could be rebels ourselves, except for the ambush part, of course.
Bonnie
and Clyde are not only interesting because of their love or their devil-may-care
attitude, but because of their driving. Clyde was a fast but sometimes careless
driver, who could put hundreds of miles behind him for days on end without ever
really knowing where he’d end up. In her poetry, Bonnie herself alluded to the
road as a metaphor for their lives. The places he and Bonnie saw, the highways
they traveled – these have become a huge part of their history and much of it
is still on display today.
Take Dallas,
for instance. Bonnie
and Clyde grew up in and around West Dallas, which the Dallas Times Herald
called “little Cicero” and where cops only patrolled in pairs. Shot gun houses
and open sewers characterized this unincorporated, predominantly poor-white neighborhood
that sat in the Trinity River’s flood plain. While West Dallas is no longer a
slum, Clyde’s some-time home, the Barrow gas station, still sits along Singleton
Boulevard. Around the corner on Winnetka Street are the former homes of fellow
partners-in-crime, the Hamilton Brothers, and the “safe house” where Clyde shot
Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis (said “safe house” was also home to a Hamilton
sister). To the west are Bonnie’s old elementary school on Chalk Hill Road, and
the Fish Trap Cemetery, Bonnie’s first grave site. She was moved to Crown Hill
Memorial Park on Webb Chapel Road in the 1940s, with, arguably, the best tombstone
dedication in Dallas, offered without
a hint of sarcasm: |
AS
THE FLOWERS ARE ALL MADE SWEETER BY
THE SUNSHINE AND THE DEW,
SO THIS OLD
WORLD IS MADE BRIGHTER
BY THE LIVES OF FOLKS LIKE YOU. |
| Clyde’s “permanent”
home, which he shares with his brother Buck, is inside Western Heights Cemetery
on Fort Worth Avenue. Just like Bonnie’s, his stone is encased in cement, as a
few misguided souls have vandalized or stolen the tombstones over the years. |
| Top
of the Hill Terrace, a former speakeasy, is now the Arlington Baptist College.
Photo by Robin Cole-Jett |
As
Bonnie
and Clyde lived lives on the run, they were purported to have stayed in many
places during their brief lives. It’s hard to tell where legend and reality meet,
but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun speculating. The Arlington Baptist College,
located on the old Bankhead Highway (US 80) between Dallas
and Fort Worth, is just such a
place. The campus consists of pretty sandstone buildings atop a large hill, a
quite serene setting – but during Prohibition, this used to be Top of the Hill
Terrace, an illegal gambling casino and speakeasy. Bonnie and Clyde may have dined
here on occasion in relative safety from the law. The couple also supposedly stayed
in a room at the Stockyards Hotel in Fort
Worth, where it is claimed Bonnie left her pistol inside a third story room
that overlooks North Main and Exchange Streets. The pistol is displayed in a glass
case inside the western-themed room.
Other Texas towns have their own
Bonnie and Clyde history. The panhandle town of Wellington
was the site
of the little-known crash that crippled Bonnie’s leg. Eastham Prison Farm
near Trinity saw the escape of five inmates orchestrated by Clyde. An oil and
gas field agent was kidnapped in Electra,
near Wichita
Falls, and the calaboose in the Kaufman county town of Kemp served Bonnie
and fellow criminal Ralph
Fults as overnight accommodations when they were arrested for trying to break
into a hardware store. |
 |
The
Kemp calaboose once held Bonnie Parker and Ralph
Fults
Photo by Robin Cole-Jett |
While
attempting to retrace Bonnie
Parker and Clyde Barrow’s run from all that was decent in society can at times
seem to be an exercise in the macabre, it does serve a purpose. By just simply
taking a journey to the places where their lives took place, one can gain a sense
of history that books just can’t replicate. Often, the past is best preserved
when one can experience it in the present – even if experienced through the lives
gangsters.
© Robin
Jett
Published May 15, 2009
Email: jettrobin@hotmail.com
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