Reality less romantic than outlaw legend (Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow)

The Dallas Morning News ^ | April 18, 2003 | By BRIAN ANDERSON / Dallas Web Staff

[salmon76]

I'll bet the Left tries to make Saddam into a hero.

[Paleo Conservative]

I'll bet the Left tries to make Saddam into a hero.

Like Stalin and Castro?

[steplock]

Back in 1967, we had a substitute teacher at Irving High (just south of Grapevine) who was a Texas Ranger during the Bonnie/Clyde days. He spent a lot of classroom time telling us stories of the chases and shootouts. He said he was in the "final shootout" when bonnie & clyde were finally killed.

[Petruchio]

Let me guess . . . Bonnie is on the left and Clyde is on the right.

Do I win?

[joesnuffy]

The rebels of the 50s the godfathers of counter-culture love the criminal as hero genre
rob from the rich and give to the poor....and keep a little something back for expenses

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Probably the only thing that "masterpiece" movie got right was Clyde's difficulty in "getting it up",

There was a book I read many, many years ago called, "Monkey on My Back" written by an ex-con whose last name I can not recall but I think his first name was Jack.

Jack had served time with Clyde and claimed that he (Clyde) was sold as a "girlfriend" to another con for two cartons of cigarettes. If true that might explain Clyde's little problem.

[Iris7]

I am with you all the way. "Catholic and Monarchist." All the way. Bonnie and Clyde a couple of no account thugs who got what they deserved. All the way.

(Although I surely would like to sit at table with Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson and listen to the discussion. Looking forward to doing so after my sinful aspect is removed in Purgatory and I am admitted into His Presence, after I'm Home.)

[Dan(9698)]

>>>...He said he was in the "final shootout" when bonnie & clyde were finally killed.

I bet there were 10,001 guys who were in the "final shootout".

Its no wonder they were killed.

[Tokhtamish]

Let us not forget that "Bonnie and Clyde" was a landmark film when it came out in 1967.

Now, Hollywood could make European style movies with anti-heroes and without happy endings. The Hayes Code was kaput.

[VOA]

...in my experience the only people who think Bonnie and Clyde were romantic antiherores
are immigrant Yankees and people who think that damned movie is a documentary.


Goes a long way to explaining why it's folks with Texas twangs who decided to
take down a two-bit punk named Saddam and his boys

I bet most of the representatives at the UN have a thing for Bonny AND/OR Clyde.

When explaining the world to some of my liberal colleagues, I often fall back
on that Texas aphorism:
"He needed kilt."

[myprecious]

There is a 94 year old beauty operator here in Alba, Texas that has a great Bonnie Parker story. O'dell Strickland retold this story to me this fall.

O'dell ran a beauty shop in Greenvile, Texas that shared a building with the local doctor. One afternoon, Bonnie Parker came in. She was holding an umbrella with her hand shoved up inside to conceal her pistol. She sat in the chair and told O'dell to do her hair. Scared, she washed and curled Bonnie's hair.

Suddenly the phone rang. O'dell explained that she always answered the phone because the doctor was out. If she didn't answer, someone would know something was wrong.

Bonnie told her to answer, but to not do anything stupid.

O'dell wrote on the doctor's note pad and told the caller that the doctor was out on a call, but would be back soon.

The doctor finally came back. Bonnie ducked out of site. O'dell was calm and told the doctor to check his messages.

Of course O'dell had written that Bonnie was here and to go get the sheriff. Dr. calmed said he had a house call and took his bag.

Bonnie got spooked and demanded that the curlers be taken out. Her hair was not dry yet, but she got out of there before the sheriff arrived.

This feisty 94 year old lady still cuts and styles hair here in Alba.

[VOA]

Now, Hollywood could make European style movies with anti-heroes and without
happy endings. The Hayes Code was kaput.

Funny how the Hollywood insiders are still at war with The Hayes Code many decades later.

They just can't accept (even though their box-office receipts show them the truth)
that most of the viewin populace does want a happy ending.

(I'm not for banning "anti-hero" shows. Unlike Hollywood, I'm for something they
despise -- "diversity" in theme.)

[Wondervixen]

I'm currently working on a book (editor and co-author) dealing with a couple who were "the original Bonnie & Clyde", Irene Schroeder and Glenn Dague of Wheeling, WV.

20-year-old divorcee, Irene, and former Sunday School Superintendent/married father of two, Dague, were entrenched in their own gas station and grocery store robbing spree (Aug '29-Dec '29) in the tri-state of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania before Bonnie even MET Clyde. Unlike the thrill-killing Parker and Barrow, Schroeder and Dague displayed no bloodthirsty tendencies until December 27, 1929.

On this date in history, Irene and Dague robbed yet another grocery chain store, this one in Butler, PA. They got away with $220 worth of cash, checks, and belongings. The date became significant, however, for two other reasons.
One--It was the first crime to ever inspire the use of Pennsylvania's brand-new Teletype Tickertape system, used in getting the word of fresh crimes out to every police detatchment in the state, and Two--The murder of Highway Patrolman, Cpl. Brady C. Paul, who along with his partner, Pvt. Ernest C. Moore, had set up a roadblock in wait for the vehicle carrying Irene, Dague, Irene's older brother Tommy Crawford, and her 4 year old son Donnie. A surprise gunfight ensued and the two troopers were left on the pavement, wounded...Paul mortally.

Two miles later, with their car shot up with visible bullet holes in the windshield and rear body, the killers carjacked a steel company supervisor and his secretary who were on their way to lunch and fled back to West Virginia.

Irene's toddler provided what may be the most infamous quote by a child in criminal history, two days later when Pennsylvania Troopers, tracking leads in Wheeling, found him at his aunt's residence across the Ohio River from his mother's hometown.
"My momma shot two cops just like you," was the utterance that told the police that Irene WAS the woman they were looking for.

That search carried on another 16 days, though it wasn't the Pennsylvania police to make the arrest. Way down in Arizona, on January 14, 1930, a posse of some 110 men surrounded Irene, Dague, and an ex-con drifter they had picked up along a Texas highway days earlier, in the Estrella Mountains. Upon running out of ammunition, the trio surrendered. Irene and Dague were extradited back to Pennsylvania, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Irene became the first woman in Pennsylvania history to die in the state's electric chair on February 23, 1931 at the age of 22 years, 6 days. Dague followed her to the hot seat. Tommy Crawford was never found.

Bonnie & Clyde began their criminal career the next year.

[MeekOneGOP]

I'll be darned. Thanks for sharing that story.

My Dad lives in Quitman, just down the road from Alba. (The locals pronounce it as if it we Albie, so my Dad tells me). I go through Alba on my way to his house. Highway 69 to 182 East. Small world, huh? . . .

[Tribune7]

LOL

[dix]

I’m not sure, but I think that was the story of Barney Ross who was a former lightweight boxing champion. He went to the service where he was injured, became a dope addict, and was sent to prison.

I could be totally wrong, but I saw a movie called Monkey On My Back years ago, and it was the story of Barney Ross.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

It got me curious and so I started looking and found it on Amazon.

Monkey Off My Back: An Ex-Convict and Addict Relates His Discovery of Personal Freedom,by Jack Brown

It was a interesting book as I recall.

[myprecious]

You pass right by the house. Actually, the family farm in right in between Alba and Quitman at the Lake Fork Dam. We probably have kin folk!

[MeekOneGOP]

Before Dad moved to his place in Quitman around 1982, he had a house on 2.5 acres between the dam and Highway 37. How eerie !

[MeekOneGOP]

Dad was born not too far from where he lives now. In Little Hope. Shortly after he retired, he bought that place and moved out there. "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy." He wanted to move back to the country.