by Emma Parker
In the meantime, in Broadus waiting for the train, Clyde had had time for thought. He realized that he hadn't behaved as a gentleman should where his girl's mother was concerned. He had brought her down to San Augustine, and then left her with no way to get back home except the train. She'd likely never forgive him for that, and it looked as if he was in bad enough without this added handicap. He figured that the least he could do would be to get a car somewhere — anywhere — and go back for Anne and her mother and drive them home. He left the station and went looking for a car to "borrow" — that was the phrase he used when telling me the story — and drove back in it to San Augustine. But Mrs. B. and her daughter had already gone.
Disconsolately, Clyde started back to Dallas in the stolen car, his idea being to drive it in and leave it on the streets somewhere so that officers might pick it up and return it to the owner. But he had not gone far till a car came toward him, slowed up and stopped. Fear seized Clyde. He shut off the engine, jumped into the ditch, and ran away again. Looking back, he discovered that it wasn't officers of the law, coming to bring him to justice, but just a car full of drunken negroes. However, the scare had been too much for him. He got out on the highway and started hitch-hiking, and thus came home. He went out to my mother's when he got back. He was afraid to face me, because he knew I'd get the truth out of him and give him Hail Columbia!
Strangely enough, no one ever did find out that Clyde took the car at Broadus, and when the auto rent matter came up, Clyde was excused because he was such a kid and it was his first offence. I was angry about the whole affair, but my sympathies were all with Clyde, of course. I felt that it was just a childish prank any boy might play when young and in love, and I didn't put the proper significance to it, or talk to him as I should have. It seemed rather funny — his logic and reasoning during the whole affair.
Neither did I take too seriously the events which occurred just before Christmas of that year. Buck took all the blame and Buck was the one I bawled out. We hadn't much money, of course, and Buck wanted some cash for the holidays. I'll never know whether or not Clyde really had anything to do with this. All I do know is that Buck had the back of the car full of turkeys, and Clyde was with him when the officers caught them. They were arrested and taken to jail. Here Buck assumed all the blame and got a week's sentence. Clyde was allowed to go.
Everything would have been all right if it hadn't been that this made Clyde's second offence against the law, and that Buck, who was notorious for stealing, had been up several times previous to this for petty thievery. The officers began classing the Barrow boys together, and every time Buck did something, they took Clyde down as a matter of course, even though they turned him loose each time. This began to make Clyde resentful of the law, and disgusted with their methods. He complained to me several times that just because Buck stole was no sign he did, and that he wished the smart cops would realize the fact.
Clyde was still working, but he was rather choosey about his jobs and had a good opinion of his own ability. This characteristic is not objectionable, provided one can carry through and deliver the goods, which he seemed to be doing at this period. I remember that he was out of work for a few weeks before Christmas and went to the Palace Theater as an usher. When he discovered that the salary was only $12 a week, he came home in high dudgeon and said they could take their puny job and go to the lower regions with it.
After Christmas Clyde went to work for the United Glass and Mirror Co. where he worked two years, and here he built church windows for many Dallas churches. He also made lovely mirrors, and presented some to Anne with her name on them. Anne's dates with him were growing fewer and fewer, and were always under cover because of violent parental objection concerning young Mr. Barrow, who had had too many brushes with the law to suit Anne's folks as a son-in-law.
The affair finally died a natural death, and Clyde, on a visit to Wichita Falls, met and fell in love with a beautiful girl named Gladys. Early in his love affair with Anne, he had had his arm tattooed with her name. Now he put Gladys' name on the other arm. There was no arm left for Bonnie's name, when she finally came along, but it wasn't necessary, for Bonnie's name was written on his heart.
Clyde came home from Wichita Falls, bringing Gladys with him, and announced to me that they were married. It seemed a rather jumped-up wedding to me — the whole thing seemed hasty — but I took his word for it that Gladys was everything in the world. He rented light house keeping rooms over on Liberty Street, set up his first home, and asked me over to visit with him and Gladys.
She was a likable person, very slim and pretty, and we got along very well. Where Clyde was concerned I had uncanny powers of discernment. It wasn't long before I began to sense that things weren't going exactly right. Gladys wanted too many things which Clyde's salary at the United Glass Company didn't cover. She wanted a lot of clothes, a watch, money for good times, and a car. When these things were not all forthcoming, she was very disagreeable. Clyde began to be restless and dissatisfied with life and his job.
About this time my husband and I came to the parting of the ways. I left him, and at Clyde's urgent request, I moved in with the newly-weds. There were lots of scenes between them, and many bitter words spoken. Besides the endless bickering over money, Gladys was constantly at him about Anne's name on his arm. She was furiously jealous of Anne, and although she didn't know her, was always making some remark about her. Clyde would answer back, and the fur would fly. When he'd make her shut up about Anne, the row for a car or money would start.
He went to Oklahoma and stole a car, as I learned later. When he came home, he took it over to a garage on the West Dallas pike, and told me he'd be there all day working, and for me to come over. We always liked being together better when Gladys wasn't around. I drove my car over and hunted Clyde up around noon. When I reached the garage, I found Clyde filing the numbers off the engine — a rather unusual proceedure that didn't look right to me. I asked him whose car it was and where he'd gotten it. He replied, both dimples working, that it belonged to a friend, and that he was overhauling it.
"Mighty funny overhauling," I stated determinedly. "You stole this car, Clyde. You know you stole it."
He just roared with laughter, denied the accusation as of no importance, and started pouring lye over the hood to take the paint off. I was certain the car was stolen by then, and we had a big row over it, during which Clyde said some very nasty things, and accused me of being suspicious, disloyal, and having a dirty mind. I refused to speak to him and his face was blazing with anger. I drove home and packed my clothes and moved over to mama's.
Just a few weeks later, Gladys left him and went back to Wichita Falls. Whether she moved because she found out about the car, and wouldn't stand for it, or whether she left because they had another big row over Anne B., I don't know. I found out that they hadn't really been married. Clyde sold the stolen car, and to this day, there's never been an inquiry about it which connected Clyde with its theft.
Clyde didn't come home after Gladys left him. Instead he went to live with a boy named Frank Clause and if I'd had the gift of second sight, or been able to read the future, I'd have killed Clyde rather than let him go with Frank Clause. Frank had a police record already, and was really a bad egg. He was fairly nice looking, and as he seemed to be a nice boy, I didn't suspect anything for a while, or dream the sort of life Clyde was being drawn into.
About this time I got a job again and moved in town to live in an apartment with another girl. One night, very late, Frank Clause and Clyde came by the house and got me out of bed. They had four bricks of ice cream, a handful of pocket knives, some hot water bottles, and a lot of other stuff which they spread out on the kitchen table. They got out bowls and dished up the ice cream, and when I demanded to know where they had found all this junk, Clyde told me the most marvelous lie I ever listened to. He said there had been a drug store fire out in Oak Cliff, and he and Frank just happened to be driving past and had seen peop
le throwing all sorts of things out in the street, and as every body else was doing the same thing, they had stopped and helped themselves.
Naturally, I didn't believe a word of it and I said so. Again we had a big row, and Clyde left in a huff. I was worried to death about him by now. I had found out that he had quit his job since going to live with Frank Clause, and something warned me that things weren't going right. But still I wouldn't believe that he would do anything really criminal himself. I just wouldn't believe that.
It was after this drug store affair that Clyde, Frank Clause, Buck, and a new boy from Houston were arrested by the officers for hanging around the offices of the Buell Lumber Co. They were carried to jail and held for questioning on suspicion that they had been planning to stick up the Buell Lumber Co.
I don't remember how they got out of it —somebody must have made bond for them, or something — but anyhow, I know all four of them came out to my mother's house that day and stayed the rest of the day and spent the night there, because I was there when they arrived, and I was also there the next morning when the police came after them again.
The instant the boys heard the officers talking to my mother, they all made a run for it. One of them went under the house and hid; Buck fell, going out the back door, and sprained his ankle; Frank and Clyde made for the open spaces, but when the officers shot at them, they came back. I remember Clyde was crying when he came to where my mother was in the kitchen: "Gosh, mama," he sniffed, "I've just got out of that awful place — I can't go back down there — honest, I can't!"
I was boiling mad and I spoke my mind to those cops, right and left. "They couldn't have done anything since you let them out of jail," I stormed. "They've been right here the whole time. How do you expect boys to do any better when you hound them all the time? You ought to be ashamed, that's what!" I raved and railed, for Clyde's tears had touched me. After all, he was hardly eighteen; he was still just a little boy, and he was crying and I was his sister. Naturally, my mind wasn't functioning very well about law and order.
The officers didn't get mad when I spouted off. They just grinned and let me have my say. They told me that other things had come up which necessitated further questioning of the boys. For one thing, they'd like to know just where Clyde got that yellow Buick roadster parked out in the yard? I said that was my car and Clyde had nothing to do with it. They said they were taking it along, just the same, with the boys. At that, I marched out and climbed in, still as mad as a wet hen, and announced that if that car went, I was driving it. I knew the car wasn't "hot" as the law called it. I happened to know that Clyde bought it and paid for it; I knew the people he purchased it from, and I didn't intend to let the officers take it away from him.
Off we went, I driving and the cop sitting up beside me having trouble keeping his face straight, for I was still sputtering like a fire cracker. Just for meanness I ran through two red lights with that cop, but he didn't say a word. The other boy wasn't along. He was still under the house and they didn't get him that trip, but they had Clyde, and I meant to help him out, even if I should get in jail myself. I didn't realize how futile my gesture was till later.
Down at the station the chief looked me over when I marched in, still hopping mad, and asked me just where I bought that car? I gave him the desired information. They wanted to know if I hadn't been letting Clyde use it a lot. I said, "Sure — of course — and so what?"
"Nothing," he replied, looking at me, "only you might as well stop trying to lie for him. He’s already told us that the car is his, and the reason we’re interested in it is because there’s been a lot of safe cracking going on in Lufkin and Hillsboro, and every time a job is pulled, that yellow roadster has been in town, that’s all."
I wouldn't believe him at first, but they kept hammering it into me. They said Clyde had been cracking safes for several months — ever since his friendship with Frank Clause. I could figure back. Frank had big ideas about how to get along in the world. I was heartbroken, and the officers sent me on back home to break the news to mother that Clyde was definitely a criminal. It wasn't a happy day.
Just how the boys got out of jail again I don't recall. Perhaps the officers couldn't prove anything, no matter what they knew. At any rate, they were out of jail again in a few days. Years later, Anne startled me by telling me that the last few months she went with Clyde he told her that he and some boys entered a place and stole the safe, a small one, and carried it out in the country during the night. Here they stayed till nearly daylight, trying to open it, but being new at the job of safe breaking, they were never successful, and finally had to leave it there. The police discovered it a few days later, intact. That was another thing they couldn't chalk up against Clyde because they didn't know it.
This scare about the safe robberies apparently didn't cool off Clyde any, because in just a few weeks after they were out of jail he, Buck, another fellow, and Sidney Albert Moore went to Henrietta and stole a car. They went to Denton where they robbed a garage. Here again they lifted the safe and got it into the car and started off. Clyde was driving, and even at this early age, his driving was reckless and daring. The officers sighted them and tried to whistle them down; Clyde put on his gas and made a corner on two wheels, ran into the curb, broke the front axle and threw Clyde out. When he hit the ground he kept on running.
He heard a shot as he ran, and a scream of pain from Buck, and thought surely they'd killed him, he said afterwards. After a night spent in the back alleys of Denton, he beat it for home, and he was a pretty scared boy when he got in. The papers stated that Buck received a flesh wound. Also, they were looking for a fourth man, unidentified, but Clyde laid low. Buck was sentenced to five years in the state penitentiary. This Denton affair happened in October, 1929. Buck began his sentence at Huntsville January 14, 1930. Sidney Moore drew a ten year sentence. Buck had again taken all the blame for the affair and done everything he could to keep Clyde clear from complicity in the Denton matter.
Buck's taking the blame for the Denton stick-up wasn't enough to get Clyde off, because there was a whole lot behind him that none of us knew about. He was wanted at Sherman and at Waco too. It wasn't long till they had Clyde behind the bars again. During this time, while he was still free, still apparently just a normal boy, full of fun, lovable, fond of a good time, he met Bonnie Parker, the girl who was to give him the last two years of her life with a devotion and a selfsacrificing love that surpasses my understanding, even now.
Bonnie was an adorable little thing, more like a doll than a girl. She had yellow hair that kinked all over her head like a baby's, the loveliest skin I've ever seen without a blemish on it, a regular cupid's bow of a mouth, and blue, blue eyes. Clyde always called her his "blue-eyed baby" or his "little blue-eyed girl." She had dimples that showed constantly when she talked, and she was so tiny; she was only four feet, ten inches tall, and weighed between eighty-five and ninety pounds. Her hands took a number five glove, and her feet a number three shoe. She was so full of the joy of living, she seemed to dance over the ground instead of walking; she always had a comeback for any wisecrack; her sense of humor was applied to herself as well as to the other fellow; she worked hard, lived at home, stayed in nights and never ran around; and, she simply adored and worshipped her mother. All in all, Bonnie Parker was the answer to a sister's prayer for a wife for a best loved brother. I hoped, when she found out about it, she'd overlook Clyde's police record, make a good boy out of him and stick to him.
She overlooked his past with a sympathy and a compassion that is evident only when a woman loves a man with all her heart and soul; and God knows she stuck by him till death came to them both. But, try though she did (her letters to him prove that she did try), she was never able to change him, nor to turn him aside from the path which he had chosen to follow. So seeing, after two years, the futility of her efforts, and faced with the alternative of living as a law abiding citizen without Clyde's presence and love, or of going with him on his career
of crime which eventually led to murder, she chose to go with him, live with him and die with him. As I look back over the past, I realize that Bonnie's key crime was that she loved Clyde Barrow. . . .
Mrs. Parker Begins Bonnie's Story
It is far more difficult, I suspect, for a mother to write about her daughter than for a sister to write of her brother's life. In the first place, the viewpoint is bound to be different. Nell was always on equal footing with Clyde, because they were children together; he had no hidden secrets in his heart she couldn't share. It's different between parent and child, for there's always a wall; always hidden places, no matter how understanding a parent may strive to be. And for this reason, although the tie between Bonnie and myself was always very close, now and then I shall let her cousin, Bess, who was raised with her, relate incidents.
Bonnie was the middle child born to me. She first opened her eyes upon this world at the little town of Rowena, Texas, October 1, 1910. Hubert, whom we always called Buster, was two years older than she, and her baby sister, Billie, was born three years later. My husband was a brick layer, and we had the average home with the average conveniences. Our affiliations were with the Baptist Church of Rowena, and outside of church activities, socials, box suppers, and the like, we had very little social life.
Buster was a sober sort of youngster, and when Billie came, she was spoiled and petted by her grandmother and the rest of the kin. Bonnie was a bouncing ball of energy and laughter as soon as she was able to sit alone. She was a beautiful baby, with cotton colored curls, the bluest eyes you ever saw, and an impudent little red mouth. She was always into something from the time she could toddle, and kept the whole family on the run to get her out of her scrapes.
