Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker

CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING

Bonnie Parker was born October 1, 1910, in Rowena, Texas. She was 4 foot and 11inches tall and weighed 90 pounds. She was freckle-faced and had strawberry-blond hair. Her friends thought she was very pretty. Her family was hard working people who were stuck in low paying jobs. Bonnie was a good student in high school and displayed an interest in the arts and excelled in creative writing.

Clyde Chestnut Barrow was born in Teleco, Texas, the fifth of eight children. He was 5 foot 7 inches tall and weighed 130 pounds. He had brown eyes and thick brown hair slicked back and parted on the left as was the style back then. His parents were dirt-poor tenant farmer scratching a living from the cotton fields. He along with his family moved to Dallas where they lived under a viaduct with other transient families for a little while. None of them had a place to go and no money to get them there even if they had a place. His father found work at the Star gas station on Eagle Ford Road where the whole family lived in a small storage room in the back.

Clyde and his brother Ivan, whom everyone called "Buck," generally skipped classes, though. They would drift the back streets of Dallas where they fought other truants. Clyde and Buck soon dropped out, and hung out in the pool halls, at freight yards and on street corners of West Dallas. With to much time on their hands they were bored and generated their own excitement with vandalizing and minor thefts. As their boredom escalated, so did their excitement.

Across the tracks in Cement City, Bonnie Parker was a cute little redhead who was attracting the attention of the local boys in Cement City High School. One of the "bad boys." Roy Thornton attracted her attention and no one was surprised when Bonnie quit school and eloped at the age of 16. Roy Thornton, was soon arrested for theft and received multiple-year jail term. Bonnie moved back into her grandmother's house and took a job as a waitress at Marco's Cafe in the heart of Dallas.

One evening Clyde decided to visit the sister of one his buddies. She had slipped on an ice patch and broken an arm and he thought a visit might cheer her up. Hearing a clatter coming from the kitchen, he asked her what the. "It's Bonnie Parker, a girlfriend of mine," she said, "she's making some hot chocolate. Why don't you go out there and say hello." He did and it was love at first sight, for both of them. They talked well into the late hours. Over the next couple of months they saw each other, almost every day.

Around the middle of February in 1930, Clyde heard that men were asking about him all over town. He told Bonnie that the Waco cops may be looking for him and it was time for him to leave town. He promised to send her a post card notifying her of his whereabouts and she promised to wait for him. Clyde was arrested that evening and moved to Waco County to stand trial. Bonnie, unable to stand missing him, took time off from her job and took a bus to her Cousin Mary's house in Waco.

Clyde introduced her to his cellmate, Frank Turner, a two-time loser. Frank told Bonnie that it was third arrest and he would probably receive a long sentence.. He needed a gun and he drew a map of his parents' home, showing where their gun was stored. Bonnie didn't hesitate. She took the drawing and got her cousin to take her to East Waco. The girls broke into the home and found the .32. Bonnie carried the weapon in her purse to the next visit and slipped it to Clyde.

Clyde and Turner escaped and left Waco for Illinois, robbing service stations, fruit stands and markets along the way. They frequently stole cars to elude the highway patrols. Clyde stole automobile license plates and changed them often. He learned that when a passerby memorized his license plate number and notified the police. He delayed in changing plates after robbing a Baltimore & Ohio train depot and the law caught up with him on the road.

Returned to Waco County, Clyde was hastened before a court. His escape at gun point and flight to Illinois was his downfall and he received a 14-year sentence at hard labor and was committed to the dreaded Eastham Prison Farm Number 2 in Huntsville. It was the toughest prison in Texas. Clyde's mother found a sympathetic judge, R. I. Munroe, who promised to do what he could. After a few weeks the Barrows were given the news that considering the Barrows' financial circumstances, and their the need for an extra hand to help them tend their property, Clyde would, considering his good conduct, be paroled in two years!

Not knowing, Clyde decided to speed up his chances for a parole by playing on the sympathies of the courts. He convinced a fellow prisoner on work detail to "accidentally" cut off two of his toes. It worked and Governor Sterling signed Clyde's parole. Clyde walked out of the Eastham unit in mid February of 1932, a week after the injury.

Clyde immediately went back to Bonnie, but even in love, he couldn't shake his bitterness. While courting Bonnie, he assembled a new gang, former Eastham prisoners Ray Hamilton and Ralph Fults to get some money they felt was due them. Bonnie was determened to be with Clyde from then on and went along with them on the robbery of a hardware store in Kauffman, Texas. It was the beginning of the Bonnie and Clyde saga.

Clyde, Hamilton and Fults split up after the robbery. The hardware store job didn't bring in much money. Clyde made his own way to Hillsboro. He soon got back with Hamilton and learned that Fults had been arrested. They knew they could be next and chose a grocery store owned by a Mr Bucher, that looked easy.

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