Wednesday, July 8, 2009 6:08 PM CDT
BOOK REVIEW: 'Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde' By Jeff Guinn
Review by Herb Meeker, Staff Writer
If you want to read how truth can be more exciting than fiction, then pick up the latest book about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the Depression-era gangsters.
Published during the 75th anniversary of their bloody deaths together in an ambush by law officers, the book will become the new standard for ending the myths about the criminals who came from a West Dallas slum. Having first heard of Bonnie and Clyde through the acclaimed movie of that name in 1967, I had to purge some of those half-truths myself.
Guinn, a former journalist from Texas and member of the Texas Institute of Letters, doesn’t glorify Clyde and Bonnie or their gang. Through exhaustive research and solid sources, including unpublished memoirs of some members of the Barrow and Parker families, he accuses the Barrow gang of being inept in their two years of crime sprees that went far west of Texas and as far north as Iowa. Many times, they were breaking into gumball machines or robbing Mom and Pop groceries to gain enough money to buy baloney and cheese for sandwiches.
But that did not make them any less deadly. Clyde was a crack shot and could handle a shotgun or even a Browning Automatic Rifle — several BARs were stolen from state guard armories at different times by the Barrow gang. That meant Clyde and his cohorts outgunned some small-town law officers, who could only afford small-caliber pistols with their paltry pay.
If Clyde had not gone into crime for a living, he might have had a future as a race car driver, based on Guinn’s accounts. He raced fearlessly down country roads in stolen Fords with V-8 engines under the hood. Many times, the law was eating dust long before high-powered police cruisers existed.
Clyde could be cool and reticent at times, while Bonnie was chatty and charming. She wrote poetry, which talked of their eventual fate of “Going down together” in a gunfight.
They were both loyal to their families, offering money during regular visits to West Dallas. That later backfired with criminal charges and prison time for some relatives aiding the gang.
Buck Barrow, Clyde’s older brother, was part of the gang for a time, until he was killed in a shootout at a park in Iowa. Other criminals from the Texas prison system joined the gang, too.
Blind trust in one gang member eventually led to the betrayal of Bonnie and Clyde. Henry Methvin was facing a sentence for attempted murder on a Texas prison farm when Clyde broke him out with other gang members. Methvin sought a pardon.
On May 23, 1934, outside Gibsland, La., Clyde slowed down for a jacked-up truck parked along a narrow country road. It was owned by Methvin’s father. It was part of the trap set by former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer and a five-member posse, armed with BARs and high-powered rifles. The law was not outgunned this time.
The one-sided shootout was over in seconds. Clyde died instantly. Bonnie’s screams echoed from the car, haunting some posse members for years, Guinn wrote. Hours later, the fickleness of the public was demonstrated when the bullet-riddled Ford was towed with the bodies still inside to a funeral home.
“He was nothing but a little bitty fart,” a man said of Clyde Barrow.
But thousands attended their separate funerals in Texas that spring. And the legend of Bonnie and Clyde still lives on, especially with Guinn’s fine book.
Contact Meeker at hmeeker@jg-tc.com or 238-6869.
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