Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 369: Bonnie and Clyde Part I - Once You Go Short

Episode Date: June 15, 2019

On the first of our three-part series on Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, we cover the terribly poor upbringings of two of the most famous criminals of the thirties as well as the beginning of their criminal careers and the short stint in prison that turned Clyde Barrow from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake. 

There's no place to escape to this is the last talk on the left That's when the cannon blows them started All right again, I'm gonna say first That massacres are not cool No, no, no, I know it's not cool. I know that I know that Random runaway bank robberies street crime and crime gangs and it's not cool. No, none of it's cool. No, but Also, could I just clarify this is the second intro we've done for this episode. Yes, and obviously you're like, why did you redo it? Evidently Henry started this last episode. We say massacres are cool. You can't say masters are cool

And then this is you correcting that just so the audience understands why we have this intro Things used to be kind of freer and more Right this is the last podcast on the left. I am Ben with Marcus. Hello, and of course we have gorgeous Henry Zabrowski in Los Angeles, I just want to drive a car fast Well, I just want to have all that shit where you're just going like a hand like laughing at the wall I mean I got that laws on my back. Hey, and like I wanted that's fun Yeah, fun lifestyle I would then what we're gonna find out is the reality of this today's episode and the reality of these criminals was it was actually

Very rough living and there wasn't a romantic anything romantic about it No, I would love to see you full of road rage in a model team And you're just yelling at deer and yaks because I don't even know if there were other cars on the road then All right, so why are we talking about this old-timey stuff? Maybe that's what they're wondering might be Anyway today's episode this is like a long time coming right long long time come been wanting to do this for so long And I'm excited Marcus is like super thrilled. This is gonna be the last podcast definitive history of Bonnie and Clyde Now Marcus has really given me the hit. I've really gotten history HIV for Marcus because for so long I viewed it as boring in school. I was bad at it, right?

as Every class the way I was taught in high school was the antiquated way where they didn't care if you were interested Right, it was just a list of facts, right? I had a teacher who stood stood at the front of the class It was just listed facts We wrote down facts and then we did we did tests right and that's all it was we're nowadays kids It's like teachers dressed up in costumes and they like they act it out And then they write out the answers for the tests for them with their hands And they make sure everybody's having fun and they get flowers and snacks

I think you have a gross misunderstanding of the US education system It's much much worse than it was when we were kids Jesus Christ Well, I had a teacher mr. Thomas McCann who let us listen to Billy Joel's We didn't start the fire over and over and over again until I learned about JFK Also, so we're under Bonnie and Clyde it's interesting the way it has to be named Bonnie and Clyde as opposed to Clyde and Bonnie Doesn't mark because Clyde and Bonnie just sounds like a Midwest Christian couple who own a Chick-fil-A And it's just like thank God we're closed on Sunday, so we can also teach Bible study like Clyde and Bonnie just does not work We're also gonna learn now these these are the type of things that allow these legends to grow is it sometimes

It's really just about your name your the package the time period and that's why Bonnie and Clyde up until now They stick in the imagination of Americans. Yeah, and there is something too that we'll get here But there is something to that freedom aspect that people love. Yeah Yeah, well Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were two depression era criminals from Texas who over the course of two years Robbed innumerable small businesses and gas stations stole dozens if not hundreds of cars robbed a couple of banks and were Indirectly or directly responsible for the deaths of 13 men. Oh, I never said massacres were cool We know But they were kind of run into neighbor. It's kind of crazy when the more we research Bonnie and Clyde

They're so much fun because they were such, you know, they were such ridiculous characters It was like bullets flying out of a big cloud of dirt. Yeah rolling through town. I mean, there's a reason why Flat and Scruggs foggy mountain breakdown was chosen as the theme for the Bonnie and Clyde movie interesting just really really fast Banjo music and fiddle and that's how Yeah You think about the end of the devil's rejects that great Rob zombie film to shoot out and stuff like that Yeah, fuck. Yeah, dude That's the best fucking midnight writer in that fucking sequence. It still gets me a bone. It's the best now

Although Bonnie and Clyde are now probably the most remembered of all the notorious criminals of the 30s partly because the 1967 movie of the same name They were arguably the worst at actually making crime pay. They were horrible at it No, yeah, if you go by the opinions of their peers such as John Dillinger Bonnie and Clyde were amateur Posers messy kids who are only making life more difficult for the ones who actually knew what they were doing So wait, was there like a company meeting where they were like Bonnie and Clyde you haven't been performing this this quarter Can you please do better than next John Dillinger? Look at him. He's aces As we go through these stories, you're gonna see it's true they were they were essentially again posing as these people they grew to admire these true outlaws of the

1930s because John Dillinger people like the Baker boys these were guys that were going and they were Pulling off crazy heists making crazy bank when Bonnie and Clyde were little doing their little picks offs of little little stores and Random people they're only making like 10 to 50 bucks at a time and kind of But what happened with them is that the again the freeze frame the picture? Which will then get into the actual picture of Bonnie and Clyde pointing guns at each other with cigarettes hanging around the mouth So it's like it's just too sexy Absolutely is that Bonnie and Clyde had one thing that criminals like Dillinger and baby face Nelson and pretty boy Floyd didn't have Bonnie and Clyde were fucking

Interesting now would baby face Nelson did he really have the face of the baby from happy death day to you? Well because Bonnie and Clyde were young reasonably attractive and We're fucking they got the romantic treatment because I mean you gotta remember I mean this is 1931 1932 I mean a young couple on the road illicit sex Married like that's some saucy shit, but I mean it's not like it was romantic. They were fucking using petroleum or something for Lou I mean, I can't imagine it was like really romantic sex. No, you were too young Bitboop jazz boys that got out of the the little shitty neighborhood that they were in and Exploded on the national scene so people looked up to them

Okay See the story most people think about when Bonnie and Clyde are mentioned is one of two young lovers sticking it to the man and live In life by their own rules right and on the surface that part of the story holds true Okay, and to the people who were suffering through the Great Depression of the 30s Bonnie and Clyde were heroes for just that reason People felt so goddamn powerless back then that the idea of two people killing authority figures IE cops made them feel good interest they Loved it add to that the myth that Bonnie and Clyde were actually Competent bank robbers who were stealing from the very same people that were foreclosing on homes and farms left and right

And you got a recipe for celebrity you got yourself a Robin Hood, but they weren't they weren't getting enough to share Yeah, they weren't getting up to buy things in the neighborhood They weren't doing it the MC hammer way where they would buy a house glass looking down on West Dallas Well the deeper reality of the situation however was one of two young kids who felt they deserved more in this world than the Poverty into which they were born so they decided to take a shortcut to respect and as a result over a dozen Innocent people died. Oh, that's not to say that Bonnie and Clyde had easy lives They didn't as we'll soon get into both of them grew up so poor that when the Great Depression came along in

1929 the day-to-day lives of their families were barely affected That's the best part of having nothing to lose. Yeah, is it nobody can take anything from you? Yeah, I mean it is strange the Great Depression hits and they just have like welcome welcome to my world How are you gonna do and they probably did much better than the folks who had something and now lost everything They're like see follow our lead. We know how to be poor What's because they were all being punished for their fake ass money, right? That's the problem and they they didn't have fake money, but they didn't even have real money And they didn't have anything and they were just hauling junk. Yeah

And there's plenty of junk, of course But whatever sympathy we may have for Bonnie and Clyde ends the moment murder comes into the picture The people who got killed were not the industrial bigwigs and politicians who were actually responsible for keeping people like Bonnie And Clyde living in the dirt. Hmm much of the time their victims were either shop owners Just trying to survive our regular dudes trying to make a couple extra bucks as small-town cops Whose most dangerous duty was supposed to just be breaking up drunken fights, right? So they roll into town man Again feel the dust like Yosemite Sam and so that's a price. They're not hardened killers

Like what you find out about Clyde Barrow is that he's not a fucking serial killer He's a dude that just knows that he you know We'll see moments of mercy. This is it's an incredible story The the arc that Clyde and Bonnie go the arc that Bonnie and Clyde go through it's an incredible story But the you see a lot of them the murders are accidental and also just when you got a guy in the corner Who again who's got nothing to lose? Mm-hmm. Yeah, and to address another myth about at least Clyde right up top Okay, Clyde Barrow was neither impotent as he was portrayed by Warren Beatty nor was he gay Honestly, that is how incredible Warren Beatty is as an actor

He could pretend he's impotent because you know Warren Beatty back in the day. I mean, I'd give it up I'd give it up immediately him and Faye Dunaway actually had to make an agreement to not fuck on the set And the only way for him to look cool was to pretend his dick didn't work Well the only reason why they portrayed him as impotent is because the original script had Clyde Barrow as Bisexual and since that would be too controversial for 1967 impotence was somehow the compromise Okay, I don't get why but that's what it was studio execs for you I also like that at the time being bisexual meant it was like Bonnie's like well to come tomorrow now And he would like kind of look to the side and see another man like just sort of look from outside of a tiny

Open door like and then he just kind of look at the ground and go. I'll see you in the morning Bonnie And then leave and it's like gay Sex no other explanation. What do you mean back then you just described a scene from Bohemian Rhapsody? I exactly Rhapsody is a backwards ass shitty movie That's what I've heard Well as far as the claims that Clyde Barrow was gay went that seems to have come from a place of homophobia I eat the idea that if you really want to make someone evil you make him gay on top of everything else

I got to say I was a as an advocate for the LGBTQ community. I miss scary gay I want gays to be scary again because that is like you're gonna mess I want them all to be like the teacher from nightmare on Elm Street to Marching on Washington We're gonna have our rights by the way or we will pummel you in every way possible. Yes, I am gay But I am also a supervillain well The claim that Clyde was gay comes from the opposite side of romanticizing Bonnie and Clyde Some authors like to paint Clyde as a full on

Psychopath with some even claiming that Clyde was a child killer who preferred boys and never even slept with Bonnie But those claims came long after the pair were killed at the height of their popularity in the early 30s It would have been suicide for a paper to buck the narrative of two young lovers on the run Hmm the truth as usual though is somewhere in between Although there is a fair amount of romance to the story Bonnie and Clyde were mostly a couple of dumb young kids who knew full Well the consequences of their actions, but just didn't give a fuck But I will say this is by far of all the stories we have covered on last podcast and left the most romantic Mm-hmm. This is the this is the story where the love actually was real Bonnie and Clyde loved the fuck out of each other

In a way that was probably kind of sick. They were like they were obsessed with each other They were co-dependent on each other right needed each other, but that's why no matter no one fucking fuck separate them It's it's great It's kind of it's nice because you can kind of imagine yourself you Friggin like kissle in a Ford Model T with a Bud Light with a wig on and just robbing various people true Love indeed But all it took for their celebrity status to come crashing down was one Huge fuck up and when that fuck up was paired with a misreported story the tide of public opinion turned

And when it came to that type of celebrity the turning of the tide meant certain death But before we get into the story Let's acknowledge our main source today go down together by Jeff Gwynne Which is just like Gwynne's The Road to Jonestown is absolutely fantastic and highly recommended Okay, this is the same guy who uses a big source for our Jonestown episodes this yeah Jeff Gwynne's road to go down together fucking read it. It's great. It's like an action movie Yeah, he writes an incredibly real action movie. That is their lives. It's it's it's awesome It's gripping yeah, and some people have taken umbrage with Gwynne's telling of the story by saying He made it a bit too much of an action movie

They say that he assumes a few things that he shouldn't but we'll do our best to address those claims when they arise All right, so without further ado, let's get into the always sexy always bloody and sometimes very dumb story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow Yay Now while neither Bonnie nor Clyde were born into anything even closely resembling money out of the two clod Chestnut Barrow was by far the most poverty-stricken having grown up in almost third-world conditions Your middle name was named after the only food we had in the house That's right, you're the brother's name bud broken teeth barrel Born on March 24th, 1910 Clyde was the fifth child of seven born to Henry and Q me Barrow

You saying Q me that it's spelled CUMMY Something's going on in that house with seven kids. It's pronounced Q me it is Yeah, how do you know how do you know it sprouts Q me because that's in all the documentaries they call her Q me I think it's just cuz they can't call her CUMMY That's just not I yeah, that's that I promise it now. I'm gonna flip it the other way and just be like I'm about to Q That it sounds like you're coming while thinking of math Weird but accurate yeah, yeah, yeah, so when Clyde was born Henry his father was a sharecropper who toiled in the dirt fields of

Teleco, Texas near the town of Enos now are they just selling dirt Like is that what a dirt farmer is a sharecropper. He's just piled dirt together. He's not say I might I might a dirt man You know people come and pay it to pretend to be their father No, they're farming cotton. This is cotton land. These are all cotton farmers. Oh, actually we all drove through Enos During our first Texas tour when we were driving from Austin Dallas I remember that I remember looking out the window and saying look at that beautiful town. It's so majestic and glorious I love you

You don't remember a damp thing To our loyal listeners out in Enos we love you and if you drive a PT cruiser in Enos, you're number one sure all right We had a town and no we had a gated community in our neighborhood that was Enos town They had across the street and people used to paint a pee in front of it Oh pretty you have to we have Canal Street here in New York and the fact that every teenager hasn't marked off the sea to make It ain't all street. It's making me a little disappointed in the youth quite honestly Cume definitely played her part of the weather beaten religious sharecroppers wife living a life of struggle and Penitence that was rooted in the belief that being poor was a sign that Jesus actually loved you

More than those who were rich It's like the opposite of the it's like the opposite of the prosperity gospel that we got going on now Mm-hmm. That is a line that was sold to people for a long time and the idea of keeping them poor This is a part of the weird like class struggles of the church where they they would basically Treat you be like don't worry be happy. You don't need to strive for more You don't have to because God loves the fact that you never smile You literally never smile the pictures they have of coming in the kids you me where she Oh, okay, but they all look like they all look like what's his name? Um, they all look like pig pen

From Charlie from Charlie Brown all covered in dirt and they don't even have the energy to frown It's just a bunch of lines. It's all the emojis with the two dots for the eyes and the line for a face Oh, they were working hard though hoping to make yeah, hopefully hoping to make a big one day perhaps I mean most of them were just hoping to make it to the next meal Wow like making it big for most people was not even an option And as Gwen points out Clyde was taught from a young age The poor people were godly and good while people with money were by their very nature Sinful allied with the devil and inherently lesser than okay interesting interesting flip and reversal

Yeah Now as I said Clyde was only one of seven kids and all the boys grew up with fun little nicknames Clyde was known as bud because Clyde was very friendly. Oh, his oldest brother Elvin was called Jack. Although no one can remember why it's just a name That's just another name. It's another name Clyde's younger brother was known as flop because he had big ears Cute cute kid while Clyde's older brother Ivan who would be the biggest influence in Clyde's life was known only as Buck oh god, you don't want to meet Buck in a dark alley Buck Barrow

Oh, they call me stumps cause a bird ate my hand I forgot we had an eighth child Now it seems like Cume did the best she could with the kids or at least by the standards of the time Which meant a whole lot of weapon and a whole lot of Jesus Hmm and when the boys were young they really weren't all that bad as far as we know There was none of the early childhood signs of overly violent criminal behavior I mean, they did grow up idolizing famous American outlaws like Jesse James and Billy the kid But so did just about every other poor kid at the time, right? Yeah, I love the Empire growing up as a child

Yeah, I wanted to be I like the Empire. I liked Earth Vader. Hmm. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that They dressed better. They had better amenities in their spacecraft sucked. Well, this is very country The only person who was cool was Chewbacca. He was cool Chewbacca was very cool. RIP by the way. Yeah, RIP Peter Mayhew. Yes But the barrow boys being good all changed when Buck started stealing roosters Buck wanted to get in a cock fight and to make a little money and since his family had no money He started stealing all of his money makers. Hmm. Could you can't raise a fighting cock? Yeah, you gotta steal a fighting cock. No, you can't go with just because what do you do you get a spank of cock? You're gonna get this little cock out of the rooster and you're gonna give it spanks

You're gonna beat it. You're gonna call it names. Yeah, how do you make it angry? Yeah, the the code the guy who coached all the girl sports at my school He raised fighting cocks used to go to Oklahoma every weekend fight him We not this is not a euphemism for anything, right? I just want to be sure we're still talking about roosters Yeah, we're talking about roosters. Yeah, okay. Yeah, Coach Arnold Yeah, he's take the yeah just fight because it was still legal in Oklahoma. So hello. I'm coach Arnold I raised fighting cocks. Yeah, he had a whole yeah plot of land for it. It was still legal. Yeah, wow How do you make a mean cock without having a bad mommy? Can we stop saying the word cock?

Well, that was about the worst trouble the barrow boys could get into out in telco stealing fighting cocks, but But everything fell apart when World War one came to an end See when the war was raging European farmers couldn't produce crops for obvious reasons And because American farmers were the only game in town prices for crops went through the roof during World War one But as soon as the war was over and the Europeans started producing again The bottom fell out of the market here in America and sharecroppers like Henry Barrow were put out on their ass Oh, I don't pretend to understand a single goddamn thing about economics, right? I really don't understand I don't understand anything about like

Financial politics or any of this kind of shit or but it is really interesting to see how Gwyn breaks down how Essentially these these wartime politics us putting ourselves into World War one how that ended up creating Essentially the whole that the depression kind of would fall into all of this like wide-ranging decades long bullshit That ended up turning up like but the mix with then with the dust bowl happening in the United States of America almost like Destroying us and creating an entire true crime subculture. Hmm because of it Oh, yeah, true crime and economics. It's a fascinating little It's a fun little intertwining study there So with nothing left to do in the country the Barrow family loaded up their wagon and headed to the rapidly growing city of Dallas in

1922 where industry was having the same sort of boom agriculture was having a few years before The problem was nobody wanted to employ people like Henry Barrow Why not see the city fathers of Dallas had a vision for their city where in this smallish, Texas town Would one day be on par with Cosmopolitan cities like San Francisco and Paris Honestly, I'm gonna say they beat San Francisco when we were in Dallas. We did not see one pile of human feces I know it's cuz they all walk along all the highways and Yeah, dude, I don't shoot them. They got poop. What's I don't know if Dallas is better than San Francisco I'm gonna say it's not I will say that Dallas is an interesting place because with what you've talked about at Marcus and the way

I've heard other people talk about is it seems to be Dallas was pretty highfalutin for itself and did believe that they wanted to Create essentially a city of elites and I actually don't know if like a lot Has changed Dallas is doing very well. We were just there. I love Dallas Actually, I like Dallas better now than I did when I was in college like some cool places have popped up in Dallas recently Yeah, but Dallas was trying to be a banking city I mean they didn't want they wanted to be as far removed from the cowboy culture as the rest of Texas had They wanted to move remove themselves from as far away as they could possibly get Okay, and younger people like Clyde's older siblings fit into that vision quite nicely

His older brother Jack became a mechanic while a sister Nell became a hairdresser Because the bankers who were planning to rule the city with an iron fist needed people to fix their cars and do their hair Both of them fell right in line also and but what that also did those that took Work force away from the Barrow farm and the people that needed to basically Inherit this piece of land that Henry Barrow was working for a bunch of years He basically pooped out a bunch of fucking city kids. Yeah, like right your father had you Marcus Oh, it's just like you have a city child that's in a country place And then I can't do the farm work. I'm like, it's like if I was born then right am I gonna do

I'm just gonna get beat the death in a field. Well, it'll be funny though It'll be a great show You do understand that Marcus's father didn't birth him like Arnold Schwarzenegger in junior It was his mother yes, it was and they've been very supportive of my city boy ways But then you have people like Henry Barrow He along with thousands of other small-time farmers in Texas had flocked to the cities after the crash And it got even worse after a particularly bad bull weevil infestation paired with a bout of cotton root rot Swept through East, Texas. Yeah, and then there's gunk toe and prairie worm. Oh my man

You don't want to see how wide these prairie worms Bull weevils are a legitimate concern. They sound cute. They're not. Yeah, what are they? Locusts pretty they're like a They're a kind of locust that will completely destroy a cotton crop if it really get if the infestation gets real bad Well, they shouldn't have named him something so musical because like the fly like the flying bull weevils It just sounds like a really fun old country western band that has a lot of what do you call those things jugs? Banjos Jugs and banjos. I technically there was a song about bull weevils written by the presidency the United States of America Yeah, we were the cutest alternative band of the 90s. Really? And I did figure it out the lump that was in her head cancer Now the other Texas cities like Austin San Antonio and Houston

Understood that these refugees from the cotton crash were actual human beings But the city fathers of Dallas said fuck them and shoved them all into a tent city called West Dallas Which came to be known alternately as either the bog or the devil's back porch Is West Dallas now like a hipster neighborhood, I think so yeah, I'm not real sure I know West Dallas has never been nice, but yeah, when I looked it up. It was like there's new Expanding businesses coming to West Dallas like a yoga studio The devil's back porch I would go there every day We're actually a croissant to read so if you want any sort of other top of bread, we don't have it

We just have crunchy sweet bread that you can eat with chili and that's it. This is a country chili croissant to read Also, I can't hear the word sweet breads anymore after you all tricked me into into eating lamb testicles in Oklahoma City You loved it. I thought there were actual sweet. I thought it was sweet bread I thought it was bread that was sweet not like you found out what it was. You loved it Well in West Dallas amidst the open sewers dirt streets and innumerable tents was where Clyde Barrow arrived with his family at the age of 12 and the Barrow's didn't even have a Tent they slept under their wagon every night is fucking brutal sounding

It's just it's just the way they live their lives is a way that I would I would die Oh, yeah, they think it's like if I drove my Prius to go live in a park But then I just slept under my Prius all night. Yeah, it'd be dangerous dangerous And as far as food went the only thing they ever had to eat was when the Salvation Army arrived with baloney on stale bread Ah, which the locals colorfully called West Dallas round steak fun nickname really does fix a lot of things It really does West Dallas round steak sounds like a super fun sexual position or a great sandwich Yeah, it does sound like eating ass Your round steak as far as what Henry Barrow did for money. He was a junk man

Every day he'd hitch his horse to his wagon and leave his family sitting in the dirt while he crossed the Trinity River and Scoured the nicer neighborhoods for scrap metal. Hmm, but little by little Henry gathered enough junk to build his family a tiny little shack in West Dallas And eventually the barrows were one of the few families in the camp to have an actual roof over their heads good So this guy was good. He was doing some good parenting He I don't know if the term working your ass off Like I mean literally he had a mule and his mule was his car that he'd go and he'd take a pick of scrap metal He'd go do that for 13 hours a day

He would come back to his family. He'd give them the beans that he could find he then would then spend the next Five hours building The house where they would live out of the stuff that technically he should be selling so naturally in a place So devastatingly poor some of the citizens in West Dallas turned to crime to survive For one Buck Barrow thrived in the environment as there were a hell of a lot of chickens to steal Oh What a gold mine so plenty And Clyde thought Buck was about the coolest motherfucker in the world

See Clyde was never what you'd call a big man by 15 Clyde was the biggest he'd ever be Five foot five about a hundred and twenty five pounds. Really. I like I like them Really that's like I like I'm you have like a big thing of dog food with a hat on By the time Clyde was 16 he dropped out of school But that wasn't too big of a deal because only about 40% of students in America at the time went past 8th grade Mm-hmm, and really it wouldn't have made a goddamn bit of difference in Clyde's life If he had gone all the way through school see in America back then but in Dallas Especially the station in which you born was almost guaranteed to be where you died

Interesting now admittedly it's not that much different today, right? But in the 20s if you were born poor you were guaranteed to stay poor and Clyde Barrow was so poor That not even the fathers of West Dallas aka the bog would allow their daughters to date him Hmm. Yeah, dude It was it is very very interesting to see that without the means to change, right? I mean he was fucked. They were all fucked anybody in West Dallas was just and essentially they were told This is the way it is and you're gonna like it We're gonna give you whatever fucking spare ass

Hard jobs that you can have unless you have a skill because the residence family like his hairdresser sisters They had a profitable skill and they leaned into it and they'd go and they realized I got oh This is what this is what we're gonna do profitable because of the retail area But if you come from no education, you're literally a sharecropper son that is now a junkman son There is a very little room Yeah, you do wiggle your way in a proper society and humble plug here abling and stop at we talked about some recent legislation Where making it more difficult once again for low-income people to move upwards upward mobility has always been talked about but never achieved in this Country no and it is getting worse by the day

Absolutely and as far as Clyde's dreams went he spent all the free time He had going into downtown Dallas to window shop for fine suits nice guitars and all the things he'd buy and do if only He had a little bit of money. He's like Wayne from Wayne's world Clyde Barrow was actually an accomplished guitar player Saxophonist he was like he was actually a really good musician. Okay, cool They he there was a second where he was certain to do live music It was like we might have seen a Clyde Barrow as a folk singer instead of as a Bank thief from bank robber, but it just didn't catch interesting. Yeah, and Clyde did work

I mean his first job was at the brown cracker and candy company These all sound like disgusting acts Men do with their farm hands. Give me a brown crack I don't want to give you a brown cracker a second wait. If you give me about two hours. I can give you a brown cracker. I just did brown cracker with my cousin about 45 minutes ago All right, well there at brown cracker and candy company Barrow worked for a dollar a day which even in today's money. That's a dollar 75 an hour So they just paid him to take a dump on a conveyor belt over and over and over again. Oh beans And as they said there was no room whatsoever for advancement

The way Gwen puts it people from Dallas owned and ran the factories while people from West Dallas work the factories And they were expected to work the factories for ever and they were expected to be grateful for the opportunity Right and unlike the cities on the East Coast Dallas had nothing even close to labor unions So people like Clyde were working at least 60 hours a week The most Clyde ever made was 30 cents an hour working for Proctor and Gamble Which in today's cash is still just four dollars. You make more than that in a maximum security prison. Yeah Yeah, I mean technically it's the same amount of money that a bartender at a local Irish tavern would make think about that think about that Honestly, that's what they make especially weight staff again. They get tips. Yeah, they get tips

But is that a guaranteed flow of income? That's an interesting a little economic argument We could have because a lot of people don't believe in tips or believe it's merit-based whenever why should it be merit-based? If it's a thing that then is expected of you two in order to make a living wage I'm not gonna side bubble off into this conversation Statistic show you make more money getting tips than if you get a minimum wage. They want the tips give them the money Well after Proctor and Gamble Clyde worked for the United Glass Company Then he tried enlisting in the Navy this guy He really did make every effort at least when he was younger to go straight. He's five five one twenty or something's perfect for the Navy

No, he's not honestly That's how my dad got in that is literally how my dad got in because he was tiny enough to go into the submarine Exactly, you just gotta fit then you could then it could well there weren't submarines back then I mean Clyde he tried he enlisted he even got the letters USN tattooed on his arm in anticipation He's like I'm going all in on this, but ultimately he was deemed too sickly to serve Oh, yeah, his father used to suffer from a thing. I believe they just called the shivers I think I think it was like epilepsy where he'd be like fucked and Clyde got a little touch of the shivers

Which is bad when you're auditioning for the Navy audition for the Navy. Yeah, you can call it an audition sure I tell you what I do really regret the SNL tattoo. I got And that wasn't Clyde's last ill-conceived tattoo either later that same year he got the letters EBW tight tattooed right under USN I was the initials of his girlfriend at the time Eleanor B. Williams That's gonna lead to an argument down the road with whoever you would ever be married And when that went sour Clyde moved on and pretty soon and got a spot right under EBW and then finally Grace came in at number four. What is he a fucking make-out tree where he's just carving the initials of every one that he's kissed

What is happening? Strangely Clyde never got Bonnie's name tattooed anywhere on his body. Really? I guess he learned his lesson by the way I would hope so Bonnie. I got something special for you now. I'll see him that you're you're my special lady You're my number one. You're my number one in this whole criminal organization. I got to show you right here I got a little BP on my tight But at any rate Clyde was starting to realize that he was never gonna get the nice clothes and fast cars Working at places like brown cracker. No For people like Clyde the only real way to supplement your income was through

Crime mm-hmm for the women of West Dallas the most common crime was sex work for men The crime of choice was theft mm-hmm Clyde started off by stealing what else you want to guess Ben? televisions Toasters um there was one television in one toaster in the country at the time. They were both in the Rockefeller's house Yeah, he stole okay one last thing honestly. What would he steal? What would he steal? car engines chickens That's your best betting for your buck when you get to petty crime because see look at it this way You either sell the chicken or you got a chicken dinner if you said the chicken. Have you really upset? Okay great

Well pretty soon though Clyde got picked up for chicken theft But was let go because there wasn't enough room to hold every West Dallas kid busted for stealing a chicken Yeah, because why would you literally steal an alarm clock? You literally are stealing the thing that is made to wake people up in the morning It's hard. It was hard living man. It was hard to find a way in buddy I will say I think that that's one of my favorite Historical things I even read about this book about how Texas at the time had so little room in jails That they just pardoned people right all they would do to get him out of the jail be like yeah, you're fine Then stupid get out of here. Interesting. Now Clyde was free for about three weeks

But then the cops picked him up again this time Clyde and his brother Buck had upped their poultry game by stealing a whole truckload of turkeys right before thanks Kevin What a noisier crime There's not a noisier crime that exists Stealing an entire truck of turkeys. I imagine at some point understand. They're being stolen So it's them. You're gonna think cuz all the coaches like this is all truck now say No, I didn't see any of them sir, I don't know what you're talking about sir No, that's that's our daughter

They were caught almost immediately I would think so but buck took all the blame like a good big brother And Clyde was set free but the problem was Clyde had now been picked up twice in almost as many weeks for theft Which earned him a permanent spot on the Dallas Police Department shit list So from then on anytime there was a theft Clyde was on the list for Investigation as a suspect when the cops didn't have any leads which meant that cops could detain Clyde at any time for quote-unquote Suspicion and most of the time this happened while Clyde was at work and as a result Clyde kept losing jobs because the cops come they'd pick them up They'd say all right. We're taking you downtown on suspicion. They'd take him downtown

They would question him and then they just fucking leave him there What the hell did they do? Did they put him into a lineup and they just have a bunch of turkeys staring at him and be like Like I'm sorry, mr. Clyde it looks like the turkeys have Fingered you this time you can always tell who's guilty about when the turkeys scream But this is a very this is even common nowadays I've heard people that suffer in Poverished neighborhoods, especially if you have any sort of record constant harassment by the police Yeah, it's constant keeping up of you basically checking in on you

Yeah, and you know, it's really hard to keep a job when a police officer takes you off your shift We're right. Absolutely. A lot of similarities with current-day America. Yeah I mean a lot of the stuff that we're talking about here is it did not go away Right, absolutely. It's the exact same way now as it was then absolutely and also that I mean hell This country's also but rapidly sliding towards a place where people like Bonnie and Clyde could be born again Oh my Well as a result of the police harassment Clyde kept losing jobs and eventually he began to give up on Honest work all together, but luckily for him. There was a new much more profitable fence on the market than chickens

Okay cars. Yes See around 1912 starting systems and cars began to switch from the big noisy cranks You'd have to use to start your Model T's and Model A's to electric starting systems Oh, because of this hot wiring became extremely easy and extremely common because you could open up the engine panel Right next to the driver's door Hot wire it hop in and you're fucking gone in five seconds. That's pretty hot Also, people just leave their keys in their car Mm-hmm

Also, it would it was very because you know people didn't truly understand that it would just take something that you out And then we're gonna see that the the actual advancement in his technology is going to allow Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker to evade the police for two years. Okay, and Clyde Barrow was a Natural in fact one could say that stealing cars and hauling ass were about the only two things Clyde Barrow was truly good at It's fucking killer if you do read about it in the book, too This is this is where I I was like very excited to read it Yeah, I don't know if he invented drifting Oh, they would talk about how Clyde could do a turn on you can do a 90 degree turn

And they would say like he could drive like a motherfucker. I believe it I'm sure it's easy to drift we got all the ladies just making the making the road nice and damn I don't want to say that never mind It doesn't matter. I was talking about how busies would squirt It was too dirty for me Probably kept in anyway, so the whole thing doesn't matter. Oh, yeah, okay Well Clyde would steal a car in Dallas take it to Oklahoma and sell it for about a hundred bucks Which is about $1,500 adjusted for today

Eventually Clyde started hanging out with the seedier boys his age Specifically a kid named Frank Claus who ironically was from Dallas proper Oh and Claus was what you called a second story man Which is just a weird 1920s way of naming a burglar who entered above the ground floor. I'm what you call a basement man Try to find money in your butt Anyways, I gotta go. I gotta go to jail for being a pedophile But with this second story man at his side Clyde started escalating and just as Clyde's appetite for crime hit an upswing The stock market crashed and the Great Depression began on October 29th, 1929

Hmm at its absolute worst for those of you who don't know the history the Great Depression put a full Quarter of the United States population out of work 24.5% of people in the United States did not have a job damn But although this was hitting those who already had money hard in the gut Henry Barrow was doing fucking great. Oh, he didn't have any money in the bank He didn't have a goddamn thing. It just shows again. He's just not fucked with it It was why I'm gonna eventually turn all of my cash into precious gems There's nothing I want to see more than wizard Henry Zabrowski

It's gonna look literally you are we actually had a chance to interview Dan accurate on side stories Which is gonna be out next week and speaking with Dan accurate was speaking to Henry in the future And it really was like breaking my brain to be like wow I know what my friendship is gonna look like in 30 years with Henry. My life can work out Well just a couple of months before Black Tuesday Henry Barrow actually had a little bit of luck a car spun out of control and killed his mule Well, whoa, that doesn't sound like luck. Well after threatening a lawsuit the owner of the car gave Henry $600 which Henry used to buy a Model T which exponentially increased his junk gathering abilities Oh, he's that right there is the American dream

Get a settlement under the table from an accident and then you can get even more junk To sell to slumlords. This is like first of all his his pops Henry is like Chris Farley in fucking dirty work The dude from from office space By the car make all of his dreams come true being almost paralyzed. It's a jump to conclusions But while Henry was making an honest living Buck and Clyde were breaking the law all over North Texas and it was about to catch up to him oh In 1929 about a month after the stock market crash The two brothers were joyriding in a stolen Ford with their buddy Sid

Deciding to take it a little further the three of them broke into a house and got away with a bit of jewelry and a little bit of cash Then they figured they'd round out the night nicely by breaking and knew a place called motormark garage Out in Denton to see if they could crack the safe the safe though proved uncrackable So they hauled it out to their stolen Ford to see if they could crack it at home But at the moment that these three idiots were putting an entire safe into the trunk of their car a Patrol cop came by and gave chase, but this is what I'm telling you Clyde the next time what we got to do We got to steal the entire building And that's how we know and then best part they please catch us we go inside tell him we live there

Was he with Israel keys Well Clyde jumped in the driver seat of the Ford and took off but took a turn too fast and crashed the car Oh three of them then took off on foot as the Denton police open fire Clyde and Sidney got away But Buck got shot through both of his legs Oh, and was arrested That's gonna suck cuz you know how many times this happens cuz it's like me and Jackie you're running away from a scene of a crime And then she gets shot in both legs right and she falls in like But as a brother and sister you have to have brothers in crime have to have an understanding we can give like a tip of the hat

They're like, I'll see you soon. I'll get you out of jail. Don't worry And then you leave they had a separation policy where they knew that you can't stick around and help somebody else The only way you can do is come back around and save them later on which is a very important criminal skill. Mm-hmm So your analogy Involves you leaving your sister to be arrested and nearly die at the hands of the place But you come back around okay, I yeah, I'll break her out of jail But we're trying to be a sexy lady and I'll and I will I will have sex with the jailer for a little while Gossip convince him. It's real. You know, I mean if my butt doesn't turn him away

Immediately that means he would have had sex with me. Anyway, I wouldn't have need to put the dress on but right, you know, I distract him The tragedy here is that just a few weeks before the arrest Buck had met and fallen in love with his future wife Blanche. They'd fallen so hard that they already have pet names for each other Buck called Blanche, baby and Blanche called Buck daddy Oh Danny and absolutely and it did a little like so this is the first Tumblr romance. Yeah daddy and baby Yeah, daddy fucks, baby. I don't baby loves daddy. I'm pretty sure that happened to a lead singer of a band And that man is currently incarcerated But now daddy was facing a four-year prison sentence for robbery and as far as how much was in the safe

The boys had risked their lives and freedom for a little more than 30 bucks. Oh my god. What are these the colonels secret recipe? This is incredible Now Cume and Henry hoped that this close call would put Clyde back on the straight and narrow and for a while It kind of did. I mean he was still committing crimes But he'd also started hanging out with his old West Dallas friends who are seen as better influences. Okay. Yeah, I don't do crime I'm a yo-yo man I'll go and I play yo-yo outside of businesses until they pay me to stop But it was while Clyde was hanging out with one of those friends that

According to Jeff Gwynne on January 5th 1930 Clyde Barrow went to a house party at 105 Herbert Street and met Bonnie Parker And the way they see each other it's just it is really magical It is a moment in history that if you could freeze imagining going to this party because the way he kind of sets it up is that it was Very much so like Clyde was really fucked up He didn't know what the hell to do with his life His all of his buddies were like come on so we could we could figure a way out of this his brothers in jail He'd he already went through run through a string of women and then he just walks into this party and he sees Bonnie and fucking That's it. Oh

The seas parted and they met in the middle floating to each other perhaps. Yeah, and that's just that's one version of how they met There are like there are a few different versions of how they met, but that's the one we're gonna go with that Well, I like that one. It's cute Now although Bonnie Parker wasn't as poor as Clyde Barrow her family was still not well to do by any stretch of the imagination Her father Charlie Parker died when Bonnie was four and her mother moved the remaining family to cement city Now cement city was a kind of sister city to the bog that was West Dallas While the people of West Dallas just choked on dirt and mud people in cement city at least had jobs while they choked on dirt and mud Well, why didn't they bring cement city over to bog city put the spent on the bog and then you can have a whole city

That maybe make a like nice little ravine for with the bong one. That's clean. No, I'm sorry. We already named it And it was in cement city that Emma Parker got a job as a factory seamstress But that didn't stop her from raising her kids to think that they were in fact better than everyone in Dallas Although she never really told them why they were better Well, I actually think it's kind of refreshing and it was really nice Emma Parker was constantly telling them being like you're better than any of your Circumstances and that's kind of the the concept of what supposed to be good about fucking America Yeah, this idea you're supposed to be able to go out there and make something of yourself Absolutely the crushing class war that you are losing. Yeah, you can still you can make your way through

It's a you got to navigate you got to be a navigator and sometimes you just don't make it you got to get lucky, too Well, I mean she did go a little bit far. I mean it was it was she it was more like you are superior to these other people You're superior to people in West Dallas. You're superior to the people that are above you You're better than everyone else. You are special You have your own little destiny to fulfill right and you can do pretty much tell her you can do whatever the fuck you want Never mind the consequences. She's like what mama June did with What's the honey boo boo? Honey boo boo? Yeah, and honey boo boo is going to space. Look at that. That's incredible Under that rocket. Yeah, they're gonna like the dog. They did in Russia. Well, they did the tested

Yeah, they're gonna test new private space shuttles with honey boo boo And they're gonna open up her eyes so they could just so she can watch the whole thing and then put tubes in her So they could see how her blood reacts Man, I believed you for one second and I really Really feeling gullible right now. Well as far as Bonnie is a little girl went she was to say the least a Precocious child who once shocked a crowd of churchgoers by singing this song that I'm about to play and the song is apparently what passed as a comedy tune in 1914

He's a devil in his own hometown by Billy Murray. I honestly would listen to that today I don't think we needed to make any music after 1940 Oh, it's great. Are you gonna do that as your your mother-son dance at your wedding? Bonnie also like do you have a song picked up for your mother-son dance yet? No, not yet. Okay, it's not gonna be God only knows I'll tell you that In our live show and we can't wait to see everyone in Australia, that's right Well, yeah, we're gonna be in Australia very quick plug. Remember, we're gonna be there a week after next Sydney Perth Adelaide Melbourne all kinds of places

Yeah, go to last podcast on the left comm to get tickets and we'll see all there. All right. Did you get the plug manager Ken? Well Bonnie also like to set fires because she said the colors were pretty I'm in love with her I there are so many of us. I wanted there's listeners. It's like honestly you've already ruined your life for a person like this Yeah, a little Drew Barry more like and fire starters a little creepy perhaps She also had a filthy mouth from a young age which she picked up from her uncle They said she never got rid of it Bonnie had the filthiest mouth in town school But Bonnie was never punished for anything just cuz she was so damn cute. Oh, that's how you always get away with it It's like Wendy. Yeah, when do you go and she'll take food off the plate? You're like, oh, I'm mad at you

That was food for the father button. Oh, you're cute. Yep. What can you do? Yeah, puff and drew blood on me yesterday bit my hand. What can you do? Put him to sleep. No Joke about it. That's horrible Bonnie got new her grandfather's wine stash and drank until she passed out got nephist fights with both boys and girls And generally did whatever the hell she wanted to from the time she woke up until the time she went to sleep Wow, but perhaps Bonnie's biggest influence was the picture shows from the time She was old enough to go Bonnie dreamed of a glamorous life one where she'd sing on Broadway She'd act in Hollywood movies and publish books after book of poetry. Oh, cool

But Bonnie was never gonna get out of cement city. God damn it And I should have made it less out of cement And deep down she knew it, you know, she knew she wasn't gonna get I mean she was smart I guess I mean she like won spelling bees But you know if there were like that's how Jeff Gwynne puts it There were no fucking talent scouts in cement city and Bonnie was never gonna make it to New York or LA No, she'd actually get noticed. Oh, no, cuz she'd need collateral Yeah, money to go and invest into yourself as a business and that's what's kind of what he was saying

What's that being like if maybe maybe if she had made it to New York or LA? She might have gotten in front of somebody simply just because of her drive, but it was very difficult Oh, I would assume the only talent agent had the first black couch Look at this leather it's got deep seats and the best part about it is I could put my new motor camera right across from it Hmm. Well by 15 Bonnie had married a petty thief named Roy Thornton and got a tattoo Inside her right thigh with two hearts connected by arrows labeled Bonnie and Roy This is another thing they can bond over her and Clyde. Yeah, and they probably did Probably definitely laughed about it. It's kind of like that Kelsey Grammer chastity tattoo that he got to keep from cheating on his wife

I really want to get one that's just the top of like right near the top and buy my balls that she says are you my mommy? What is wrong with you today? Naturally Bonnie's marriage to Roy Thornton was a total bust Within a year Roy was disappearing for days at a time and was refusing to tell Bonnie where he was going All the Bonnie heard a rumor that he was shacking up with Reba Griffin over in West Dallas Oh, man, which boots have your bed been under her bed, but whatever that word is Has any Reba ever gotten a man honestly? Eventually Roy just vanished all together and Bonnie was left to fend for herself

Now she got a job waitressing at Hargrave's cafe in Dallas making about 45 bucks a week plus tips in today's money Now it's Jeff Gwynne's assumption that Bonnie might have been moonlighting as a sex worker from time to time Because she was always dressed much better than her work afforded and Bonnie was also infertile Which made her a prime candidate for sex work. Okay. Good for her Get that money, but it could be that the clothes were either bought by potential suitors or were simply stolen when you read some of Bonnie's later poetry specifically a poem called the prostitutes convention Bonnie had quite a wealth of knowledge concerning the Dallas Street Walker scene. Okay, but we'll see a couple of things There's a couple things in there that I would put other little contingencies on is that sex work quote-unquote sex work

It's there's a lot of gray areas where you could just be given gifts by a dude you are dating like that Is like a thing if whether or not you call that sex work or dating I don't know but also she liked to put on the facade of these things It's like she likes to learn the lingo and the talk of these she had a Attraction she had an attraction just like Clyde did to a criminal life Immediately to see to your side because it was exciting. Mm-hmm. Yeah fake it till you make it though Yeah, and she could have picked up all that knowledge and lingo from regulars at her waitressing job Because even though she could be a bit of a pain in the acid times Bonnie was extremely well liked and people opened up to her like even when

People were kidnapped by Bonnie and Clyde later on like that when they let him go they'd be like that Bonnie's a peach That's amazing, but either way it's always very strange when you when the person who's been kidnapped is like Well, yeah, it was no idea as they did that he did that he kidnapped somebody and the dude called the blader says I think you're funny Well, it's like that scene in the Bonnie and Clyde movie when they kidnap Gene Wilder and his girlfriend like which you know that's Gene Wilder's very first role I didn't I know that yeah, yeah, but it was it was kind like that wasn't that much of an exaggeration like some people had a Fucking great time when they got kidnapped by Bonnie and Clyde that's others had an absolutely fucking awful time It was not all sunshine and lollipops throughout that of course

but either way when Bonnie and Clyde met at that house party in 1930 it said that the attraction was immediate and Mutual see Clyde's big thing was control and Bonnie liked a man who acted like he was in charge Just like all the men in the picture shows dead. What is it with people of a certain height? If I only had someone to ask maybe a really good friend to ask about the control when it comes to people of Different sizes because the best part is that tall people can't see what you're doing They don't really know you live your life in an innocent cloud Walking above while people like me have to do little machinations to make sure the bigs are Safe

Well furthermore even though everything Clyde had was stolen or bought with stolen goods Bonnie was still impressed by the nice clothes in the fancy car that Clyde had taken to the party Okay, and Clyde liked that Bonnie was cute and clingy because although Bonnie and Clyde's attracted miss could I think you could describe them as plain Whites like yeah, this is before makeup and ever if they're not ugly They're just they're playing they're playing white Bonnie was obsessed with makeup She would always would do herself up to the nines even as we go as we cover later when they were on the run They were always like Clean clothes right very like hair done makeup done

She was very much about she was about appearances because it was fun again It was anything that took them out of the day-to-day reality that they were dealing with anything to elevate themselves Right, okay, but so Bonnie was cute enough that having a girl like that constantly grabbing his arm boosted Clyde's self confidence Absolutely. Oh, yeah, and it didn't hurt that Bonnie was not quite five feet tall which complimented the five foot five Clyde Quite nicely perfect. See he'd feel a lot stronger if he dated a five foot ten woman I don't think it's strength. I don't think that Clyde needs to have any more feeling stronger But the one thing that Bonnie and Clyde shared that bound them together permanently was their dogged Determination to reject the life that they've both been born into they were gonna get out and they were gonna get out together

That's beautiful. Oh my god. No, I'm just thinking about Tracy Chapman's fast car But just a month after they met Clyde was arrested at Bonnie's house for attempted robbery the cops tracked him down And that was attempted robbery among about seven or eight other charges the cops had just been Investigating Clyde and just like tacking him on and tacking on and he was guilty. He'd done all this shit Yeah, now are we talking turkeys again? We're talking cars. We're talking cars. Oh, yeah And he did it in multiple counties and he did it in multiple states and they decided to just come for him And he was meeting Emma Parker. Yeah day He went to go because Bonnie liked him so much that she wanted to meet mom

And so she brought him over and they're hanging out and he's just like I'll tell you what Mrs. Parker I'm gonna tell good guy girl. It's gonna be absolutely wonderful and fantastic and but she was like Why are you in a suit? You obviously can't afford this shit You have like a shiny brand new car that you cannot afford I know for a fact and then the cop show up. That's a rough. Yeah, it's a rough day Yeah, right and Bonnie was absolutely Absolutely devastated and wrote this in her journal after visiting Clyde in jail quote I was so blue and mad or discouraged. I just had to cry

I had an able in on my eyes and began to stream down my face and I had to stop on Lamar Street I laid my head down on the steering wheel and sure did boo-hoo man now that would all be summed up in a meme They were so much more articulate people were had to be more articulate back then. Do you think sure-dead boo-hoo is? Articulate I do I think there's something very artistic about sure-dead boo-hoo because I understand that she was crying very hard And she's like boo-hoo when you say it an antiquated like old-timey way it is cute But if she went like oh for did boo-hoo It's simple. She's a simple. She was not a simple woman. I'm very complex No, I'd imagine she had a very nice Texas accent

I'm sure just I laid my head down on the steering wheel and sure did boo-hoo. She sure Well Clyde beat the first rap in Denton but was immediately hauled off to Waco to face seven other charges ranging from car theft to possession of stolen goods all While using pseudonyms like Elvin Williams Elden Williams Jack Hale and Roy Bailey cool. Those are good fake names. Yeah Roy Bailey's a great fake name great fake name And so for these crimes Clyde was given seven concurrent two-year terms on March 5th 1930 and earned a spot on the infamous one-way wagon from Waco to Huntsville State Penitentiary That right there is a micro episode that we'll do one day the guy of it ran the one way

We're the one-way wagon that guy is such a that's a fucking character. Yeah, I do love sir Technically, they just gave him two years though. Yeah, right. Yeah, but just a few days later Buck who was still serving his four-year term had escaped from Huntsville while serving as a trustee in the prison's kitchen He had another dude just jumped in a guard's car when no one was looking and drove back to Dallas Oh, I was hoping you would have escaped in the mashed potatoes. That's the biggest part of mashed potatoes has ever come out of this kitchen Yeah, it's kind of funny, right? Wait a second That mashed potato saved me an answer

And when Buck showed back up at his parents house still wearing his prison overalls his father just shook his head and said That's buck! Okay, what about Barb? I mean that is a television show. What about Barb? Let's get it done Well, that was kind of the Barrow family's attitude towards all their kids. It's like, well, that's just buck or like, well That's just Clyde. That's just who they are. That's just can't do anything about it. It's just, you know, that's just him What are you gonna do snitch on your own kids? These are honestly the best parents we've covered so far, right? Well, what's this put Henry Barrow? I think he put it really quickly. He's like a work man ain't got time to sit his kids The way that they talked about it is that they just straight up like they were essentially equals

The age of 10 they were there working. They were essentially employees of the farm and then the rest of them went to go Make money someplace else and try to bring whatever they could back. Right? Well, meanwhile Clyde Barrow was planning an escape of his own See Clyde had no intention of going to Huntsville by reputation and design Huntsville was plainly put hell on earth So before the wagon came to cart him away Clyde cooked up a plan with Bonnie Now even though the two of them had only been dating a month when Clyde got arrested Bonnie had still been visiting Clyde almost daily in both Denton and Waco

So one day while Bonnie was making a regular visit Clyde whispered the details of his plan See the whole thing had been cooked up with a fellow prisoner named William Turner Um Turner was in the cell next to Clyde's and Turner had hidden a revolver in his parents house in east Waco Oh, they would have loved to know they would have loved it one extra gun In order to stir the soup with it to make eggs with it. Totally. I'm really happy. You didn't say the extra the plan was Hey, why don't you Bonnie open your vagina and let me try to destroy this again. Listen now. I'll listen now I've got to go away for a long time. Okay. Now listen Oh, I just got to do one thing for me. I need you to show me that bottle

Just just just once just once so I can see so I can remember now wink it wink it God Bonnie, I love you. Oh Love is real Well, Clyde and Turner figured the only way to get that revolver into the jail was to have Bonnie Smuggle it in uh-oh So Clyde drew Bonnie a map of where in the house the gun was hidden and asked her to go get it and come back that same day See this had to be a Split second decision for Bonnie the wagon to Huntsville could come at any moment and once Clyde was on that wagon

Bonnie couldn't do anything to help The plan was for Clyde and Turner to use the gun to escape Then Clyde would lay low for a while and eventually come back for Bonnie and really Bonnie could have turned him down Yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she could have headed back to cement city got herself a job Found herself another man and lived a normal if somewhat boring life Yeah, that's not a great alternative It's not man. You literally Just got the invitation

To criminal lifestyle like this is it right you want in Bonnie and think about how much he trusted Bonnie He just in this moment of time. I mean he's stupid right, but he also It was just like he'd write people write time Sizzling together. Oh, yeah, and it's it's awesome. Yeah, it's like Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory with a golden ticket and the chocolate chocolate bar But in this case, it's a gun inside of an Easter bunny or something. I don't know how it works Well, Bonnie accepted because this type of action was exactly what Bonnie had been craving With a daring rescue attempt like this Bonnie would be on par with the women She saw each week at the picture show and what better way to show her loyalty to her man than to help them bust out of prison

Interesting. I always think about that time that I was um I was working at Hollywood video And I was sitting there just just polishing was polishing the videos. I really forgot what I used to do for I forgot I even what my job was. Uh, it wasn't a lot of a job, but the entire Uh, the 76ers came in the really the Philadelphia the Philadelphia 76ers They were in town playing the Orlando magic and they came in and they said Uh, we love the way you're polishing them videotapes and I'm like, huh tizma job, sir Really? And they said you want to come with us to help shine these basketballs?

And I said no But I think about that decision all the time and about how what my life would have been like if I just went with them Shining them balls. Right. Mm-hmm. Again, just an extension of the idea that took place at the end of dumb and dumber When they were asked if they wanted to go With a massage boys for the Hawaiian Tropic Girls Is this an extension of your decision to turn down the opportunity to play a blues brother at universal studios florida? That is a real opportunity that I did say no to and it did end up Better in the end, but because I would just be in Orlando probably right now

I would probably be I would be one of those. Uh, what is it the despicable me? Oh Yeah I would pay money to have an alternative universe just to see you get knocked over by a fat 70 year old And just see you with your little feet be like no, I should have gone to college Mommy mommy, why does that minion smell like whiskey? Cause I'm depressed. What was that?

So bunny agreed it took a while to find the gun But she eventually managed it. The only problem was how she was gonna get it back into the jail The purse too obvious. They're gonna check the purse. Yep, and the gun was too big for her boot because remember She's five foot tall. All right. Are we getting to something here? No, no, no, she was small. She couldn't put it in her pussy. Yeah And it's too big for a boot. It's gonna be too big for her vagina. I don't know what that's gonna gum up the gun I oh my god I'm not gonna gum up the gun. It's totally gonna gum up the gun

Okay, continue on So bonnie decided the best course of action was to buckle an extra belt under her dress to hold the gun Cause she'd never been through a full body search on any of her previous visits And bonnie well she came in and they fucking loved her. Yeah, she charmed the entire staff She charmed the officers. They were letting her like go back until they were giving her extra visiting hours She was using the private bathroom. Huh, okay, and bonnie was absolutely correct in her assumption She went through security again with a smile Unbuckled the gun from her belt as soon as she and Clyde were alone and handed it to her bow

Oh Love is in the air Yeah, it is it's real So while bonnie was waiting for word from Clyde back at her cousin's house he william turner and a third prisoner named Emery Abernathy put the plan into place Why is there's always a third guy who jumps on? Yeah, why in prison escapes? There's always in prison escapes it starts with the two guys of planning and there's always some guy that was it's just always It's like I sucked a cop's dick. I didn't know he was undercover and I also don't know why he let me suck his dick

Well for the ruse They'd chosen the old sick prisoner routine. Oh, that's great classic routine Yeah A turner called out to the guard a man named hues jones and told him he was nauseous and needed a little milk to settle his stomach Oh, yeah, nothing settles a stomach like 1930s milk A whole nothing like a whole mengala milk to just make you feel better Oh, yeah, and since getting milk was easier than mopping up vomit hues went and got the milk Okay, but when hues opened the cell door to hand turner the milk

Abernathy pulled out the gun and ordered the guard into the cell. So you guys aren't going to be drinking the milk Is that right? Oh, uh jokes on you fella look look look look look look look oh I guess I'll clean up the vomit then anyway Well within minutes the three prisoners were out on the streets of waco And they briefly exchanged gunfire with the guard while they were running down the street but pretty soon Clyde had hot Wired a car and smartly they abandoned the first car for a better one just a little bit outside of town This is fucking g t a this is grand theft auto before they didn't even exist

The funny thing is that like a lot of these shootouts It's you remember that scene in trailer park boys where they're shooting at each other and one of them accidentally gets hit And they're like hold on a second one of them one of them guy hit we got to stop for a second That's what all of these feel like because Clyde was always shooting over their heads and the other guys are shooting over his head They're not they're just it's like a game. It's total fucking chaos right that is that that is a part of kind of the the energy of this whole story is that every single the it shows that Shootouts aren't what we see in the movies. I mean obviously not are these kind of organized things. It's these very

haphazard Just people pull out guns and just shooting them in the general direction of each other There's like people running around like it's literally citizens in the middle of the fight. It's it's so much I don't know. I love the it's not subtlety It's something about the idea that like it's not two factions getting in a line and getting cover and firing on each other It's a whole tornado of activity And if you want to watch a live shooting feel free to turn on any television news channel on any random friday And there's a good chance. They'll be covering it right there for you trailer park boys, by the way shout out

Instagram has reunited my love Re-invigorated my love for them and if anyone knows the trailer park boys have them reach out to us We'd love to talk to them. Yeah, we'd love to talk to them. Yeah, they're the best Well the second car that Clyde and his two companions stole Wasn't reported stolen until the next morning which gave the escapees a 12 hour head start They switched cars and lampasses, gulf weight and brownwood as they headed west Never stopping for a moment and as far as Bonnie went She didn't hear anything about the boys until she read a headline in the Waco Times Herald a few days later that said

Trio leaves trail of stolen cars. Oh, dude. That's fucking awesome Um, and there was much editorializing to be done in said article. Oh, yeah, it read quote Schoolboy barrel. Welly Turner and Emory Abernathy are at large this morning, but they'll be back They haven't the brains to stay free. It's the dumble in them that brings them back that dumble dumbbell I like dumble better I'm officially calling people dumbles from now on. I think that's actually better Well, thankfully though, there was no mention of Bonnie whatsoever The cops hadn't even thought that maybe it was Bonnie that smuggled in the gun to the boys

Even though that was the only logical explanation But just to be safe Bonnie hitchhiked back to Dallas instead of taking the bus or train Lest the laws as they all call the cops be on the lookout for Clyde's new accomplice Now eventually Clyde did get a telegram to Bonnie about five days after the breakout The boys have made it as far as southwest Ohio But since the boys were after all just boys their first attempt at crime on the outside Resulted in their arrest The ad hoc gang broke into a dry cleaners and a railroad depot on the same night and took in about 60 bucks

And they got away with it that night But they'd been pretty conspicuous in casing the depot earlier that day So the agent had written down their plate number So y'all got money I'm just asking it's asking asking it. Can I ask another more specific question? Where is the money? And how much is it? Uh, sir, are you planning on coming back here later and robbing up to hear this railroad store? Noooooooo

Well, it's such when the boys drove past the same railway depot on their way out of town the next day The cops who were there Investigating the burglary Immediately recognized the car and gave chase and after his pursuit then involved more than a few gunshots and two separate car chases All three men were arrested The subsequent report in the wake-go-times Harold read baby thugs captured Baby thugs? Why did they make it so cute?

Because if they are baby thugs, that's like super funny. Like remember what was it? Bobbo? No, what's the a b-bos world? Bobbo's world? Uh, Bobby's world? Babies kids? Babies kids! Babies kids! Are you talking about the tone-loak baby? Yeah Well, the accompanying editorial made sure to gloat about how the writer's previous estimation of the criminals as baby dumbbells

Was proved accurate. Yeah, and the thing was Bonnie was paying attention to what those newspaper men were saying Bonnie's not perfect See, Bonnie thought that after the prison escape she'd be living a glamorous life on the run right beside her gangster boyfriend Hmm sure, but that's also kind of that's also kind of the line that Clyde sold her. Yeah, it's been like it's gonna be you and me Baby, we're gonna hit these streets. We're gonna go out there and never gonna Another McCord of the Cobb for you My sweet sweet Bonnie Parker Wow

Well instead as Jeff Gwynne puts it Bonnie was the humiliated girlfriend of a bumbling baby dumbbell Dang it. Well if she had gone on the road with Clyde, maybe she would have felt different But she got none of the thrill that she expected because remember she thought she was gonna be She thought she was gonna be dating DB Cooper, but instead she's dating Kato Kalin Yeah, I mean after she uh after she got him the gun She went back to her cousin's house and just sat there for days upon days upon days And then had to hitchhike back to Dallas from Waco, uh, which in 1930 was not a fun trip No, that's never good when a young girl is sitting there like the old woman from the notebook

Just trying to relive a past that she doesn't have or remember Mm-hmm Well such the romance of Bonnie and Clyde hit a cooling period While Clyde finally got his trip on the one-way wagon to the Huntsville state prison work camp aka Eastham or as it was known to the prisoners The bloody ham Oh All these they all sound like potential bar names

Love the bloody ham I so this is where we enter the period of time that we visited a little bit when we covered pansram Carl pansram where the prison system of america in the early 1900s was fucking brutal very very intense and It didn't exactly rehabilitate people. Yeah. Well, see the thing is about the texas penal system Uh at that time was that parts of it were not meant to rehabilitate in any way whatsoever The point of prison in texas was to make it so fucking awful that not only would nobody want to return But the people who spent time in that prison would spread the word about how awful it was once they got out

Right, right instead though like it always is the prison system just ended up producing broken Desperate men who would rather die than spend another minute in prison In much of that had to do with the policies of the general manager of the Huntsville prison system Lee Simmons. Hmm. Well, that was of course Boys you gotta be up at five o'clock in the morning. You're gonna want to sweat to the oldies If you are not sweating to the oldies at five o'clock in the morning, I am sorry You will be sweating to the oldies all day long. Yeah, but instead of Richard Simmons It's a man that looks like Richard Simmons, but he's covered in swatica tattoos

And he's just like lifting his knees and being like lift them knees for white power Lift them knees for white power See Simmons was particularly fond of a punishment called the bat Which was nothing more than a greased leather strap between 18 inches and three feet long by three to five inches wide This device would be used to whip the bare backs butts and thighs of prisoners But it wouldn't be the guards who held the prisoners down. That job was left to their fellow inmates Who would hold them down spread eagled on the ground while all the other inmates were made to stand in a circle and watch Well, this is uh, this is our shout out to our listeners over at kink.com

Um, this is not this is not a shameful thing. Uh, if you choose this Yes, of course, and thank you for the subscription by the way. Yes, absolutely No kink.com wonderful up and on the up and up and everyone is safe and everyone is having fun and that's wonderful Yeah, but if the guards at eastem were feeling especially sadistic They would pour sand into the gaping lacerations left by the leather And although the limit was supposed to be 20 lashes Guards never really bothered to keep count. They just kind of kept going until they wanted to stop Then once the prisoner finally passed out usually after pissing and shitting himself

Oh, the rest of the prisoners were made to line up and closely inspect the bat itself Sometimes it said the other prisoners were made to actually lick it Look at why don't they mention? I don't want to lick it. I don't do I have to lick it. I think you do Are you daring me? I got How about we pin you down and we use it on you get that over here? And that's the sort of place clad barrow was walking into a little more than 20 years old 20 years old. He is a country idiot. He is five foot five. He's 125 pounds

He's walking into the worst place for a pygmy to exist. Wow Wow. Thing is though things didn't have to be as bad as all that for Clyde Most first time offenders were kept inside the main prison unit known as the walls It was still awful, but at the very least you could maybe learn a trade Like you might learn how to like take care of a horse or something like that. Cool But repeat offenders or wildly violent prisoners were sent to eastam cotton farm 35 miles northeast of huntsville proper where men were made to work 10 hour days seven days a week With half an hour off on saturdays for a bath. Oh my goodness. All right. Well again

Still happens today. Yeah. Yeah, and for reasons still unknown to this day That was where five foot five 125 pound Clyde barrow was sent to eastam We don't know why no one knows why he was sent there. He shouldn't have been sent there You don't think so he was shooting at all the cops and stuff He wasn't that well known. That's the thing. He was just in the paper because that is what some people Maybe think that that's why he was sent but Clyde barrow was not that well known down in huntsville. Nobody would have known who the fuck he was

And he was still a first time offender and he was a fucking tiny little slip of a man He wasn't and he wasn't like a tiny little slip that was wildly dangerous like peewee gaskins Like he was just a kid. He'd stolen a couple cars. Okay. All right. Yeah It sounds like it was just a bad streak of luck. It seems that he just kind of got randomly put into that pile Sure. Sure. Yeah So Clyde barrow took his ride on the one-way wagon chained by the neck to every other inmate on their way to huntsville And arrived on april 21st 1930 the one slightly bright spot was that Clyde made a friend along the way. Is it a mouse? Oh, I hope it's a little mouse. Oh, you made friends with 19 year old Ralph Faults. All right

It's no fault of mine. I get it Ralph. It's really but it is your fault, yeah Well, Ralph was sitting across the way from Clyde and when the two of them got to talk and they found they had a lot in common Are you getting like a big circular cut from the chain around your neck? Yeah Me too This is it's just amazing how just two random people can meet. There's so many similarities But Faults had just escaped from huntsville and guards didn't take too kindly to returning escapees Upon his arrival Faults was made to quote ride the barrel. Uh-oh This punishment involves straddling a pickle barrel while handcuffed

Now this doesn't sound too hard when you only got to do it for a few minutes a few seconds But Faults was made to do it for an entire day and an entire night And every time he'd fall hard to the ground the guards would scoop them back up Put them back on the barrel for more. Oh, it's a tiny because it's not like a huge barrel It's enough of a barrel that your toes Can stabilize you on top of it. So the rim of the barrel digs its way into your inner thighs So he said to the point you're so numb from the ways down right that you you don't want to be unnumb Because once you finally get the feeling back. It's just pure torture. Right?

It's like when you uh, sit on the toilet for a little too long legs go numb You got to stay there longer just to avoid all the pain exactly like yep. Yeah, now you're living on the toilet Yeah Yeah, but the guards were nothing compared to the monster that was baby monzingo It sounds like a character from fucking blazing saddles Monzingo baby monzingo. That's not a name Henry That sounds like a name that you would make up making fun of people who make up names Yes

Yes Monzingo had actually been fired from huntsville prison once before for unnecessary cruelty towards prisoners Oh my she must be fired From huntsville for being unnecessarily cruel Yeah, you have to be a nazi like yeah But when Simmons, you know the guy who loved the bat when Simmons became manager He hired monzingo back and put him in charge of eastem and gave him free reign to be as cruel as he liked Because nobody went to eastem. Nobody was watching eastem. Those people could be treated

However, badly the prison decided they needed to be treated. So basically sheriff Joe Arpaio found his Darth Vader Joe Arpaio is fucking nothing compared to these guys I'm not going to tell Arpaio that because we don't need him to try to compete to be worse Well under monzingo eastem came to be known as little alcatraz Oh my gosh Yeah, it's like when Kevin Spacey was been put in charge of a new upstate new york chapter of the ymca And they just call it now the no boys zone Right, absolutely

And when Clyde showed up monzingo picked an inmate at random and smashed him in the face with a stick Just to show dominance just picked a dude. Boom. All right boys. This is how it's gonna be could have done without that sir and the longer Definitely could have done without it I don't really want okay You want me to use it? You're cute. You're funny Hey guys, my name is bb. I'm so excited to be here with y'all. It's gonna be a fun summer, isn't it? Who wants their dick chopped off?

His voice is so fun, but then he's so mean Yeah, it's funny how it works like that. Yeah And the longer that Clyde and Fultz spent working those 10 hour days swinging axes and enduring Almost daily beatings from the guards the more they vowed to return one day raid the farm and set everyone free That was what Henry was talking about earlier with pans around. Yeah, right like that's where the oh, wow Well, that was everyone that is except for ed Crowder Crowder was a lifer and a building tender and at over six feet tall and 200 pounds of pure muscle Crowder stood above the rest in both size and in his capacity for violence

Now a building tender that means they would the way they also sort of would do cruel mind games That they would choose some more of the violent members also guys that have no chance of getting out to become little Come on dance for the prison guards. So they would be inmates that would have little They would have a position of authority Over the other inmates and be given weapons and more food and more time off from their work detail And all they had to do was keep people in line. Okay See since Crowder was a building tender and kept the inmates in line The guards didn't really care what he did when he was in the dorm dorm when he was in the dormitory at night

And Crowder Was a rapist and it wasn't long after Clyde Barrow arrived at eastam that ed Crowder began raping him Almost every single night in full view of the other inmates. This was to Clyde Clyde Oh, yes, and this is also In the story of pans ram. We've seen this before People that and he was deeply deeply affected by this and we would know the secret well into the 90s when blanche Well, we'll get into the the basically diary the diary of several members of the The actual gang the set up Barrow gang

They revealed like because Clyde didn't want anybody to know that this happened him The fact that we're talking about this is like the ultimate punishment for him because he didn't he didn't want anybody to know And this would end up, you know, we'll get into it. Interesting. So is that did he really turn here as a person? Oh, yeah, because it went on for an entire year Oh, yeah, and the guards couldn't have cared less and most of the other inmates either didn't care Uh, or didn't want it to happen to them didn't have the power to stop it and we're happy that it wasn't happening to them Oh, god, but after about a year Clyde decided he couldn't take it anymore So he teamed up with another building tender named Aubrey scaly who had almost as much of a grudge against Crowder as Clyde had

Scaly was another lifer and he promised Clyde that if Clyde were to murder Crowder Scaly would take the heat So on October 29th 1931 Clyde hid a lead pipe in his pants during work detail and snuck it into the dorm That night Clyde walked into the bathroom by himself where he knew Crowder would follow He treated literally did the thing where he was just like Going to go take a shower make sure a wash real good like like literally like in full view of everybody like Dropped a towel like it was Scarlett Johansson in in under the skin Oh my god, so he entices him into the bathroom Mm-hmm, and then when Crowder walked through the door

Clyde swung the pipe down and crushed Crowder's skull killing him almost instantly. Can we just celebrate one murder on this show? I'm thinking this is good. This is Clyde's one good murder, right? Yeah, Scaly then leapt from the shadows with a shiv and filled Crowder's corpse full of holes Yeah, and he then Scaly gave himself a cut on the ribs just to make it look good in the official report Despite Crowder having a big fucking hole in his head The official report said the Crowder had just lost a knife fight. Okay. I guess that makes it better. I don't know Okay, and with that Clyde Barrow had gained a little bit of freedom

But it had come at the cost of a murder Later, Ralph Fultz would say that at this point he watched Clyde change from a schoolboy To a rattlesnake right before his eyes Back home though other Barrow's were doing pretty good. Okay All right Well, Henry Barrow had collected enough junk over the years to buy two lots along Eagle Ford Road in West Dallas And it was there that the Barrow's built a service station with two gas pumps and an outhouse in the back Which Clyde's younger sister used to brag was a two-holer. That's a double-holer

Yeah, it's a love seat. Wow. Yep. You can sit there with your buddy. You and your buddy counting your shits together That's a one That's blunk two Blunk First one to five wins Okay But even though Clyde's older brother Buck was out of prison, he was still technically on the run Blanche had married him in July of 1931

But she was never quite cut out for the kind of life that buck was leading Now Blanche wasn't quite as bad as the shrieking panicking Betty that she was portrayed as in the Bonnie and Clyde movie and in fact Blanche was Quite pissed off when she saw that movie Really, but the thing was the reason why she was most pissed off is because she was portrayed as Kind of dour and a little plane when in reality Blanche Was actually prettier than Bonnie. Come on. I actually think Blanche actually looked more like Faye Dunaway than Bonnie did

Oh, come on. I think Blanche was hotter than Bonnie. Yeah, and it's interesting to say that But it's like, yeah, she was mad because the what you'll see is that when she's eventually caught the picture of her when she's Eventually caught she looks like a friggin movie star. Yeah, it's a crazy picture. Yeah. Yeah, it's an insane picture But the thing was is that Blanche no matter what she didn't like the life She didn't like the life on the run Right And eventually though she and buck's mother convinced buck to turn himself in And apparently this just wasn't done because officials were so happy that buck turned himself in that they just sent him right back to the

Walls in Huntsville They didn't even send him to east him and they didn't even give him any further time on a sentence. They were just like welcome back Thanks for coming back saved us the trouble. So you're telling me sir. You are here to turn yourself in Is that correct, sir? I I have put myself on the return line. You are here in my receipt. Yep Yep, ready for jail ready for jail. Thank you for jail. Oh, all right then So now both barrow boys were incarcerated at Huntsville But Clyde's world was a far cry from bucks

Clyde was still in east him which as I mentioned earlier was known as the bloody ham Now the reason why it was named as such was not for the punishment meted out nor was it for the violence between the inmates The reason why they named it the bloody ham was because inmates would regularly cut off Fingers toes sometimes even hands and feet in an attempt to escape the back Backbreaking labor. That's how bad and they cheese and they took it as like a punishment that was suitable Like they it was so matter of fact that dudes would cut their fingers off and their fucking appendages off to not work on the farm They'd be like, all right, like you'd show up me like I lost my whole hand to a A a field yater

And they would just straight up you're like, all right, and then put the basically just kick you back to the walls Yeah, wow It was like an admission fee. So if you cut off a pinky there, but like, all right, you don't got to be up until 11 a.m That's fine two pinkies. It's like you don't got to be out of the place until noon Wow, here you go. You're a jailer now Yeah, Ralph Foltz later said that in one particularly bad week He and Clyde saw over 14 instances of self-neutilation Geez and after over a year of backbreaking work Clyde decided he'd had enough as well

Now we're not sure who actually swung the axe, but on January 27th, 1932 Someone cut off Clyde's entire left big toe and part of the toe next to it. Oh, you need those. Yeah Yes, and Clyde was officially off work duty But the thing was He didn't really need to do that Yeah, see Texas uh did and still does have a pretty bad crime problem You know, it's always been kind of a lawless place But after the depression hit things only got worse and as a result Texas prisons were wildly overcrowded

So to alleviate some of the pressure because you know private prisons were not yet the norm in Texas as they are now They didn't just send them all to private prisons the governor On a pretty regular basis took requests from mothers who wanted to see their sons pardoned uh-oh And just six days after Clyde chopped off his toes Governor Ross Sterling issued a pardon to Cume Barrow's son And Clyde walked out of Huntsville on a pair of old crutches

And gained a limp that he would have until the day he died Well, that is yeah, he hobbled out of Huntsville And he took him a very long time to learn because what's weird is I've always I'm like gonna be like, ah big toe Hey, he can walk a big toe. He realized actually a big toe is like an important part It's like a thing that really does keep you balanced. It totally matters You know what the big toe is. It's the thumb of the feet I'm calling it interesting

Well one thing that Clyde said over and over again as soon as he got out was that he would sooner die Then ever go back to prison And really Clyde did try to go straight when he got out at least for a little while And his dream was to open an auto parts and repair store in the lot next to his family service station But you got to have capital for that And honestly, he was apparently very skilled at fixing cars Yeah, him and all of his brothers were very very skilled at this which would become a very helpful later on in their criminal career So Clyde tried getting outside work make enough capital open his auto parts store

But he had two things going against him or really by this time three things First of all cops weren't leaving him alone Just like before every time Clyde got a job cops would come in haul him in on suspicion and Clyde would get fired for missing work Jays then again there weren't that many jobs to be had the depression had made its way to texas And the dust storms emanating from the great western dust bowl were suffocating large parts of the country And black blizzards would envelop Dallas on a regular basis This is the kind of shit that that really sets the scene for what this whole part of the world was like That you couldn't breathe like you would be the dust would literally fill the air

So you couldn't breathe and they said essentially it was a they created an ecological crisis by Overgrazing all of these grass fields. It's not overgrazing. It's over tilling Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. How how this how this happened was the great depression hit And crop prices plummeted and so in order to keep their land the farmer see what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to farm And then you let your and then you let the land rest and then you farm and then you let land rest But because these farmers were trying to keep their money They had to keep farming the same land over and over again And the thing is about the grass out there is that that prairie grass was holding all the earth together

And so when they kept farming kept tilling the fields and kept tilling the fields That just created dirt that created dust and that part of the country is very windy So all that dirt all that dust, I mean millions of years of grass that have been held together Suddenly that is blowing all across the country and clouds so big That you can actually see them coming from miles away and they are black and it is full of dirt And the wind is blowing so hard and it's blowing the dust so hard that it actually cuts your skin Fills the lungs people suffocate from dirt pneumonia their lungs fill up until they cannot breathe anymore And that was where Clyde Barrow was that's where Bonnie Parker was that's where everybody in the southwest was at this time

Also shout out to ICP and their new album dirt pneumonia That I think is fucking it's they're back I love I love it. I mean it could do a good thing get your paint get your car painted and nice and clean with a little With a sand wash that's not so bad But no it is never good when you're just driving through town and you're like huntress Thompson Following the derby race in the desert just covered with fucking sand, but you're not a reporter. You're just trying to go to work Yeah, these storms were so bad People were having breathing problems in new york city

Imagine what the people actually in it went through And if you out there are interested in more about the Dust Bowl read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan It's one of my favorite nonfiction books. I love reading about dust and bowls He does he always said you've always said that you love dust. I love dust. I love it But the thing was Clyde Could have just left Dallas He could have just left texas and he even attempted it once by going up to massachusetts But he said he damn near died a loneliness and returned after only a couple of weeks

And yes, it was terribly unfair and stupid and counterintuitive to a functioning society That the cops wouldn't leave him alone, but Clyde could have just gone to a different town Hell he could have just gone to fort worth fort worth It's 35 miles away and he still wouldn't have been that far away from his family who could have come and visit him whenever he wanted It's not it's about us pride marcus. It's about it's about fucking good like making it where you were born Restan that's it. That's his problem is that he was suffering these dumb ideas Of you should be connected to the place where you were randomly born No, I mean I understand. I mean that's fort worth. It's a great place to be. That's why alicia keys saying that song

You know fort worth where all the dreams are made of Oh, yeah, I remember the heron jay-z. Yeah jay-z is from one of the more popular projects of fort worth Yeah, I remember that fort worth rap scene. Absolutely Instead of doing that though Clyde decided that if the cops are going to brand him a criminal then a criminal was all he was going to be And that decision was made final when ralph faults was released from huntsville in august of 1931 See all that talk about free and prisoners from the bloody ham was turning out to be more than just idle chatter Clyde and faults were a hundred percent set on actually pulling it off

I like this. I honestly man. These people are being treated horribly. At least they want to go back and try to save some lives So upon release faults did a practice run of sorts in january of 1932 He smuggled a bunch of hacksaw blades in the spines of a few magazines and helped bust his friend raymond hamilton out of jail Once hamilton was out He and faults met up with Clyde in west dallas and the first of many baro gangs was born. All right It's not all right. It's not all right. It's very bad. It's this. You know, you know, let me hold you. All right. I'll redo it. Oh, no People are about to start fucking dying. Okay. I I changed my I changed my shoes. I've learned are not cool I know that they are not cool now. I know marcus is booking in this episode with public shaming

Public shaming of massacres. Yeah No, I'm Henry and I you're two friends But what about bonnie? Now that's not it's what about barb. What is wrong with you people? All right. I'm done. Well, while Clyde was in jail Things between him and bonnie as I said kind of cooled off by the time of Clyde's first Thanksgiving in eastum The letters had slowed to a trickle and bonnie had started seeing other men But when Clyde was released from eastum the first place he went was bonnie's house Where she was hanging out with her new boyfriend

Oh, but yep, she embraced Clyde immediately as if just a week had passed and the new boyfriend Slunk out the back. Yep. You know why because once you go short you don't abort Thank you Ross Perot And when the time came for the new barrow gang to go out on the road Bonnie was as game as she could possibly be ready for anything and everything and over the next two years 13 people would die as a result And that's where we'll pick back up for bonnie and Clyde part two What a ride man. This is gonna be a great series

Oh, yeah, get ready for some foggy mountain breakdown this next episode because it's gonna get fast again I don't know what foggy mountain foggy mountain breakdown mean You but you have listened to it drunkenly at my house many times. Oh the song. Yeah, great. Again. I thought we were talking about something disgusting No, dude, this is a part of america This is a streak that has always been inside of america this this idea of the I mean I don't know what it is something about the outlaw that we all still worship We're all still like really into we're into when people act bad We like when they are when they're naughty because a part of it is that we all feel

We're kind of stuck in these little societal prisons Absolutely, we're supposed to follow the rules and you pay your taxes You know do the shit and then somewhere along the lines you see somebody like this like technically living this sort of this dream Yeah, this idea of being lawless and being disconnected from the mores. We're all forced to follow Yeah, but you don't realize that there's a reality attached to it That is very bleak and the nice thing about living vicariously through characters like bonnie and Clyde is at the end of it You don't die You just get to be like, oh, I'm gonna go back into the bushes now all as well

Awesome. Well, that is such really interesting. I had no idea about the I mean Clyde really had a He had a rough go of it. He had a real rough go of it. Yeah, this is a sympathetic character. Obviously again Uh what they did was horrible, but very cool. Um, all right. Well, what do we have to do here? We have to say come to see us in australia. Yeah, we are going to be in Perth first and we got some tickets available in Perth We got a couple of tickets. What was the other spot there? Henry that uh, Sydney the big one is Sydney. Honestly, it's so funny. It's our it is the biggest city I guess it's the biggest city in australia. It's the one where we need fucking asses to show up We're pretty much sold out everywhere else. So come on out to Sydney. We're really excited

That's the city. We're gonna be spending the most amount of time in I've gotten a lot of good recommendations I want people to tell me where to go in Sydney But mostly people keep saying the zoo and I I'm fine with zoos, but they're like like bar I want bars Yeah, yeah, well, I think they're keep on saying the zoo because you talked about your love of koalas for about an hour and a half And people just want you to see koalas which are evidently full of chlamydia and extremely dangerous and uh, quite dumb quite dumb evidently Going a little kisses though They are kissable

So, yeah, I mean just keep on supporting all the shows here on last podcast network able to stop at this week There's a lot of actually crossover with Bonnie and Clyde talking about poverty. Yeah, there's some it gets For some reason the government believes it's really easy to be poor and it needs to become more difficult. So I talk about that They believe that the poor are living lives of leisure and it's like laziness is why you're poor Which is actually it seems to be the opposite because I remember when I was much poorer I seem to have remembered working much longer hours. I had three jobs at one point. Yes, absolutely Um, so check out top hat. We want to get those numbers up would absolutely love it. Um page seven wizard in the bruiser Um

Movie signs with the mads, you know where to find all the shows keep on supporting our network Please god it all it's all because of you. So word of mouth if you like a show tell someone Yeah, and don't forget about the story must be told if you like real real weird shit, honestly Uh read and Andrew read failure Andrew short those dudes are two of our best friends for a long time And they are fucking crazy. I love they are very crazy That shit is like because we don't you know, even as network owners I listen to the other shows we don't give a lot of notes when I listen to that show I'm just like holy shit

They're just getting deeper and deeper to almost at the point being like are they real? Do they really believe this? Yes, they are doing a brilliant. Uh, I guess is it inception. What do you call that? Uh, it's a definite. It's a definite little universe that they're building and it's yeah, it's it's really great It's very recommended. All right. So thank y'all so much for supporting the shows and I think that's about it Yeah, I think that's all all right everyone hail yourselves Uh, if you listen tonight before you can listen to watch the season finale of your pretty faces going to hell on An adult swim or go on adult swim comm slash your pretty face is going to hell to watch the episodes

There you can watch it. It all helps. We want to see some five. So please help absolutely support Henry Zabrowski Your pretty face is going to hell I watched some of the clips on instagram and honestly this season looks absolutely hilarious Um, what time is it at Henry? Is it midnight midnight? Midnight. Um, all right everyone hail yourselves Hail Satan again. Let's do a magustillations here. Can we magustillation? All right. All right. That's fine. That's fine with me Hail me as well. Sure. Honestly back is still not feeling good. Your back is still not you did it well sleeping You hurt your back while resting. I have done nothing to fix it

So that might have something to do with it. Maybe go back to bed again, and then you'll be on airplanes. Ah Goodbye This show is made possible by listeners like you thanks to our ad sponsors. You can support our shows by supporting them For more shows like the one you just listened to go to last podcast network.com