Beinville Parish, 1986.
Left to right. Jimmy Canavan, Paul Davis, and Steve Davis. Photo taken by Bob Kinsey. Summer, 1986, This is the exact spot where Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were killed by law enforcement led by Frank Hamer in 1934, and not a second too soon. The trees behind us have been clear cut, they are only pines and northwest La. is all pine. Back in the day this narrow road would have been nothing but a thin tarmac strip and loblolly pine trees crowding the narrow roads, it is dark as hell there now at night, in the thirties it would have been another Translyvania. As can be seen this is not exactly a holy place nor should it be. Clyde's car was headed for Castor, my grandmother's town, when he was ambushed. When my grandmother Jewell Bogan Davis died in '93, I spoke to many of the townspeople who had a lot of stories about this period of time. I remember one older man telling me how he went down to the mailbox one day to get the paper and Clyde Barrow was reading it. He said Clyde looked at him and said, "Fuck off, kid". Him and Bonnie were living in a derelict farmhouse near Castor at that time. Here is the car after it was towed to Gibsland.
Sheriff Henderson Jordan tried to keep this stolen car. He finally had to give it up. The amount of firearms found in it is staggering. This was one of the best trips in my life, and boy did we have fun going out to the family property and blowing rotten trees apart with Wingmasters.
Clyde was no doubt an evil person, but he kept his word and would move heaven and earth to help his friends. He killed at least seven cops. It was not until he helped some friends escape from a particularly brutal prison, Eastham, that Lee Simmons, the head of the Texas Prison System, came after him with a vengeance. He is the one who went to Ma and Pa Ferguson and asked that he be allowed to hire Frank Hamer to track Clyde down.
Frank on the right with some dead Mexicans. The Texas Rangers did not screw around, not at all.
I lived for two years across from his old house on Barton Springs road in Austin.
3 BAR's, 7 45s, and one heck of a lot of ammo. Clyde did not play.
Clyde and Buck Barrow. There is an auto shop just behind this. Paths of glory, and all that.
Good riddance. In Bryan Burroughs' excellent book Public Enemies, he refers to Clyde as a 'shark-eyed multiple murderer and his delusional girlfriend'. Spot on. They were unknown outside of the South until that silly movie came out with Warren Beatty playing the 5' 4" 120 lb. Clyde. Hamer was slandered very badly in that film and the studio had to fork over big bucks to his heirs.
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