The Open Road

 

Mark and I aren’t anyone’s idea of a romantic young couple on the open road but in the mid thirties, a young couple named Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, fit that image and captured the public’s imagination. She was a little over five feet tall, about 100 pounds and a part time waitress from a poor Dallas home. He was a small-time thief from a similarly destitute Dallas family who hated poverty and wanted to make a name for himself. They became the most romanticized, infamous, outlaw couple in US history. For over two years, during the depression era, the country became transfixed by their illicit romance and violent crime spree. Even though they were small-time criminals, they landed on J. Edgar Hoover’s most wanted list and were shot to death by officers in an ambush, near Gribsland, LA, May 23, 1934. Today, Mark and I visited Gribsland and the Bonnie & Clyde Ambush museum. The museum occupies the building that was once called Ma Canfield’s restaurant where the couple stopped and purchased their last meal (fried bologna and BLT sandwiches) before driving 7 miles down a desolate Louisiana back road to their deaths. It was a pretty cool stop for this romantic “old”couple on the open road.