Bonnie & Clyde
You can see me in the photo at the left kneeling by a headstone in a forlorn, weed-infested graveyard in a bad part of Dallas, Texas. The remains below that headstone are none other than those of Clyde Barrow, the male half of the notorious duo who ravaged the the southern states in the late 1920s/ early 1930s, and who were made famous to our generation by the hit movie Bonnie & Clyde, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. In real life, just as in the movie, Bonnie and Clyde drove into an ambush in rural Louisiana where they met their ends in a hail of bullets on May 23, 1934.
How I came to be in this dreary place on a rainy day started with a story my dad told MD and me on our last trip to visit the folks in Michigan. I can’t remember now how it came up, but he started telling us about the time he saw the remains of Adam “Eddie” Richetti, the sidekick of Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd in a funeral home in Bolivar, Missouri. My father grew up on a farm near a little town called Halfway, which is ‘halfway’ between Bolivar and Buffalo. For the folks in Halfway, Bolivar was the closest ‘big’ town where everyone went to shop. At that time, Halfway was basically a wide spot in the road.
In June 1933 ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd and Adam Richetti (shown at right) stopped off to get their stolen car fixed at Bitzer Chevrolet where Richetti’s brother, Joe, worked as a mechanic. As they were cooling their heels there, the Polk County Sheriff who lived in Bolivar, William Killingsworth, wandered in. My dad didn’t know if he just happened in or if he had heard the gangsters might be there. I suspect the former since he didn’t come in with guns drawn. Floyd and Richetti took him captive at gun point, took Joe’s car and lit out for Kansas City. Along the way they ditched Joe’s car, stole another vehicle, switched their hostages (they had collected another along the way) over, and kept on traveling. Before they reached Kansas City, they let Killingsworth and the other hostage go by the side of the road, and drove off. They reached Kansas City, and there was where the story went murky.
Due to other commitments tomorrow and Monday (see below for the Monday commitment) I more than likely won’t be able to get the promised post up before Tuesday. I was working away on it this afternoon (actually alternating between writing the post and dealing with comments) when my bride came in and whined for me to go to a movie I didn’t really want to see. But, being the dutiful and obliging spouse that I am, I went. And I was glad I did.
As most readers of this blog know, MD and I split our non-traveling time between Incline Village, Nevada (on the north shore of Lake Tahoe) and Santa Barbara, California. We don’t have a house in the city of Santa Barbara but in the unincorporated town of Montecito, which is a sleepy little suburb of Santa Barbara (as if Santa Barbara is large enough to have a suburb). We live on Park Lane, a street well known in Montecito, notably for the giant Eucalyptus trees that line it. Although there are Eucalyptus trees all over the Montecito/Santa Barbara area, as far as I know, Park Lane is the only street flanked by them.


