Anyway, in this tale about the infamous Texas outlaws, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, Clyde is portrayed by a young Warren Beatty and Bonnie is honored (and I do mean HONORED) to be played by Faye Dunaway. Have you ever seen a picture of the real Bonnie Parker? She looked more like my Uncle Milton, the wife-beating drunk, than she does Faye Dunaway. But oh, well.

My hero, Gene Hackman, plays Clyde's brother Buck Barrow and Estelle Parsons is his wife, Blanche. Blanche is a preacher's daughter who somehow gets married to Buck while he's in the joint, I think, and suddenly finds herself a criminal on the lam once he gets out. I'm sure Blanche's post-prison dreams fell more along the line of a little house somewhere with kids running around and Daddy comin' over for Sunday dinner. Ahem. Anyway, Estelle Parsons does a brilliant job in this role. She may have even won an Academy Award for it. I'm sure she was at least nominated.

Watching this movie took me, rather unexpectedly, back to my childhood. To that deep, dark, dank existence which I have all but blocked from memory. Every now and then, like last night, something comes along to open the veil between then and now, and propel me back to a moment in time.

The veil lifted and I found myself a child of about ten years, at the drive-in movie theater in town one night with my family. Now the drive-in movie theater was a big deal in Madisonville, Texas, our metropolis of 2,000 hardy souls. And actually being there was a big deal, too, because we lived twelve miles out of town in the country. Going into town for a movie constituted a major event.

I don't remember what was playing that night; I'm sure it must have been something to do with the Barrow Gang, because as an extra treat the movie producer had brought along an actual physical remnant of the Barrow Gang and their unseemly demise.

I was too young to be living when Bonnie and Clyde were terrorizing the countryside, but their heyday was only about twenty years in the past and they were still very much alive in the minds of most Madisonvillians. My grandmother remembered them well. So did other members of the family. All my life, Bonnie and Clyde had been the topic of conversation on many a summer night as we gathered on the front porch, cicadas singing in the background, and listened to the grownups tell stories.

Uncle Sterling was the greatest of all the storytellers. He had a way of making you hang on every word. He could build suspense just with his voice. Without any kind of gesture or movement, he could suddenly send a chill down your spine with a carefully worded suggestion or a slight change in the timbre of his voice. Gawd, how we loved for Uncle Sterling to come entertain us! And Uncle Sterling had some great Bonnie and Clyde stories. Bonham and I sat wide-eyed, trying to imagine these ghosts from the past, this Bonnie and Clyde who swept through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri, robbing and killing and running for their lives.

Their lives finally came to an end, however, in a very bloody way, on a country road much like the one we traveled every day. They were ambushed by the law as they stopped to help a friend. At least, they thought he was a friend. And it just so happened that on that very night at the drive-in movie theater, the producers had brought along the car ... yes, the VERY CAR ... complete with bullet holes and dried blood on the seats, in which they had died. I walked around it, agog. The old nineteen-thirtysomething ride was a pitiful sight. Black, battered and rusty; so many bullet holes in it, I didn't know how it was holding together. Big signs painted across the fenderwells ... "THE VERY AUTOMOBILE IN WHICH THEY DIED!"

I stood there and looked at it. Tried to get a feel for the people who died in it, for their legacy. But I could not retrieve it. From wherever in the universe those things flow, it did not flow to me in that moment. I found myself totally unmoved emotionally. It just wasn't real to me for some reason. The whole thing looked like one great big scam. But when Daddy asked me later if I had learned a lesson from all that, I went ahead and gave him the obligatory "yes, sir."

My Daddy always thought I was gonna wind up like Bonnie and Clyde, see. He thought I was a little criminal in the making and he never hesitated to tell me so.

Sorry, Pops, wherever you are. Being gunned down by the law is simply one more way in which I have failed you.

youngblood

Youngblood Brasket is a storyteller who shares her home, with cats Harmony and Bandon, a rabbit, a field mouse and various creatures of the forest on the Texas Gulf Coast. Her varied background includes freelance work in petrochem, the oil patch, trucking, and construction. Youngblood has also tried her hand as a rigger helper, ironworker, demolition technician, roadie for a Rhythm & Blues band, and as a member of the aerospace industry, where she still works today. One of our favorite people, Youngblood Brasket is a Regular Contributor to the Song & Story Street Section of Sunshine Street Sketches.

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