Wellington High - 1929
Salt Fork Area
The Pritchard Home
Rushing to the scene of the accident about one hundred yards away, Sam, Jack, and Alonzo discover a mangled Ford that has blown through a wooden barricade, flown into the air and spun around on the way down to a crash in the dry riverbed that rolls it over several times and puts the car facing south in the direction it had already come. Doors jammed and windows blown out, they are surprised to find that three people have survived the vehicle's rag doll journey to rest. The rescuers pull a man through where the windshield use to be, then another man, and finally a young woman ... the men are dazed and banged up, but the unconscious woman is in the worst shape, the car's smashed battery has coated her right leg in acid that has burnt the appendage from hip to ankle, in some places, exposing bone to the night air. Carrying the woman to the Pritchard home, she is gently laid on a bed where Sallie and Gladys do the best they can to tend to her wounds by swabbing them with baking soda and yellow Cloverrine Salve. Done, Sallie tells the women's companions its time to get a doctor and things get strange ... the driver of the vehicle says no, and heads back to the car for the group's luggage, while the other man stays with the family and his damaged friend, who soon wakes in extreme pain. Ignoring the orders of the driver though, Alonzo sneaks away and takes his father-in-law's old Dodge into town, where he contacts Collingsworth County Sheriff George Corry and Wellington Chief of Police Paul Hardy of trouble at the Pritchard farm. The lawmen request an ambulance be dispatched, then head off for the farm in a Chevrolet, with Alonzo lagging behind when he can't get the Dodge started again.
The Now Built Bridge
Ouch!
Illuminated only by a single kerosene lamp, when the lawmen enter the house, a figure steps out of the shadows holding a deadly BAR and requests the pair's weapons, which the wounded women they came to help staggers off the bed and collects, while the third man shows up now armed with a shotgun, stating, "You boys are just in time. We want to borrow your car." A moment later, showing the three strangers are not to be trifled with, thinking Gladys is about to escape when she goes to latch the back kitchen door to prevent her baby from crawling out of the area, the man unleashes a round from the shotgun that nicks one of Gladys's fingers and scratches the baby's scalp from bits of destroyed window screen. Unbeknownst to the family and the lawmen, the strangers they have been attempting to help are the notorious Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Park, and their sometimes partner, W. D. Jones, on their way to meet Buck and Blanche Barrow in Oklahoma after having a visit with family in Dallas (Buck and Blanche have been visiting her side of the family).
Clyde
Bonnie
Jones
Time to leave, deciding he can't leave the lawmen behind, the Barrow Gang get into the lawmen's car ... Clyde behind the wheel, Bonnie next to him, and Jones on the passenger side of the front seat, with the lawmen in the back seat. But only for a short time, Bonnie suffering terribly is soon transferred to the back seat where she lays on the laps of the lawmen. Driving much slower through the night (during which Clyde foolishly tells the lawmen he is one of the infamous Barrow brothers), it is well after midnight by the time they cross the state border into Oklahoma and meet Buck and Blanche at a deserted bridge between the towns of Erick and Sayre (asleep in their car, the pair will have to be roused from their slumber by Clyde's honking of the Chevrolet's horn). Gang reunited, Bonnie is placed in Buck's car on a pile of clothing, while Clyde rewards the lawmen for being tender with Bonnie by not killing them, and instead, having Buck and Jones handcuff them and tie them to a nearby tree (he is angered later when he discovers that lacking rope, the pair has used strands of nearby barbed wire to bind the men to the tree). Then the gang is off into the night. Soon freeing themselves, Corry and Hardy waste no time in notifying law enforcement in the region of the presence of the Barrow Gang, and that Bonnie has grave burn wounds that require hospitalization and a doctor (the next morning, a host of Wellington's citizens invade the crash site, gawking at the wreck which will eventually be rebuilt and sold, while taking souvenirs that one day will end up in the town's small museum ... two ammo clips for Clyde's BAR and a pair of Bonnie's gloves)..
Buck & Blanche
Bonnie's Gloves
Righted Vehicle
On the road, moving through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas, Bonnie's injuries are tended to as best the gang can with the authorities on high alert, but it is the beginning of the end for the group (not knowing who he is dealing with, a easily duped Dr. Walter Eberle sees Bonnie twice at the Twin Cities Tourist Camp where the gang is staying, both times telling Clyde she needs to be treated at a hospital ... instead, the gang treats her wounds with Unguentine and Amytal, a pain killing drug that Bonnie becomes temporarily addicted to). Separating for the time being, Clyde drives to Dallas alone to pick up Bonnie's sister, Billie Jean Parker (who is soon nursing her sister as the gang aimlessly rambles through the southwest ... support that will eventually get her one year and a day behind bars for harboring her sister). While Clyde is gone, with her pains a trigger, Bonnie and Blanche clash again and again (one fight causes Bonnie to jump out of bed and break open her scabs) to the point where they stop talking to each other, and Jones and Buck, following Clyde's instructions, go after spending money by robbing Brown's Grocery in Fayetteville ... a robbery that nets the outlaws a measly $20, a Model A delivery truck (which Jones steals and then abandons), and the attentions of the authorities. Driving recklessly, Buck crashes the pair's escape car, and when Alma Marshal Henry Humphrey (seeking redemption by capturing the bandits who robbed the Alma bank the day before and tied up Humphrey during the robbery) and Crawford County Deputy Sheriff Red Salyers (an electrician making ends meet with a second job in law enforcement) come upon the scene, Barrow guns down Humphrey with a shot gun blast to the man's chest (passing the mortally wounded lawman, Buck pauses just long enough to steal the marshal's .38 revolver ... on the job only two months, the 51-year-old Humphrey leaves behind a wife and three children), Jones chases Salyers into a nearby house with fire from his BAR and shoots at a passing motorist, for which he is rewarded by having two of his finger tips shot off by Salyers. The pair escape in the for-door maroon Ford of Salyers.
Unguentine
Billie Jean
Humphrey
Unremitting heat now on the members of the Barrow Gang, Bonnie will be a cripple for the rest of her short life (whenever possible, Clyde will carry her), limping on the badly damaged leg, and in hiding and treating her, the gang will make the mistakes which lead to a shootout with authorities on July 18, in Platte City, Missouri, and that gun battle in turn will lead to another clash with the law at Dexfield Park in Iowa on July 24, that will mortally wound Buck and get Blanche captured (she will serve six years behind bars). Holes in the gang's membership (Jones will be arrested in Houston, and to escape murder charges, will begin fabricating stories of Clyde being a homosexual and that he was an unwilling member of the gang that had to be tied up every night ... the tall tales save him from death row, but he does spend six years behind bars ... freed, he dies in gunfire during a domestic dispute in 1974 at the age of 58), the new gang assembled from convicts Bonnie and Clyde free from Eastham State Prison will result in more botched robberies, kidnappings, murders, and eventually, betrayal at the hands of escapee, Henry Methvin, that makes the outlaw lovers Swiss cheese Louisiana roadkill for an ambush party led by legendary Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer.
Moments After The Shooting Ends - Dexfield Park -
Captured Blanche And Wounded Buck In Undershirt
Methvin
Hamer
The Blasted Pair
The final downward spiral of Bonnie & Clyde starts on a hot Saturday evening outside the town of Wellington, Texas ... 6/10/1933.
Outlaw Lovers
Memorial
No comments:
Post a Comment