Hey guys, this is Mel. If you're listening to this, you
are about to hear a super special sneak peek of our latest
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Hope you enjoy. But is there anything that you
guys know about Bonnie and Clyde before?
Just that they're they were up to no good, I think.
I'm guessing they're murderers, yeah.
They still just have to teach us.
Yeah, I don't know. I picture them like zooming
around in a car and shooting the cops and on the run and stuff
but I don't really know what happened.
Yeah. I know I knew of Bonnie and
Clyde, obviously, partially because in 2016 there's ATV show
called Timeless. Shout out or comment or anything
if you guys remember that show and watched it.
I loved it. It was one of my favorite shows.
And then I got cancelled. But anyway, they had a whole
episode about Bonnie and Clyde and I thought that was really
interesting and it really turned me on onto Bonnie and Clyde.
And then I think a year or two later for school, I took history
through film class. We had to watch the 1967 Bonnie
and Clyde movie with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, and
that was also interesting. So I learned a lot about them
because we also learned about the Great Depression and about
Bonnie and Clyde through that class.
So. And so Kate, what 3 words would
you use to describe this couple? I would use passionate fun, Oh
cool and dangerous. No.
So maybe they didn't come, people.
Well there is that dangerous word to do this episode.
I read a couple books. One was Go Down Together, The
True Untold Story Bond Clyde by Jeff Gwynn Gwynn, Jeff Gwynn
Bonnie and Clyde. The Making of a Legends by Karen
Blumenthal. Love that book.
Wholly recommend it. And Bonnie and Clyde, The Lives
Behind the Legend by Paul Schneider.
Yeah, but let's get into it. So to begin Clyde Chestnut
Barrow. Chestnut, yeah.
That's cool, that's his real middle name.
But later in life he kept saying that his middle name was
Champion, but it was actually Chestnut.
This is our first Clyde on the podcast.
That's true. I don't think there's that many
others. I don't know any.
Other famous people. I don't know.
I don't know if I know any. Maybe this name like kind of?
Killed it. Yeah.
Maybe so. Yeah.
He was born on March 24th, 19 O 9 or 1910.
No one's entirely sure in Telico, Texas.
He was the fifth child in his family out of seven.
He had four older siblings and two younger ones.
He was approximately 15 years younger than his eldest sibling
and nine years older than his youngest sibling.
So there's a big age gap. So he was the fifth child, I'm
7. So he was towards the end, he
was like one of the baby siblings and there's 15 years
between him and his eldest sibling and nine years between
him and his youngest siblings. Is that how can?
The parents be doing that. Maybe this?
Started early. Maybe the mom was like 19 or
something when she started and then.
Well, our. 40. Grandfathers mom had each of the
kids 10 years apart but that even seemed wild to me.
Like 15 years and then wait, what is it, 15?
15 and 9. That's like a huge difference.
I know. Wow.
But there's seven kids spread out throughout that time period.
So. But even despite the age grab,
Clyde got along really well with his siblings.
He was very close to them, especially the ones obviously
closest in age to him. And his nickname in his family
was Bud because he was such a buddy to his siblings.
Yeah. And his parents were named Henry
and Q Me. I kept reading it and I never
looked at the pronunciation. How do you spell it?
CUM i.e. I think it's also coming.
I think it might be coming for real.
OK, no wonder he turned out. That way, Yeah.
When Clyde was born, they were cotton farmers.
OK. And according to Clyde's mother,
Cummy, as a child, he was a bit mischievous, having once been
caught stealing candy from a store.
But overall, he was a good boy. He's considering, playful and
full of life. What if it's not cummy?
I think it is cummy. What is the other like Cummy?
Cummy. I honestly think it's cummy
cummy. I think it's kill me.
OK, kill me, I'll just say kill me even though I think it's the
other one. But anyway, I don't think.
I mean she comes up a lot, but I don't think I will say her much
her name much anyway. He liked to sing and dance.
He even taught himself how to play the guitar.
His dream was to be in a band and he was also recorded as
being a good shot with a gun. But he was also an avid animal
lover and didn't like to hunt. Clyde grew poor in a three room
shack alongside the rest of his family.
It was a tight squeeze, and so most the kids had to sleep on
pallets on the floor. Oh my God, I know.
And even with their own cotton farm to manage, more often than
not to make ends meet. To make ends meet, the parents
had to work as migrant workers on other people's farms.
The kids did too, but most usually they earned their keep
by picking cotton on their uncle's farm.
So Clyde kind of grew up working as a cotton picker on various
farms. However, when Kai was about 13
in 1922, his family ditched farming altogether and moved to
the nearest city, which was Dallas, TX.
For the first years, Kai and his family lived alongside 20 other
families under a bridge that ran across Trinity River, which was
apparently very polluted at the time.
The the Barrows specifically lived under their wagon as they
didn't have a tent, but eventually they scrapped enough
material together to build a shack in the same area.
So under the bridge. They were really roughing it.
I know. It may be one of the poorest
upbringings we've ever heard about.
I think. So Oh my God.
I really think it is. It was a big surprise to me
because I knew of Bonnie and Clyde, but I didn't really know
in depth their backgrounds. Yeah, I really know most after,
like, when they were already together.
Yeah. So when Clyde was 16 he left
school and began working full time.
First at a candy company and then a soap factory, movie
theatre, an auto paint shop, a glass company and on and on, on
many odd jobs and most of all the money he made he gave to his
parents. And when he wasn't working in
his free time, Clyde learned how to play the saxophone from his
brother-in-law. He also started dating a girl
named Eleanor and he even got her initials tattooed on his
left forearm. Wow.
And then later on he got at least three other girls initials
tattooed on his arm. That's like that Norman
Rockwell. Painting.
Yeah. It's like crossing an out and
then a new name. Yeah.
So he had plenty of tattoos and
a lot of them were initials of other.
Girls, I feel like if you were dating someone and he already
had his exes tattooed on him, he'd be like, well, is there
something wrong with me? You need to get me tattooed on.
Yeah, it's like now you have to do this every time.
All right, I will have to stop the episode right there.
Thank you so much for listening to the teaser.
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