The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #108015   Message #2933014
Posted By: Ron Davies
22-Jun-10 - 11:27 PM
Thread Name: BS: Tattoos - why?
Subject: RE: BS: Tattoos - why?
Just read the best book I've read in years:   Go Down Together, by Jeff Guinn.

A sociological study of the really down and out in Texas in the 20's (farmers, including Clyde Barrow's father, who got caught in the US farm depression which hit 10 years before the official Depression--"When World War I ended...American farmers went down to defeat with the Germans". He wound up close to the bottom of the pile, a junkman).

A dual biography of Bonnie and Clyde.

A whodunnit, since you know it ended in bullets but not exactly how it reached that point.

History that reads like a novel.

And on top of that, a bit a relevance to the thread.

Amos mentioned "the young and frustrated".    Fits perfectly here.

In anticipation of joining the Navy--and getting out of the slum where he lived-- Clyde had "USN" tattooed on his left arm. But the Navy turned him down due to "lingering effects from the illness that hospitalized him soon after the Barrows arrived in West Dallas" the slum across the river from Dallas.   (Could possibly have been malaria or yellow fever).

Then he added "EBW" (for Eleanor).    Then "Anne" and "Grace" joined the others.

Never Bonnie--though that was the one that lasted the rest of his short life.