Their Last Meal, Bonnie & Clyde
Around 9 a.m., ninety years ago today, May 24, 1934, a pair of young lovers pulled up outside Ma Canfield’s little restaurant in Gibsland, Louisiana, about 45 miles due east of Shreveport.
She was 23. He was 25.
Stories vary. Some say they ate a quick breakfast of donuts and coffee inside. Others, that she waited outside in the car, while he ran in to pick up a fried bologna sandwich for him, and BLT for her.
All the stories agree about the sandwiches.
Putting their 1934 Ford Deluxe into gear, they headed south down Highway 154.
Seven miles outside of town they slowed to check out a vehicle pulled up alongside the road.
That’s when the bullets started flying, 167 holes were counted in the Ford Deluxe. An untold number flew through the windows and just plain missed.
A total of 26 bullets struck the young woman, 17 hit the young fella.
It’s been said she was still holding half of that BLT sandwich in her hand.
You probably know by now, we’re talking about two of the most infamous criminals in American history, Bonnie and Clyde.
The Museum Owners
Ma Canfield is no longer operating a restaurant in Gibsland but, if you want to know everything there is to know about Bonnie and Clyde, it’s still the place to go because, that’s where you’ll now find the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum.
The dusty old building is filled with everything imaginable related to the infamous couple.
Before we talk more about the museum, we need to talk a bit about its founder, LJ “Boot” Hinton, and current owner, Perry Carver.
Hinton was just five months old when Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed, but he was still directly connected to the event. His father, Dallas Deputy Sheriff Ted Hinton, was a member of the six-man posse that staged the ambush.
As it happens, Deputy Hinton knew Bonnie Parker before she met up with Clyde Barrow, and even admitted he had a crush on her at the time. Of the ambush, he told people Bonnie died in his arms.
With that connection, Boots Hinton became fascinated with Bonnie and Clyde’s story and through the years acquired a massive amount of memorabilia. Searching for a place to share his treasures with others, he took over the building that housed Ma Canfield’s restaurant and opened the museum in 2009.
Unfortunately for Boots, only a few years passed before he began suffering from health issues and worried what would happen to his legacy.
That’s when Perry Carver stepped in. Perry and Boots had known each for going on two decades, bound by a common passion for all things Bonnie and Clyde.
Ready for a twist in our story?
Perry’s connection to Bonnie and Clyde came back when he was eight years old, crawling in and playing around the 1934 Ford Deluxe in which they were killed.
Turns out, while living in Atlanta as a kid, his parents knew Ted Toddy, the car’s owner. Toddy had purchased it for $14,500, thinking he could make a buck or two off of it, literally.
He showed it at a traveling carnival, letting people sit in it for a buck
After the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway became a big hit, he sold it for $175,000. (Little sidenote, while the movie is fun to watch, in a perverse Keystone Cops kind of way, don’t look to it for historical accuracy.)
Sadly, the car is not at the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum. It’s owned by and displayed at Whiskey Pete’s Casino in Primm, Nevada.
Back to Perry. He has described to a variety of sources that he remembers the car filled with red blood stains along with seeing an embedded tooth and pieces of bone inside.
Toddy gave Perry a box of the car’s shattered glass, a door handle and, one day, while little Perry was sitting in the car, Toddy pulled a knife from his pocket, cut out about a six-inch long square of the seat fabric with blood stain on it, and gave it to him as well. (It’s on display at the museum.)
That began Perry’s fascination with the notorious pair and he, like Boots, began amassing his own memorabilia.
Perry purchased the museum in 2015, combining his and Boots collections, and has continued operating it, and adding even more, ever since.
Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum
I love kitschy museums. I mean that with absolutely no disrespect and complete sincerity.
Museums that, the minute you walk through the door, you know they were created by an individual with a passion. There’s no big budget for multimedia displays or interactive exhibits.
The Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum is one of those museums, packed, corner to corner, floor to ceiling, with stuff.
If you’re ever anywhere near it, you have to stop.
You’ll find everything and anything related to Bonnie and Clyde, directly, and even indirectly with photos and memories of their family members, weapons similar to those used in the ambush, and memorabilia from movies and television shows.
One highlight is a bullet-ridden replica of that 1934 Ford Deluxe in which they met their demise.
If you’re a bit on the squeamish side, or have small children, be forewarned, there are some pretty graphic exhibits within the museum. The death car replica comes complete with mannequins inside of Bonnie’s and Clyde’s bodies.
Just a few steps from there is a recreation of the morgue where they were taken, with their bloodied (mannequins again) bodies stretched out on beds, with large black-and-white photos of their dead bodies taken at the time, displayed on the walls.
Further on there’s an actual cast of Clyde’s hand. As the story goes, the man who donated it to the museum got it from his uncle, a newspaper photographer at the time.
The uncle went to the morgue and ran into someone who asked if he would like an actual imprint of Clyde’s right hand and he said, “sure”. He took it home, his wife later gave it to the donor’s father, who used it as a doorstop.
Little known bit of trivia, Bonnie was pretty good at poetry. Also in the museum is a recreation of their graves. On the wall above is a black-and-white mural with the words from one of Bonnie’s poems:
Some day they’ll all go down together,
And they’ll bury them side by side,
To few it’ll be grief,
The law a relief,
But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.
Another sidenote, the pair are buried in different Dallas area cemeteries. Bonnie’s mother refused to have her buried beside Clyde.
There are a LOT of YouTube videos with images inside the museum if you’re interested in a closer peek.
Here’s a recent one from a nearby television station, interviewing Perry, in anticipation of the 90th anniversary:
Bonnie and Clyde Festival
FYI, Gibsland, where the museum is located, hosts a Bonnie and Clyde Festival each year over the weekend closest to the date when the ambush occurred.
This year that happens to be this Friday and Saturday, May 24 and 25.
Not sure I’m up for a last minute 800-mile road trip, but it would be a hoot!
Notes
A couple additional notes.
About that last meal at Ma Canfields. As I mentioned above, several sources say they had a quick breakfast inside before ordering the sandwiches to go.
FWIW, Perry Carver at the Ambush Museum says Bonnie had been badly injured in an earlier car accident and her leg was severely infected. So much so that she could barely walk, Clyde was having to carry her and she was probably dying. That would make it nearly impossible, at least impracticable, for them to have breakfast inside.
I've heard other reports about her being injured as well, so I tend to believe she waited out in the car. Of course, you're entirely free to believe whichever version you wish.
For my Iowa friends, Bonnie and Clyde were no strangers to our state, robbing several banks here.
One of their most notable stops came on July 24, 1933, as they were camping out at Dexfield Park near Dexter, west of Des Moines. They commonly camped out rather than staying in motels or other places where they might be identified.
Law enforcement discovered they were there, a posse was formed and a huge shootout began at 5 a.m. Everyone in the gang was wounded in one fashion or another before escaping the park. Following a chase, Clyde's brother Buck and sister-in-law Blanche were eventually captured. Buck died five days later from his wounds. Read the full story here.
Also, the last bank they ever robbed came on April 16, a little more than five weeks prior to the ambush in Louisiana, at the First National Bank in Stuart, just a few miles from Dexter. The bank is currently being renovated with plans of turning the upstairs apartment into an Airbnb.
Finally, miscellaneous, random, trivia: Clyde was 5'4" and Bonnie never made five foot, measuring in at 4'11".
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