Hon, back in the day many people lived in apartments above or tacked onto their businesses. It would not have been unusual for his family to live behind the family gas station.
Would you say Col Sanders went bad?
WIKI:
At the age of 40, Sanders cooked chicken dishes and other meals for people who stopped at his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. Since he did not have a restaurant, he served customers in his living quarters in the service station. His local popularity grew, and Sanders moved to a motel and restaurant that seated 142 people and worked as the chef. Over the next nine years, he developed his method of cooking chicken. Furthermore, he made use of a pressure fryer that allowed the chicken to be cooked much faster than by pan frying.
Well, people in those days weren’t nearly as mobile. My father (b.1921) was born 12 miles from where he lived. Ultimately he died further away (helicopter took him to a bigger hospital than the hometown’s, you know) but he’s buried just 12 miles from his birthplace. And if you’re looking for a job locally, surely they’ve at least heard what you did, regardless of what you put on your app.
Even today people can favor those from their area. My hs girlfriend went to college, got a degree in education, and ended up teaching in our home town. She was up against people with better degrees and more experience when she interviewed, but being a hometown girl and a known quantity, they chose her.
My paternal grandfather was a constable (Precinct 7) in Dallas during the Bonnie and Clyde years; my father and my uncle were his deputies. All of them were extremely grateful that their paths never crossed. My best friend’s mother attended school with Bonnie, in Cement City, in East Dallas. She always said that Bonnie was smart, made good grades, and was very attractive. Contrary to popular legend, they were feared and not idealized. My father always referred to them as “amoral chicken thieves.” Back then, a chicken thief was pretty much a low life. After the two of them were killed in Louisiana, their bodies were brought back to Dallas and were on more or less public display, depending on who you knew. My father and a friend of his went to view both bodies; my father always maintained that many of the people who did so simply wanted the assurance that they were really and truly dead. One of them, I’ve forgotten which one, was buried in a cemetery not too far from our house; I used to sometimes take a look at the headstone while waiting for a bus. I think it was Clyde’s grave but I’m not sure. Their death car was on display at the Texas State Fair for years. I saw it many times over the years.
None. They robbed very few banks. They weren’t good enough criminals to rob banks. They mostly stole from gas stations and country stores, and managed to get enough to maintain a lifestyle of eating and sleeping in stolen cars. Some criminal masterminds.
While there may have been some level of public support (or at least indifference), that went away when they started making a habit of killing cops. That was looked down on, then as now.
Even Dillinger (who was sort of glorified) always felt it necessary to deny killing a cop, despite evidence that he did.
IIRC, it wasn’t the family gas station. That would make a lot of difference from Col. Sanders’ situation.
Also, the “Colonel’s” legacy of treachery and deceit, as well as the many political assassinations for which he was responsible should be enough of an answer to your other question!!
It was. Barrow was in his mid-teens and already pretty much on his way to a life of crime by then, though. Not that his childhood was middle-class or anything, not by any means. His parents were sharecroppers, and for some time after the move to Dallas lived in a shantytown beneath an aqueduct.
I’ve read Going Down Together (just out recently) and also the memoir by Blanche Barrow. (She was given a smallish sum for the rights to use her name in the movie by Warren Beatty, but she didn’t like it at all, especially Estelle Parson’s (playing her) performance.)
I don’t think they were psychopathic killers at all, it seems to me people got shot in the heat of the moment, but they didn’t kill deliberately and sadistically (and Bonnie never shot anyone, but posed holding a gun. The newspapers published the goofing-around pictures and Bonnie was astonished to read how her ‘legend’ grew.) They both grew up very, very poor in Texas - Dallas, was it? - living in shacks their families had knocked together. No jobs around, being a waitress or trying to get a job in the cement factory were the best things offered.
They seemed to spend most of their time driving enormous distances around the center of the US, always circling around and coming back to visit with their relatives. Clyde wanted to join up with the more famous gangs of criminals of the time, but ‘the Barrow gang’ was considered small fry who only robbed general stores for a few bucks at a time.
