9. Open topic

As I may have mentioned in class, my uncle is a documentarian and free lance travel journalist. He has lived in dozens of countries from Ireland to Thailand and is a self-proclaimed vagabond. Over the last few years, I have had the pleasure of traveling with him across much of America during my summer vacations. We have explored America together from the Florida Everglades to the peak of Mt. Hood Oregon, encountering many fascinating people, places, and ideas along the way. In my conversations with him, my uncle has often given me advice on travel and in particular, being that he is a travel journalist, on writing about ones travels. Much of what he has told me I think is quite valuable, and so I thought I would share a few of his tips in my open topic blog post.

On writing about ones travels:

-Live and the stories will follow. The first step to travel writing is “living the story.” Seek out new and exciting experiences that interest you. Think of yourself as the “producer, star, writer, director, and editor of your own story”. Seek out unique and fascinating people for your production. 
-Take photos and notes. “Record the adventure while it’s happening” and don’t be shy, most people love being asked to have a picture with them; this has proved true in my own experience as well. Enjoy meeting people and let them know how much you enjoyed meeting them.
-“Shoot first and ask questions later.” Snap lots of photos and sort out which ones you want to keep later. You can always delete a photo off your memory card but you can never add one that was never taken.
-Try to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. When you travel you are an outsider, giving you a fresh view and take on things. Try to see beyond the obvious and dig beneath the surface.
-“Don’t write about what you had for breakfast unless it was truly amazing, people just find that annoying.”
 -Never write over your photos. If a picture is worth a thousand words it is not necessary, and if it’s not why have the picture to begin with.
-“Write from your heart.”  Try to write about how a place affected you. That is at least as important as the place itself.
-Share your experiences with others.  “You’re lucky to be a free range human roaming outside a cubicle. Share all the wonder with those who can only live it vicariously for now.”
-Read great travel writing, like in this class. Reading great travel writing inspires the human spirit and teaches you how to write well.

So, there are a few thoughts on travel and travel writing from my uncle the travel writer. I apologize for crudely summarizing them, but hopefully you found them as insightful and useful as I have.
 

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this collection of color slide reproductions from the 1930s and 40s (via Tumblr and the links on the left-hand side of our Travel Studies blog).  Beyond leading me down the road of Internet procrastination, these photos astonished me.  They are gorgeous and a rare insight into the past.  I didn’t even realize that color slide film existed in the 1930s and certainly don’t immediately associate it with any photos until its rise to artistic prominence in the 70s and 80s.  That is what made these images so stunning.  Not only do they give us more material with which to visually imagine the lives of America in the early twentieth century, but also they undermine our traditional envisioning of the era as a collection of dramatic black and white Dorothea Langue portraits.
 
The limitations of black and white photography exaggerate the emotional drama and desperation of the Depression era to the contemporary viewer.  They make us think of hardships past, an era different from our own.  We’ve romanticized the notion of black and white photography with feelings of nostalgia and beauty.  In a way, it seems difficult to relate to the time period in a way other than through this nostalgia since we are used to such colored contemporary visual culture.  It is for this reason that these color photos of the Depression seem so startling.  The medium seems anachronistic and surprises us.  The vivid colors of the contemporary reproductions from the slides don’t seem to belong to the scenes themselves; they are perhaps too vivid, or maybe too real.
 
These photos remind us that Americans in the 1930s saw their lives in color, not in melodramatic monochrome.  They at once give the photos an additional depth while expressing quotidian subject matter, not monumentalized in the styles of Lange and Evans.  They are something that seems more relatable to us today and show us exactly to what extent technology and communication affect our ways of seeing.  They are bizarre rarities, completely entrancing.  They make me think of the importance of collecting a variety of sources in examining the past and how many ways there are to look at things.
 
On a semi-related note: Color photos from Russia in the 1910s

I visited my parents back in Jersey over the weekend, where my mom subscribes to Time magazine. Right there on the cover of the newest issue I read: "An American Journey." Apparently, Joe Klein is reporting stories gathered from a road trip he took across the country to interview various Americans about politics. Well, isn't that just so darn relevant to this class? Clearly, some things really haven't changed at all since the 1930's. People in relatively remote areas of the country still feel under- or misrepresented. Washington still doesn't understand or care. I thought the information age was supposed to solve this? Anyone can blog their discontentment now, and even the oldest members of Congress know what the internet is now that Ted Stevens is gone.

However, this land is apparently just too fast, and millions of Americans are still falling through the gaping canyon of obscurity. Travel is still a key means of connecting with people, try as Facebook may to replace it. In the Time Article, entitled "Encountering Anguish and Anxiety Across America," Klein hits upon many key ideas brought up in class in reference to the 1930's. He finds that Americans have a "growing sense that our best days as a nation are behind us" and despise the "disgraceful behavior of the financial community." Then, in true upper-class travel writer fashion, he ends the article by romanticizing travel. "Road trips," he muses, " are nourishment for the mind and the soul." Calling them "a classic American pastime," he claims that his own road trip left him "cleansed and transformed." Now, if only every member of Congress could hop in a car for six weeks and go around their state (or just walk if they're representing Rhode Island), perhaps the gaps the internet can't breach won't become quite as yawning as they became during the Depression.

Much has been said of Annie Leibovitz’s ad campaign for Louis Vuitton starring Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson. Most of which has been outright derision, aghast at toting 1000$ bags in the African savannah, a place of abject poverty.

The past few years have seen a democratization of international travel. The travel infrastructure that existed in America, built in the 30’s, now has been replicated elsewhere. Information is ubiquitous too. A Google search is all it takes sometimes to find an inside scoop that could shave off a few extra dollars. Also, we not only know more about the world, we know more about each other too. If Victoria backpacked around Europe after University, Elizabeth wants to backpack South America.    

More people travel. And as numbers have gone up, the industry has moved on from being a relatively niche one to a mass market one. Think of a modern airline. Airlines try and squeeze in as many seats in mostly an all-economy configuration, while consumers use website that survey the Internet for the cheapest fare.

Did anyone say the destination was the journey itself? Trying telling that to you on a layover in Denver, sandwiched in a crowded terminal, only awaiting to be packed like sardines in a Southwest A330.

This is the very reason that the Louis Vuitton initiative needs to be celebrated. Think of the greatest journeys in life. They are often ones that you undertake because you simply can. Not because you have to. You just want to.

This isn’t a lament against budget travel. Just that the scorn most see luxury travel with is unnecessary. It is an ideal worth achieving. I realized this a few weeks ago on an Airbus 380 flying business on a free upgrade from Dubai to New York. Having made my way through security, immigration and boarding, finally the plane took off. After the meal service, the lights turned off, I relaxed on the 180 degree recline.

I closed my eyes. Only to open them a few seconds later to a nightsky with a thousand twinkling stars. Maybe it wasn’t real, but 37, 000 feet up, what is real and what isn’t?

 Was Tom Joad gay? Do you know that for sure? Why shouldn’t he be? Why couldn’t he be? As a red-blooded American, Tom Joad, the bastion of masculinity, is now gay. How do we feel about that? 
It’s no secret, many writers who went on the road in the 1930’s were in search of more than the sights and sounds of the American pastoral, many were in search of finding themselves. Tom Kromer, in his depressing Depression account of his travels throughout the United States, chose to engage in gay sex for money, but gay sex none-the-less. Even though it was out of necessity, Kromer’s steamy chapter was stricken from the original publication for its explicit content.
 
Have many things changed? Besides the cliché Brokeback Mountain of recent memory, little has challenged the masculinity of the man, and the less-than-masculine perception of the gay male. What does this masculinity perception do? Well, for Tom in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, emasculation is something he and his family are all too familiar with. Tom and others like him survived along the paternalist structure of tenant farming; depending on another man for his and his family’s livelihood. What became of Tom? He with the help of Casy, were able to form a new masculine ideal; one that brought together the masses, fought against unfair landowners, and birthed a shared commitment to traditional and fair labor. Heroically, Tom is forced to work for his cause from afar, as police have deemed him an outlaw, operating outside of the acceptable and punishable by imprisonment or worse. He’s a rabblerouser. A bastard. A red.
 
This neo-masculinity of the 1930’s that Tom Joad exemplifies so well, is something nearly every schoolchild in the nation can say they’ve read on their literary checklist (or at least on SparkNotes). It’s a story every man wants to identify with and one every man wishes he could be; a resilient outsider ready to do anything for his family and for his people to make things just. Now. What if Tom was gay? How would Tom have acted differently? Would any of us even know who Tom Joad was? I think this is a point Steinbeck doesn’t address for this simple reason; it shouldn’t and doesn’t matter.
 
When has a gay man or woman not been grouped into a categorically discriminated whole? When has GLBT community not felt oppressed because their rights as Americans were being abused? Tom Joad’s cause is the cause of so many Americans, one that breaks from conventional wisdom to shine the light on a quandary so egregious that a great literary work on the subject can be run every curriculum in the nation for generations to come. Reshaping false perception to fit reality, that is Steinbeck’s intention.
 
The simple invisibility of gays during the Depression-era exemplifies the need accept that there were gays inevitably interspersed within the worker’s rights movement. With governors, representatives, and other public officials bashing gays one week and coming out the next, there’s no reason to perceive Tom as anything; gay or straight. We, of course, have coded him along with other strong men to immortalize his figure in the name of strength, fortitude, and tough for all the right reasons. He’s the hero. He’s the man. He’s a man. His is the same fight so many Americans face every day of our lives. Not just Jack Kerouac.
 
When will we accept Tom Joad was gay? Only until we accept that the plight of the minority affects the identity of every American; the identity of us all.

With the advent of commercial planes, travel today is less about traveling on the road and more about traveling through the air. However, even today, there are still many parallels to traveling during the depression of the 1930’s and traveling during the recession of the 2000’s. During the 1930’s, travelers often left home in search of new opportunities, especially for employment. Today, many people still travel around the country for possible employment. However, the concerns of these travelers have differed greatly in the past seventy years.
 
In the 1930’s, travelers’ greatest trepidations were their general well being. Many migrant workers flooded different areas of the United States in search of a better life. Those that did not travel by car often took trains across the country. Hobos and runaways occupied the boxcars of the trains. If these passengers were caught illegally riding the train, they would face brutal punishments, including beatings, by the train police. Those that travelled by car were commonly migrant workers from Oklahoma, who travelled across route 66 to California. When they arrived in California, the workers and their families were forced to live in different camps or Hoovervilles. The living conditions in theses areas were poor and unsanitary. Shelter was made from leftover pieces of metal, wood crates, cardboard, and other materials that were available. The jobs that they hoped for were nonexistent or very low paying and many of them included tough and dangerous labor. Thus, for travelers in the 1930’s, the crux of their worries were whether they would find adequate shelter, food, and employment when they arrived at their destination.    
 
For travelers today, their greatest concern centers on their personal safety. The greatest difference between travelers today versus travelers in the 1930’s is more Americans are travelling for leisure than work. Thus, their concerns differ greatly. The War on Terror has generated new worries for travelers. After September 11, American’s began to worry about their safety on planes. These concerns have stopped some from travelling. Even those that do travel on planes have apprehension. As recently, on Sunday, October 3, 2010, the United States State Department issued a warning to Americans who are traveling in Europe. According to the warning, “Current information suggests that al-Qa’ida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks.” Like previous attacks, the State Department warns that the terrorists plan to “attack public transportation systems.” Thus, Americans do not worry about their possible living conditions or jobs during their travels, but more about the possibility that they will be a target of a terrorist attack.

What comprises the romanticism so often tied to traveling? We have read various accounts of travel inspired by a desire to abandon stale or unpleasant circumstances, or to set out on an adventure, or to record the faces and stories of those who are doing so. Something that has been stirring in the back of my mind as I read through these tales and recordings is the question of how much the romanticism of travel played a part in driving these writers and photographers out onto the open road.
 
This is not at all to discredit the incorporation of field study into one’s work; it is of course both admirable and significant that these documenters went out and sometimes quite literally lived the lives of the people they documented in order to obtain a certain perspective. Compared to those who sat inside, satisfied with the information provided in newspapers or through hearsay, this is pretty remarkable. My question, though, is whether they would have done the same if the primary act involved was not traveling, but something less – to use the term once more – romantic.
 
Would any of them have willingly lived in a slum, or gone without food, or subjected themselves to any of the other grizzly conditions of those they were supposedly documenting, for the sake of their photographs or writing? More specifically, would they have gone to such extents if travel were in no way a part of it?
 
Incorporating the element of travel into the “roughing-it” lifestyle is significant. Perhaps through physically detaching ourselves from a specific place, we feel detachment from regular societal norms and needs is slightly more tolerable. It all comes together to build this temporary fantasy of getting back to our “roots” or basic necessities, though I think this fantasy would soon fall apart if we remained in one place. If we are on a road trip, for example, we have no problem skipping a few showers or meals, or getting sunburn, or sleeping in a car; even if it actually isn’t that great in reality, it’s part of the “experience,” and we will laugh about it later or maybe even right then and there. We’ll smoke a bunch of cigarettes and eat a cheeseburger from a roadside diner for breakfast that we paid for with money from under the passenger seat.
 
But if we aren’t traveling? I don’t think many of us would settle for missing a shower or skipping a good night’s rest. There wouldn’t be a box labeled “the romanticism of travel” for us to throw all of those crappy situations into. Maybe it is because our desire for necessities is closely tied to our desire for a home; we don’t need luxuries when we travel because we had them before we left and we’ll have them when we get home again. Inevitably the travel-centered conversation will bring us to the question of “What is home?”, but I think that’s for another entry.

It seems many of the people studied in this course have been compelled to travel due to tragic circumstance, but there are those who go for other reasons. The journalists and intellectuals set out as a response to a rising tide of poverty and despair, but in doing so they are seeking “the voice of the people.” As journalists, it is their professional obligation to listen to the populace, but this is not a career chosen lightly, so one might well imagine that this search for the vox populi is on some level a quest of self-discovery as well. It is the importance of this aspect of travel I wish to stress.
 
Seeing the world has a number of obvious benefits. Exposure to foreign peoples and ideas produces educated, cultured, and worldly citizens, but travel has benefits beyond greater social understanding. In the documentary we watched in the last class, many of the boys riding the rails did so in search of work, but one of the boys cited his motivation as adventure. 
 
The essence of traveling is pure adventure—it’s a compulsion to see not seeking greener pastures, but rather new hues of green never seen before. Traveling forces introspection. Being away from home means that even the smallest of decisions and habits cannot rely on routine. The phrase, “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone,” is most often said in a negative context, but forcing oneself to live without familiar comforts forces reflection on why one has what one has. Obviously, living out of a backpack makes one realize how much sheer stuff one can live without, but this experiences begs a more important question: what can’t one live without. Until put to the test, it is shockingly difficult to see who or what one will miss. Homesickness crops up in bizarre and unexpected ways, offering the traveler clues as to what they find truly important.
 
That said, when I travel, I sort of cheat. I have a jacket covered in patches accrued from countries and events from across the globe. In this manner, I carry with me grounding; a sort of map of my past travels that doubles as a compass that always points to where I come from.  It is important to seek out new experiences not just for their sake, but for how these new experiences—and the process of seeking them—can inform one’s past.

(Original Photo)

While watching Hulu instead of writing this blog entry I came across a commercial from Louis Vuitton for its new marketing campaign “Journey”.  It’s just a series of images with a basic soundtrack in the background and words flashing across at different points--nothing special.  The commercial was intriguing to me because of our class discussions.  Although melodramatic it made some interesting points.  One line of text that appears says “a journey shows us not only the world, but how we fit into it”.  To bring it into our class discussions, how do hobos fit into the world? Or, how does their wandering show them their place in the world?

In Boxcar Bertha the answer is in the ending completely undisguised.  Through her wandering Bertha realizes how she fits into things: she is the mother of her child; that is her place in the world.  It was her journey beginning as she left her community to when she finally decides to go back home to her daughter that she realizes it.

The Joads are also looking for their place in the world.  They’re always talking about the white house they’re going to live in when they get to California.  There is a faith that that is where they belong.   When they get there, they find it hard to even fit into the Hooverville they come to in California.  Whether they find their place in the world in the ending I don’t know.  

In contrast, in Waiting for Nothing Kromer seems to be looking for how he fits into the world, but in the end decided he would never find out and gave up.  The way the book ends is with the image of him just being another stiff among stiffs, another face in the sea of face.  He seems to have a conviction that this will never change.

I think overall that there is a desire among wanderers in the Great Depression to find their place in life.  What I’m curious about is whether being a hobo is filling a needed place in the world.   What purpose does being a hobo serve in the bigger scheme of things?  At first one would say they are a drain on society, a negative force.  But aren’t they also the ones that make folks say, well at least I’m better off than that guy?  Everyone society needs to have a bottom rung, maybe that’s where the hobos fit in.

After learning about the hobo culture of the Great Depression in the 1930s, I thought I would examine hobo culture today.  A first difference in the hobo lifestyle definitely lies in the severity of the poverty that people such as Tom Kromer experienced.  Since the 1930s our country has set up countless systems, non-profits, and organizations to help people out of a life of poverty – not to say that it is entirely effective.  Today there is an acceptance among many (not everyone) that sometimes poverty is out of your hands and that assistance is needed. 

However, today a culture of poverty remains, but in a different way.  One of my classes recently discussed the term “hipster” and how it is used in society today.  Mainly, it has a negative connotation of pretentious posers, or at least this is one of the conclusions we came to.  A hipster lives the “bohemian” life, emulating the lifestyle of the hippies of the 1960s, and often lives a life of modest means, whether necessary or desired.  What interests me is the intersection of the hobo lifestyle with the hipster life.  They seem to be clumped into one group today, but contradict each other somewhat.  One article I found describing Portland, OR described it as the “town of hoboes and hipsters”.  Another person, referring to some vile drink, says only “cheap bastards, hobos, and hipsters (ok, a little redundant there) make it a point of honor to drink this stuff”.  And yet another website even created the game ‘Hipster, Hobo or in a Band?’, where you guess which is which.  No, these writers are not sociologists or anthropologists, but somehow it is evident that in many people’s minds, hipsters are very much linked to hobos.

If you ask me, I think it all comes back to the romanticized notion of life on the road, livin’ off the land.  Mix in a little revolution from the 1960s, a privileged upbringing and voila!  A hipster is made.  The laissez-faire hobo lifestyle portrayed in movies and pop culture sucks us all in, including myself.  In fact, there is still a strong hobo community today and current estimates state that there are around 20,000 people living the hobo lifestyle today!  They have symbols and secret codes to indicate safe places to sleep and even have hobo conventions! There are many such conventions, but the National Hobo Convention is held every August in Britt, Iowa.  (If you want to support the convention you can buy a lightweight fleece fest with the NHC insignia, for the very low price of $50.)  The organizing, fundraising, and publicity of these hobo conventions seems to tell me that it isn’t just the hipsters who romanticize the hobo lifestyle, but all of those who remember or yearn for a simpler time.  Yet, I wonder what Tom Kromer and his fellow stiffs would think of hipsters and hobos today…

Ah the freedom of the rails. American teenagers in the 1930s had it all going for them. Sure it was dangerous and not the cleanest experience, but darn, were they free!
 
I know that romanticizing the Depression is looked down upon. I know I am not supposed to, but I just can’t help it. Isn’t there something liberating about not having any money, any ties, or any destination? I don’t know about you, but sometimes I sit in class and dream about leaving it all behind – it’s corny, I know, but it’s enticing! All of that government propaganda and deliberate infrastructure building worked on me. I want to rent a car and go across the country (I know we haven’t gotten to the tourism sectional yet, but I am anxiously awaiting it).
 
It just isn’t the same. There isn’t that sense of adventure any more. It isn’t safe for a young girl to hitchhike.
 
When I was living in Italy, we used to ride the trains without buying tickets because nobody ever came around to check. One time, we were leaving a small town and the conductor came around asking us for our tickets. We pretended like we didn’t understand his Italian and they ended up kicking us off the train at a closed down station with one line running out of it. There was not a train in sight. We had to hitchhike back home and everything turned out fine. (Photo is mine. On the train there)
 
This experience, while such a small scale (and awfully romantic) sample of the lifestyle in the 1930s whet my appetite for excitement. I love to meet new people and I try to strike the balance between seeing the good in others and being open to them, and endangering yourself. Granted, this experience was in Europe, and I was with another girl so it was safer. But I want to do this in the United States. I want to see the Grand Canon and camp along the way and drive out there. I want to meet people in diners and hear their stories.
 
 I think there is so much to learn about America. It’s possible that the 1930s sparked this interest and that the excitement is just a long lasting residual from harsher times. I know I have it easy, but it hasn’t taken that excitement away.
 
Maybe in these familiar and somewhat precarious economic times, we need to revive the attitude of the 1930s. Maybe we need to look at America as a yet undiscovered land rich with people, even when resources dwindle and we need to take to the highways and explore! 

This year Charles Willeford, an American author, published his memiors, I Was Looking For a Street, which chronicle his time as a migrant teenager traveling the railroads during the Great Depression. He grew up in Los Angeles in a middle class family. He describes his class status, saying, “I don’t think we were rich, or anything close to that, but we were well-to-do…We had a full-time Negro cook, and we ate big dinners at night.”(P. 3)

After losing his mother to T.B. he moved in with his grandmother. However, after the stock market crash in 1929, his grandmother was housing additional extended family, and the young Willeford felt himself becoming a burden to the household. Although the economic circumstance of the family, and the country at large, caused the young willeford, just barely a teenager, to venture outward-bound, the reader gets the feeling that he also yearned for a certain sense of adventure that we heard about in the documentary about hobos we watched in class on Tuesday. He writes, “I left home and went on the road. I wasn’t alone. For the next few years there were thousands of boys my age riding freight trains to nowhere. But no one can ever tell me I didn’t have a happy childhood.”(P. 45)

Having largely been raised middle class the young Willeford had to learn the ways of the hobo quicly in order to adapt to his surroundings. He learned a lot of vital advice on the road such as when he explains, “When I first hit the road, a bum in Colton, California, had told me that a man should always have a destination of some kind in his mind, even though he had no real plan and knew in his heart that he was going nowhere.”(P. 59) Little tricks like this helped Willeford learn how to trick himself into believing he had an inckling of direction and purpose, and fooling the authorities, so as not to be arrested. He went beyond simply creating a false destination though, making an entire fictitious back story including a new name for himself, Jake Lowey, which he got from his one-eyed uncle. Willeford’s first hand account of what it was like to grow up on the railroads of the South Western United States is very interesting, and fits perfectly into the body of work that we have been reading and discussing. Ultimately, the reader sees that growing up on the road is not so much different from growing up anywhere else. Willeford, or Jake Lowey, makes a few friends who realize that their odds of survival are much better in a group, and learns how to navigate the social circles of the work camps. He seems to encourage the reader to embark on their own journey, writing brief sentiments such as, “As long as a man leaves everything behind, including his money posessions, and clothes, he will have no regrets when he begins a life somewhere else. “(P. 18)
Although, growing up homeless, and alone on the road during the Great Depression would have been a horrowing experience, Willeford seems to embrace the adventure, and exude a sense of pride for accomplishing the feet. His optimism radiates in passages such as this one: “If I could learn how to drive a car I could go to Miami Beach, maybe, and drive a taxicab. Or I could go to San Francisco, or Seattle, or Alaska. Why not Alaska, that is, If I could get a good used Navy pea jacket first. My possibilities were limitless. One man alone, without responsibilties, has got a fighting chance in this world; and it was, indeed, a wonderful world.” (P. 146) All in all, It is a great story, and I highly recommend reading the book.

-Bonnie Parker, “The Trail’s End”

I have to confess: I have been infatuated with the story of Bonnie and Clyde for some time now. It’s hard not to be. The tale is so undeniably sexy. Two lovers running from the law, robbing banks during the great Depression? It’s classic.

So I was really surprised when reading Bonnie and Clyde: the Lives Behind the Legend this summer (yes, that is how I actually spend my free time) that the tale we usually hear about the duo is pretty bland when compared with the real thing. Bland but romanticized. In other words, Bonnie and Clyde didn’t just rob banks, giggle, and screw all the time. Shocking, right?

First things first: neither Clyde nor Bonnie was particularly big or menacing. Bonnie was barely 4’11, and Clyde just 5’3 (source).

Bonnie Parker also wrote poetry. Her poem “The Trail’s End” (the beginning of which is posted above) tells their story. She specifically blames the police for forcing them-specifically Clyde- to turn against the law. 

“They call them cold-blooded killers
they say they are heartless and mean. 
But I say this with pride 
that I once knew Clyde, 
when he was honest and upright and clean.  

But the law fooled around; 
kept taking him down, 
and locking him up in a cell. 
Till he said to me; "I'll never be free, 
so I'll meet a few of them in hell" 

As early as 16, Clyde had a criminal record for turning in a rental car late. According to Shneider, the author of Lives Behind the Legend, after this incident the police would pick him up for any crime committed in the area, and he was not able to keep a job. So, as Bonnie suggests in her poem, Clyde turned to full-time crime as his only option. 

The vague middle of the story is fairly well known: Clyde met Bonnie at a party; there were several robberies (mostly of gas stations, and little family groceries, and only a very few banks.); a few killings… Oh, but those famous pictures taken? The ones where Bonnie is pictured with a cigar in her mouth? She didn’t actually smoke. The cigar was borrowed as a joke from Buck, Clyde’s brother and fellow member of the “Barrow gang.” (55) What is more, it is often claimed that Bonnie never fired a shot during her time as an outlaw. 

With almost a year to go until their bloody end, Clyde and Bonnie were in a horrific car accident, leaving Bonnie’s leg so badly burned that she was never able to walk properly again. She mostly hopped or was carried by Clyde. Buck died in a shoot out with the cops not long after. As Bonnie wrote,

“They don't think they're too smart or desperate
they know that the law always wins.

They've been shot at before;
but they do not ignore,
that death is the wages of sin.”

When they were finally shot down, it was after being lured into a trap set by the parents of one of their fellow gang members. 

“Some day they'll go down together
they'll bury them side by side.
To few it'll be grief,
to the law a relief
but it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.”

Knowing that their end was not long in coming, Bonnie made her mother promise to bury them together. However, her mother was so angry at Clyde- who she believed was at fault, that that they two had to be laid to rest at entirely different burial grounds.

 

There is really so much more to the Bonnie and Clyde story than I have been able to write about here... For instance, there was a period of time near the end of the story when Bonnie was carrying around a rabbit in the Barrow getaway car to give to her family as a gift. There was also talk among the gang of Bonnie and Clyde's bad hygiene- they would laugh at anyone who brushed their teeth. There is a certain kind of fatalism about the two- both knew that it couldn't end any way other than death. And it wasn't fun either. Even as famous bank robbers, they always had to sleep in the woods, or when they were lucky, in motels. They couldn't return home because of the police.

If you are interested in the full story, I really urge you to read Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend. It may seem a little awkward at first, because it's strangely told from Clyde's point of view, but it gives so much more detail to the over-glamorized the story that we all know.

Other useful sources:
http://mredpolicekidnap.blogspot.com/
http://texashideout.tripod.com/bc.htm
http://texashideout.tripod.com/quotes.html (quotes from the Barrow Gang, police, and relatives)
http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/clyde/clyde.htm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1186790/Bonnie-Clyde-How-pair-bit-crooks-worlds-famous-gangsters.html
http://www.legacy.com/ns/news-story.aspx?t=-years-of-bonnie-parker&id=116

When Woody Guthrie got “off the bum” and moved to New York, he marries a young Jewish dancer from Brooklyn, and began to write songs about the “real America” (“This Land is your Land”). He was then convinced to write a book about his travels. Guthrie was convinced by the provocative, socialistic, artists and political agitators in (mostly) Greenwich Village who starting the Folk movement with their love of Guthrie’s music, and feelings of finding a truly representative American music.
 
As I said in my last post about Guthrie: “Guthrie was ahead of his time socially and politically. He wanted to tell the real story of the road, in the real vernacular, just like he does in his music. He wanted to tell the American story in a way that was truly American, and that is what folk music is. Some reviews at the time put down his writing styles for its "Too careful reproduction of illiterate speech." (Library Journal quote via source). However, it is clear when reading it, he is not imitating a way of living, speaking or thinking. Just like his attempt to make a national anthem that was more representative of the America most people lived in, he wanted to write about an experience that most people could relate to at the time.”

(source) He wrote the song “This Land is Your Land,” as a new national anthem for the real “folks” out there. He thought “God Bless America” wasn’t representative of the American people especially in 1940 when he wrote this famous song. He was very political, and wrote many songs having to do with social and politial issues, but none are as clear and famous as this one: “"This Land Is Your Land," written in 1940 to tell Guthrie's countrymen that America belongs to the many and not the few” (source).

(source)
 
A Folk song is a song for the people, about the people and representative of the people. Guthrie felt this way about his music, and how music should be. Reading about him, his life, his carrer and his beliefs has been truly enlightening for me as a musican, and also on a personal level. When I was younger, I went to a very progressive school. We would have school meetings and all the different grades would present some sort of artistic work (performing or otherwise). The whole school though, would always sing at every assembly. There were a few songs that consistently repeated, and “This Land is Your Land” was one of them. The older we got at that school, the more we were expected to pass the knowledge of this song on to the younger students, and teach them the lyrics and little dances we made up. It was a community and participatory event that brought us all closer together. However, though I’ve always known the lyrics to this song, I never understood their meaning or ever gave them any thought.
 
Knowing what I know now about what Guthrie was trying to say with this song, and reading the lyrics carefully I understand that he was talking about the dire situations of people he had seen across America, and though he loved his country and wanted to make sure everyone felt a sense of belonging here, he was acknowledging the problems we were having doing that at the time. It was a form of social protest and a form of letting the government know that steps needed to be taken so that America was no longer leaving problems alone in order to keep an idyllic appearance for the country.