After my parents married in 1967, my father still went by Clarence Goodbar, Jr. or his nickname “Sonny.” My mother, Bonita, went by Bonnie. One evening at a party when making introductions, Don Blocker made the comment they should go by “Bonnie and Clyde.”1 The movie of the same name starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway had been released a few months earlier about the Barrow gang so the moniker was fresh on people’s minds. From that evening on, my dad started going by Clyde, and my parents were Bonnie and Clyde. From then on when making introductions, they were Bonnie and Clyde, “like the gangsters.”
Clyde said his father Clarence didn’t talk about his early life very much. During the Great Depression in the 1930s when the Bonnie and Clyde Barrow gang were active, my grandfather was in his early twenties. My father claimed Clarence had a brand new fast car, probably similar to the Ford V8 like the 1934 Ford Model 40B Fordor Deluxe that Bonnie and Clyde Barrow drove when they met their end in May, 1934. My cousin Jamie Reuter posted this 1950s picture to ancestry.com and to my grandfather’s obituary page on findagrave.com.
In 2021 I watched the documentary BBC TImewatch: The Real Bonnie and Clyde (BBC Timewatch: Season 15, Episode 2, 2009). 71P8) (BBC Timewatch: Season 15, Episode 2, 2009). Thirteen minutes into the video this picture instantly grabbed my attention: Four people were standing around the front of a car and the man on the right side of the picture bore a striking resemblance to my grandfather Clarence.
I had since found another copy of that photo. The “B + B” is for Blanche and Marvin “Buck” Barrow, married outlaws.
When I mentioned the video and sent the picture to my father, he also thought the man could have been his father. However, neither my father nor I pursued this further; it remained a family curiosity. The Barrow gang by now have been well documented, but could it be that my grandfather was an unknown outlaw? A lot of the pieces fit: a man who didn’t talk about his past who could buy a new Ford hotrod during the Great Depression, especially in the South of the United States. Maybe he was a bootlegger, a common pastime where one bought beer or hard liquor from one “wet” city, county, or state, and drove it to a “dry” city, county, or state to sell for a profit. Your car had to be fast to outrun the police if you were so inclined, and have strong rear suspension to hold the weight of the booze and not arouse suspicion.
Last week, I found and added the obituary for Clarence’s second wife, Martha Mills and it got me looking through my notes for Clarence. And that picture… I had to know more.
I pasted that picture into a reverse image search and it yielded exactly two matches: one for the aforementioned BBC Timewatch documentary on YouTube, and another in the Facebook group “1920s-1930s Gangsters & Outlaws.” On July 11, 2012, a post read, “Part of the infamous Barrow Gang: (From left to right) Darrell Barrow (Clyde’s cousin), Marvin ‘Buck’ Barrow (Clyde’s brother), Blanche Barrow (Clyde’s sister-in-law and Marvin’s wife), and Pearl D. Toms (Clyde’s cousin).”
Then I had to find out more about this Pearl D. Toms, because it was giving me “A Boy Named Sue” vibes. In my experience from the 1970s on, Pearl was a feminine name. Names crossing gender boundaries isn’t anything new; at my high school in south Louisiana, I had two classmates named Tracy Duplantis, and you always heard “Would Tracy Duplantis—the boy (or ‘the girl’)—report to…” And there’s Blake, Riley, Quinn, Robin, not to mention Alex, have all crossed genders.
Searching Google for “Pearl D. Toms” led directly to this webpage where Mr. Pearl Toms stands tall on a porch. He’s a perfect match to the aforemented photos.
Pearl Toms died in 1936 from a car accident in Texas. Also, Pearl was some seven years older than Clarence, not that it matters much in terms of being a gangster.
Coming back to those pictures, there’s now no doubt the four people—the same four people—are sitting on the porch and standing around that car: Darrell Barrow, Blanche Barrow, Marvin “Buck” Barrow, and Pearl D. Toms. It wasn’t my grandfather, after all. And probably a good thing, too! since my dad is here and I am here to share this story with you.
1 Goodbar, Clyde. Whatever Happened to Mr Goodbar? (InstantPublisher.com, 2022), 54.