Locals Capitalize On Bonnie & Clyde

After seventy five years, there’s still a great fascination of the Bonnie & Clyde saga held by locals and tourists alike. While most of the media and tourist attention has shined on the tiny Bienville Parish town of Gibsland, LA where the Authentic Bonnie and Clyde Museum and the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum are located, the Bienville Parish seat of Arcadia, LA has its own place of notoriety in the Bonnie & Clyde story.

Both Gibsland and Arcadia, LA are located eight miles apart along Interstate 20 in the northern part of the state, approximately midway between Shreveport and Monroe, LA. The fateful ambush occurred on May 23, 1934 several miles south of Gibsland along LA-Hiway 154 near the village of Sailes, LA.

Even though at times Gibsland seems to get more of the limelight for being the closest town to the ambush, when it comes to generating municipal tax revenue Gibsland is not the only local town capitalizing on Bonnie and Clyde’s fame.

Gibsland's commemorative Bonnie & Clyde Festival is held annually this time every year, while the swap meet in Arcadia is a monthly event that makes the Bonnie & Clyde Trade Days RV Park a very integral part of Arcadia's overall economy year round. Local business owners say, "So goes the Trade Days, so goes Arcadia."

Covering 130 acres in the piney woods of Bienville Parish, the Bonnie & Clyde Trade Days and RV Park in Arcadia is the largest swap meet in Louisiana as vendors and bargain hunters travel from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Mississippi to make great deals, enjoy beautiful scenery and fish.

Ray Worsham, owner of the Bonnie & Clyde Trade Days RV Park in Arcadia vividly recalled his mother’s account of how she was among the hundreds if not thousands of people who immediately lined up to see the dead bodies of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow after the bullet riddled “Death Car” had been towed to the Conger’s Funeral Home in Arcadia with their bodies still inside.

Worsham, also noted that the funeral home was located at the rear of a furniture store and to keep the furniture from fading, the lower half of all the windows were painted. This forced curious people on the outside to climb a ladder in order to get a gruesome view of the bodies.

The 3-day monthly Trade Days event brings in a whopping draw of customers for the area's gas stations, restaurants, antique stores, grocery/retail stores, and hotels in Arcadia, thus increasing the town’s tax revenue and boosting local morale.

However, the Bonnie & Clyde Trade Days has a knack for getting partially or completely rained on nearly every month! According to the testimony of its vendors and owner this month of May was the first profitable swap meet in all of 2009 so far, as the weather was finally favorable enough for people to shop during the day. The rain only fell during non-peak hours.

Some locals have gone so far to say that the bad weather (which seems to come like clock-work nearly every Trade Days weekend) is due to a curse on the area for continuously glorifying the Barrow Gang who was known to have killed at least a dozen people during their crime spree. Others believe it just rains a lot.

Worsham, park owner since 2006 dispells the myth by saying he has never heard of any criticisms about glorifying the criminals or for not giving proper condolences or acknowledgement to the families of the Barrow Gang's victims.

When the Bonnie & Clyde Trade Days and RV Park first opened on a very hot sunny day in September of 1990, current Arcadia Mayor Eugene Smith stated that the streets of Arcadia were so jam packed, cars were lined up along I-20 to get off at the Arcadia exit.

The main thoroughfare leading from the interstate through town to the Trade Days Park moved at such a snail's pace, that some people who didn't know how long the 6 mile trek was began to walk on foot because it seemed faster than trying to drive.

Unfortunately for some who managed to overcome such obstacles, if they didn’t get to the park early that day, it was a tough day indeed because by late afternoon, the Trade Days vendors sold out and the concessions stands and park staff ran out of ice, food, toilet paper, everything!

Ever since that first weekend, the Bonnie & Clyde Trade Days RV Park in Arcadia opens Friday, Saturday and Sunday on the weekend before the 3^rd Monday of each month. A few people in this area still occasionally have a hard time figuring out exactly what the Trade Days dates will fall on from month to month.

However, the weekend before the 3^rd Monday schedule was set up in order not to conflict with another hugely popular swap meet in Canton, TX.

Bonnie & Clyde Trade Days and RV Park's huge initial success has waned in recent years, but the new owner is hopeful for a recovery as the nation's economy recovers. The Trade Days owner believes that the economy has had a direct affect on the market's success as well as a major shift in the types of items being sold, namely antiques.

Owner Ray Worsham says “The old style antiques that were very unique like the real ice boxes once used as refrigerators, porcelain figurines, dolls with porcelain heads and hands were a major draw to the park. Those items got snatched up during the 90's and will stay in people's houses until the Gen-Xer's have a chance to clean out Mom & Dad's stuff.”

He also says that the older generation of vendors is dying out: “Even the old-school Baby Boom vendors who have been rock steady at Bonnie & Clyde Trade Days over the years have begun to scale down, and in some cases not show up at all for several months due to the terrible economy.”

Louisiana's overall economy in general is not as bad as the nation's economy, but BCTD’s out-of-state vendors were drastically affected by $4/gal gasoline last year, and many lost the incentive to travel such long distances, especially with so much unfavorable weather this year. But overall, the Trade Days is still a major draw, and appears to be making a comeback.

The very names themselves "Bonnie & Clyde" have a particular appeal to people both locally and abroad. The BCTD Park has an original 1934 Ford similar to the Death Car on the grounds, as well as some other B&C memorabilia, including some original photos of the notorious couple. www.bonnieandclydetradedays.com

The Arcadia/Bienville Parish Chamber of Commerce located at the rear of the Train Depot also has some fascinating Bonnie & Clyde memorabilia.

During those days the legend of Bonnie & Clyde was a great mystery that seemed to have gotten many people’s minds off the Great Depression, at least momentarily. Bonnie Parker’s romantic involvement with the likes of Clyde Barrow, and her association with a gang of notorious killers seemed so unlikely and brought great intrigue.

For a long time only a few people knew exactly what the couple looked like. There were no fax machines, computers or internet, GPS systems, electronic credit card purchase trails, or photo-capable cell phones available to broadcast the Barrow Gang’s profile or track their sporadic movements.

By the time their deeds were publicized on the front page of local newspapers, they’d be well on their way to who-knew-where for the next job. Bonnie & Clyde were known to drive long distances in the back wood areas and to criss-cross from state to state in order to avoid capture.

But one day towards the end of their crime spree and in their haste to escape an ambush, this elusive couple unintentionally left behind some rolls of undeveloped photo film in a stolen car which they abandoned for the police to find.

Shortly thereafter the infamous photos that we see today began to appear across the country. And when the photos came out, some were surprised to find that Bonnie & Clyde looked a bit older than being in their early to mid twenties.

Aside from general admiration of their boldness and the love story element, it is this writer's opinion that part of the nostalgia of Bonnie & Clyde even today has to do with how it keeps us connected to that day in time in America: void of air conditioning, super highways, hospital emergency rooms and television.

Even today, the place marking where Bonnie & Clyde were gunned down is remote; deep in the piney woods of Louisiana where cell phones are still known to fail.

While attending the 75th anniversary of the Bonnie & Clyde ambush reenactment deep in the piney woods along LA-Hiway 154, I briefly spoke with a friendly gentleman who asked for directions to the nearest gas station.

He had led his family in a 2-car caravan from Houston, TX, some 300 miles away, and I knew just how he felt because both of us had approached the ambush marker from the same backwoods area without a gas station in sight.

I was a bit low on gas too because since Gibsland was blocked off from the interstate side that day, I had to approach the ambush marker from the opposite direction. Not realizing how much farther it was by taking the long way around, I admit being a bit nerve wracked as the needle on my gas gauge seemed to dip past the 1/4 mark like a sweeping second hand on a clock!

Another friendly local gentleman by the name of Bill Holmes, now in his early eighties lives a few miles from the ambush marker just outside Sailes, LA. He said that as a young boy, after walking 7 miles from a nearby community that he too lined up to see the bloody bodies of Bonnie & Clyde at the funeral home.

Mr. Holmes also recounted that the people of Sailes often talked about how the current location of the now famous ambush marker on LA Hiway 154 is not the actual location of the ambush.

They claim the ambush actually took place about 1 mile south at a certain bend on the same road. If that is true, I can see why this might be the case because as the photos above indicate, the topography of the road is very conducive to accommodating a large group of tourists seeking to view the ambush marker at it's current location.

On May 23, 2009, there were many people from all around to celebrate this 75^th anniversary of the Bonnie & Clyde ambush. They anxiously awaited to view the scheduled reenactment at the site of the ambush marker.

Even though the local municipalities of Arcadia, LA and Gibsland, LA benefit financially from the notoriety of Bonnie & Clyde, despite what some may think, I believe there is nothing sinister about it. This is a normal and expected trend for any town that hosts an indigenous tourist attraction.

It is believed by some that Bonnie Parker never actually killed anybody, but of course was guilty by association and participated in the crimes by loading the gang members’ weapons.

Whether she pulled any triggers or not, during previous encounters with the law Clyde Barrow proved himself to be a cold-blooded killer if given even the slightest advantage, and the heroic ambush posse of Bienville Parish would take no chances with either of them.

Although the reenactment Ford was different than the actual Death Car (notice how the doors open from the front), it was an awesome and sobering experience to imagine what it must have been like when 6 law enforcement officials shot first and asked no questions that fateful day.

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