Bonnie and Clyde [antikvár]

1 The times were hard. The great depression lay across the land and suffering spread and many lives were shattered. Factories closed down. Businesses failed. Men were thrown out of work and despaired of ever finding jobs. Small farms were possessed by banks and farmers were ordered off the soil. War veterans peddled nickel apples on the streets of the cities and took nourishment at soup kitchens. Politicians, well fed and addicted to platitudes, foretold a comer around which prosperity waited. Few people ever turned that comer. Anger and bittemess intensified. Dry-eyed women could do nothing to ease the hunger of their children or the torment of their husbands. Families piled their belongings into old cars and headed west; others split up, never to be reunited, and young men frequently went out on their own, taking what they could find out of life. It was 1932 and the times were hard. In the states of the Southwest the land baked under a hot, white sun, all existence slowed, the juice of life running slow. In West Dallas, Texas, the air was thick and oppressive, an infectious stillness that stretched to the horizon and put Bonnie Parker in mind of the mournful cadence of a fimeral as it headed for the cemetery outside of town, 5