Jeff Guinn Read online

  Cumie had lived in Nacogdoches all her life, and was part of a family that adhered to the most conservative of Christian faiths. A tiny girl just under five feet tall, she was a churchgoing Baptist of the “hard shell” variety, raised in the belief that she needed to be good because that was what Jesus expected, and reminded of it by her parents, W. W. and Mahaly Walker, with frequent beatings for the slightest transgression. When she met Henry, she had just endured what she later recalled as “one of the worst whippings I ever got” for some perceived misstep with a previous beau. Cumie was not allowed to apply the profane face paint known as “make-up,” which was just starting to sneak its Satan-inspired way into the Texas countryside. She was so swayed by her parents’ lectures on the subject that, for the rest of her life, Cumie assumed that any woman using cosmetics was at least someone of low morals and most likely a prostitute.

  Rigorous discipline didn’t mean Cumie’s childhood was unhappy. She loved animals, cats especially, and had many pets. Though some conservative Christian homes banned all but religious music, secular tunes were allowed in Cumie’s. She had a knack for playing instruments, and was especially talented on the Jew’s harp. And, very much unlike Henry, she went to school regularly.

  On December 5, 1891, Henry and Cumie were married in her parents’ house. The bride was sixteen, ten months younger than her new husband. Cumie immediately embraced Henry’s dream of owning his own farm. It was a fine Christian ambition, one she could understand and wholeheartedly support. Newlywed Henry quit his job at the sawmill and rented a few acres near town. It was risky. The sawmill paid regular wages, and people always needed lumber. But there was no reason for Henry to doubt he could someday evolve from tenant to landowner. Many young men shared similar ambitions. Forty percent of all Americans lived on farms. Of the 4.6 million farms operating in 1891, more than one-fourth were at least partially worked by tenants. In Texas, it was closer to one-third. During good years, even a smallish tenant farm of five or six acres could produce three thousand pounds, or about five bales, of cotton, enough after sale to pay the landlord, provide at least a subsistence living for the tenant’s family, and, perhaps, leave a few dollars over for savings. The work was arduous, but Henry was mostly past his bouts with illness. Cumie recalled in her unpublished memoir that the first half-decade of her marriage was “bright and rosey then, for we were young and saw things with the eyes of youth…. But we soon awoke to a realization that life was indeed earnest.”

  The fortunes of Nacogdoches farmers fluctuated more than Henry and Cumie liked. It was a given that farm couples produced children as well as crops, since every offspring who survived infancy, as all Henry and Cumie’s babies did, eventually meant an additional pair of hands in the field. But the arrivals of son Elvin in 1894 and daughter Artie in 1899 initially added just two more mouths to feed, and their parents decided a move to Milam County, also in East Texas, might provide better opportunity. They did not consider giving up farming.

  The Barrows rented another small acreage in Jones Prairie, where they continued to grow cotton and produce babies. A second son, Ivan, was born in 1903, and another daughter, Nell, came in 1905. Later there would be considerable dispute over whether Ivan’s year of birth was 1903 or 1905; in the terrible times to come, Cumie sometimes mixed up the dates and order of her children’s births. But she entered 1903 as Ivan’s birth year in her family Bible, Cumie’s most sacred possession. She would never have recorded inaccurate information there.

  Milam County didn’t prove any more profitable for Henry than Nacogdoches. Cumie would recall “it got pretty rough.” When Henry’s few acres couldn’t financially support the family, they all—mother and older children as well as father—had to begin “hiring out” to help pick the cotton on other farmers’ property. It now seemed obvious that Henry Barrow was never going to be in a position to buy a farm of his own, but still he wouldn’t give up the dream.

  Once again, Henry packed his family and few possessions into his wagon and moved on, this time a little to the north near the tiny hamlet of Telico in Ellis County, Texas. The familiar pattern immediately began to repeat itself: Henry struggled to break even, and more babies came. The first was Clyde in 1910, and his date of birth, like Ivan’s, was destined to be incorrectly reported. Cumie, in the subsequent time of confusion, told some authorities that her third son was born in 1909, but she entered the date as March 24, 1910, in the family Bible, which would seem more authoritative. Farm women like Cumie usually gave birth in their shacks, often with the help of local midwives (Clyde’s was Annie Curtis of Telico), and public birth records were kept haphazardly. None for Clyde Chestnut Barrow apparently exist. L.C. (the initials were his full name) came in 1913, then Marie in 1918, and the family was complete with seven children.

  All four Barrow sons were addressed in the family by nicknames rather than their given ones. Elvin became “Jack.” No one seems to recall why. Ivan was nicknamed “Buck” by an aunt. Clyde was “Bud” because he was such buddies with his little brother, and L.C. was “Flop” thanks to an unfortunate pair of ears. Jack was serious and industrious like his father, Buck and Bud were high-spirited, and Flop was a good-natured tagalong.

  Looking back on life in Telico, Nell Barrow later said, “I suppose we weren’t a very happy family.” Being happy took energy her parents didn’t have. Henry came home to their three-room shack every day from his rented fields feeling exhausted. Cumie spent some of each day out working with him while the older children minded the younger ones. Then she had to come in, fix dinner, haul water, wash clothes, nurse anyone who was sick, and do whatever else needed to be done. Clothing and food were equally hard to come by. Running water and electricity were unimaginable for most rich rural Texans, let alone any poor ones. After dark, children sleeping on pallets took up much of the floor. A few family photographs were taken at the Telico farm, no one knows by whom. Certainly the Barrows didn’t have the money to hire a photographer to come out to their rented property. The original prints and negatives have long since disappeared—sold to or stolen by collectors—but L.C.’s stepson Buddy still has a few grainy copies. In them, Cumie Barrow’s mouth is striking. Her lips are pursed in a thin, pinched line. Families of the time liked to pose formally, but there is not even the slightest hint of warmth or contentment in Cumie’s face, and the expressions of her husband and children are equally joyless. “We had no time, then, for day dreaming,” Cumie would write. “Life was very much of a struggle.”

  Cumie divided that struggle into two parts: for earthly survival, and for heavenly glory. None of her children demonstrated interest in emulating their father as farmers. Accordingly, they, unlike him, needed educations. Although they had to go to country school “by the littles,” attending in between working their own family harvests and hiring out as field workers to other, more well-to-do neighbors, Cumie saw to it that they were in class whenever possible. She tolerated no debate, telling them, “If you don’t go to school, you’ll grow up to be idiots.”

  Even more important to Cumie than her children’s ongoing education was the state of their faith. Jesus constantly watched and judged all; life on earth was an eyeblink of eternity, and Cumie wanted her offspring weighing that into every decision they made. The Jesus worshipped by Cumie Barrow and her fellow backcountry fundamentalists saved through fear rather than forgiveness. You did what the Bible said because Jesus would send your soul straight to hell if you didn’t. At home, the Barrow children were reminded of this daily. It would have also been pointed out to them in church as well as by their mother that, in fact, their poverty was a plus in their relationship with Christ. The Bible was replete with reminders that Jesus loved poor people a lot more than he did rich ones. Wearing patched clothes and sometimes not having enough to eat were, in effect, evidence of personal godliness. The implication was obvious, if not declared outright: poor people were good, rich people were bad.

  The Bible as well as her own experience guided Cumie’s appr
oach to discipline. She did not want to spoil her children, so she never spared the rod. The legs of all seven kids were constant targets. Youngest child Marie would later recall how her mother made them “dance.” Cumie never doubted her stern methods. She was hitting those kids to save them.

  Cumie was the Barrow parent who did the hitting, not Henry. He was a typical man of his time and background. The father’s job was to provide for his family, and Henry took this seriously. It was the mother’s responsibility to discipline the children. Taciturn to the point of muteness, Henry would mutter, “Cumie, make that child mind,” and expect it to be done.

  It speaks well of Cumie that none of the Barrow children grew up hating or even resenting their grimly determined mother. All seven had close relationships with her throughout their lives. She loved them, and in spite of her sternness and whippings, they realized it. Whatever problems any of the Barrows ever had with the outside world, within their family they were devoted to each other.

  Most of the Barrow kids didn’t give Cumie cause for concern. They were fairly typical East Texas country youngsters who did their chores, played when they had time, loved going to the picture show as a special treat—the theater in Telico was a three-mile walk from the family farm, but they happily made the six-mile round-trip—and went to church and school as mandated by their mother. Their worst offenses were simple ones, like smoking primitive cigarettes packed with grapevine. But then Buck and Bud began straying from the straight and narrow, and Cumie’s preaching and whipping didn’t seem to help.

  Buck started out attending school, and he did well when he was there. But he loved the outdoors better and aggravated his mother by frequently playing hooky. Buck quit school for good after the third grade, and was almost as illiterate as his father. For a while, Cumie still had hopes for him because he kept attending church, but even there he eventually defied her.

  It wasn’t that Buck was in any way mean-spirited. He’d always been as happy-go-lucky as his family’s hardscrabble lifestyle allowed. When, as a little boy, he had no toy horses to play with, he pretended to be a horse himself. Hunting and fishing, critical to keeping food on the Barrow table, were pastimes Buck considered fun rather than a chore. He had a quick temper, but would cool down just as fast. And though he flouted Cumie’s edicts about school and church, he never was insolent. Instead, he was just—Buck.

  But as a teenager, Buck began getting involved in cockfighting. Much as his father had once yearned for a horse so he could compete rather than bet, Buck wanted his own pugnacious rooster, and it was easier for a country kid to acquire one of those than a racehorse. Cumie noted in her memoir that Buck “had some game roosters that he got hold of.” It wouldn’t be the last time Cumie chose not to know what one of her sons had really been up to. Nell Barrow was more specific: her brother, she said, wasn’t above “lifting” a bird. And Buck developed a personal philosophy, one he shared with his younger siblings. “A good run,” he would lecture them, “is better than a poor stand.”

  There appeared to be little chance of reforming Buck, but Bud was seven years younger. He didn’t like school any more than Buck did, but he stuck with it, and to Cumie’s pleasure he very much enjoyed attending church. Later, at age fourteen, Bud would even be “saved” and baptized at the Eureka Baptist Church, a necessary step in the life of any fundamentalist believer who hoped to gain a place in heaven. It involved admitting before the congregation that he was a helpless sinner who wanted to accept Jesus and His teachings into his own life, for fear of being damned for eternity. Cumie didn’t doubt Bud meant it.

  But there were still those bothersome traits, like hero-worshipping Buck and bossing even his older sister Nell around. When she and Bud and Flop played, Bud had to be the one in charge, saying who would pretend to be who, and no backtalk. He had a forceful enough personality to make them go along with it. And the roles Bud inevitably chose for himself were outlaws. He was Jesse James or Billy the Kid. Nell and Flop were variously members of his gang, outfoxed lawmen, or victims. Sometimes Bud had a toy gun; usually, just pointed sticks. All the kids around Telico played games mimicking frontier violence, at least in part because that was a regular theme of the picture shows there. Flashy, gun-wielding William S. Hart was Bud’s favorite actor, and Jesse and Billy had been poor people’s folk heroes for years, defiant rebels who stood up to for themselves and died doing it, each betrayed by someone he trusted but never wavering in his disdain for powerful oppressors.

  Bud liked and was handy with real guns, too. Every country family had a rifle or two, which were necessary for hunting and also for doing away with farm animals too sick or decrepit to be of further use. Cumie recalled that Bud “could shoot good,” adding the caveat that “he hardly ever carried a gun much.” Bud liked handling the guns far more than he liked shooting animals. Unlike Buck, he hunted out of duty rather than for pleasure, and avoided it as much as possible. Target practice was more to his taste.

  Bud’s temper was different, too, from his older brother’s. Bud remembered every slight, every insult. His anger would smolder long-term. Forgiveness was not part of his character.

  Cumie fretted most about Bud’s behavior in fights. All country boys had their share of scraps. Bud usually tried to avoid them, preferring to talk rather than punch his way out of disagreements. But when fighting was inevitable, when Bud believed he had no other option, then he completely lost control and exploded into violence. He’d use fists, sticks, rocks, or any other handy weapon, and never showed mercy to opponents. If Bud lost a fight, he brooded and waited for the opportunity to attack again.

  Perhaps Bud’s greatest pleasure was music. He took after his mother that way, and it was a special bond between them. (Cumie would later brag that “all during his life his mother seems to have been first in his thoughts.”) There was a guitar in the Barrow shack, and Bud taught himself to play. Cumie’s religious strictures were also flexible regarding dancing. Bud excelled at this among the Barrow kids, to the extent that his mother pronounced him “an extra good dancer.” He had some thoughts of making music his livelihood. His first announced professional ambition was “to be in some kind of band with other boys.”

  Bud spent part of each year living with his uncle. Frank Barrow had set himself up farming in Corsicana, Texas, about twenty-seven miles from Henry’s place in Telico, and Nellie and Bud, and later Flop and Marie, would be sent there for weeks at a time. Frank was a little more successful than Henry, and it’s probable the younger kids among the Ellis County Barrows were sent to him so they could still have something to eat when the cupboard was mostly bare in Telico. But the sojourns at Uncle Frank’s weren’t vacations. Visiting nieces and nephews were expected to go to school, and, outside the classroom, to pitch in and work just like at home, picking cotton or hoeing corn. Bud’s cousins, Pete and Dood, enjoyed his company, but they did have one complaint. The guy never wanted to hunt. Instead, he wanted to play Billy the Kid or Jesse James.

  So, despite his love of religion and music, Cumie continued to fret about Bud, and she agonized over Buck. In her later years, as with many parents who regret tragedy in their children’s lives, Cumie decided she and Henry were at least partially to blame. “We have both learned since that each child born is a challenge, and a duty and responsibility we should all try to fully and squarely meet,” Cumie reflected. “Perhaps had my husband [and I] understood that then and taken more time to really be with our children, played with them more and watched over their growing up as we should have, things might have been far different from what they were.”

  At least Buck and Bud were out in the country, where their potential for mischief was mostly confined to stealing roosters, cutting school, or pretending to be famous outlaws. There wasn’t that much trouble available for them to get into, until a war’s aftermath and the ambitions of their older siblings conspired to end their isolation from more substantial temptation.

  When World War I ended on November 11, 1918, American
farmers went down to defeat along with the Germans. The term “global economics” would have meant nothing to Henry and Cumie, but it was deadly to the tattered remnants of their dreams.

  During the war, farm production in Europe came to a standstill. American grain and cotton were suddenly in worldwide demand. There wasn’t enough to go around, and, because of scarcity, prices skyrocketed accordingly. From the halls of Congress in Washington, D.C., to the tenant farms of East Texas, no one apparently anticipated that the price boom would ever end. Cotton had been selling for about ten to twelve cents a pound in the years prior to the war, but just before Armistice Day it was forty cents, and rumored to soon be shooting up to fifty or even sixty. Between 1910 and 1918, the average value of Texas farms had doubled. Big landowners took out loans to acquire even more property and additional seed to plant on it. Banks were glad to cooperate. Tenants like Henry didn’t have money to invest, but they did hope the effects of the boom would eventually trickle down to them. Instead, soon after hostilities ceased, European farmers once again had their own crops to sell, international supply was great enough to meet or even exceed overseas demand, and cotton prices in America plummeted to eight cents a pound. Wealthy U.S. landowners who’d borrowed to take advantage of the high prices were hard-pressed to meet their loan payments. They were no longer in position to extend credit to tenants who needed extra time to pay their rent. In East Texas, the price of cotton seed was more than what the resulting crop could be sold for after harvest. Devastated tenant farmers began giving up their land and moving their families to the cities, where there was the promise of jobs in factories. American industry, unlike agriculture, was still booming.