Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire I just watched The Highwaymen

I don't think Frank Hamer would much give a flying fugk.

The movie is based on his assessments based on decades of manhunts.

Meh...it’s a good movie, but Maney Gault was only 48 and was not a down and out drunk. He was actively employed with the Highway Patrol in 1934.

In some ways 50 back the was even younger than it is now. People weren’t counting down the days until they could draw Social Security. They worked. And they worked until they died because they didn’t have a choice. And yeah, a lot of them did die in their late 50s and 60s when one of these heart ailments or infections that people still get but mostly recover from today would kill them, but they worked.

Hamer like it so much that he pissed off J. Edgar Hoover by offering to catch John Dillinger.

Going to have to see it tonight when I get home.

My Mom was raised in east Texas. Born in 1923. They burned out and moved to Dallas about the time the war broke out. Dad was born and raised right here in south Kansas about thirty miles from Missouri, but it was dusty enough around here to have to put quilts, rags and such around the doors and windows to keep the dust out.

Grandpa was tough enough to stay here and not migrate to California. I guess that was good...They ate jackrabbits.

Another historical fact!!!!

Hamer was the only ever Oxford educated ranger!!!!

Truth! Look it up!

My wife and I watched the movie last night, and we enjoyed it. While I was on a road trip down south a couple of years ago, I visited the ambush site. Here are some pictures.

First, I made a stop at the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland, Louisiana. It was a mixture of historical artifacts and hoke. It claims to be located on the site of Rosa's Cafe, where the duo dined for the last time. It had a couple of supposedly authentic shootout guns and then some others "just like the ones really used." They had shot up a different car as a simulated death car. They had some VHS tapes of History Channel type historical footage, some movie posters and some period artifacts. It was a hoot.


Here is the original marker at the ambush site:


Here is the newer model:


The ambush site:


Looking south on Highway 154 (toward Sailes):


Looking north on Highway 154 (toward Gibsland):

If Bonnie wasn't a participant in the killings then she was the poster child for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. lol Unlike all the stand up shootouts where they give the bad guy all the opportunity to kill them in all those old west movies, the real guys were just going to ambush them and kill them and then go home to their wives' chicken dinner while B&C were barking in hell. Same with the unlucky Frito Banditos, whether they were 6 or sixty in number.

Looks about like any other spot in the road in northwest Louisiana or east Texas.

The Barrow gang weren’t thrill killers. Plenty of instances where they let people, even cops, go. They just didn’t hesitate to kill someone, anyone, if they felt they had to.

I loaned my Son the book a long time ago. He called Saturday to say be watched the movie. I forgot about it. He did say he enjoyed the movie.

Truth! The weird thing about my tour in 2017 is that things still look just as bad in the rural areas as depicted during the depression, but without the shanty towns. There were abandoned houses everywhere. I went and visited where I learned to deer hunt in Huey Long's old stomping grounds in Winn Parish, and I couldn't believe it. I guess the decline in the logging industry hit that area hard. It was like being in a time warp!

thank you for sharing your thoughts, brother.

Please remember the feelings of the other brothers.

Oxford, Miss?

Texas

Ain’t no decline in the logging industry down here. Just in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t support that many people. For the most part, the logging industry didn’t get going good until most of the people cleared out. Damned near every one of those thousands of acres of pine woods were at one time covered in corn and cotton. But the boll weevil and soil depletion got the cotton and the Depression finished off those small farms.

In the county where I grew up in, it was the 2010 census before there were as many people as there were in the 1890 census. And even then, most of those were concentrated in one town instead of being spread out all over the county like they were in 1890.

I hear people talk about habitat depletion and urban enroachment all the time. That ain’t true in most of the rural south. Lots of those counties have more “wild” areas than at any time since white settlement began.

Deflave made my point. Men worked very hard back then and most guys were pretty rough looking for their age. Not an abundance of metro sexuals back then.

Fat wasn't an issue during the depression. You either worked it off or starved it off...or both.

The movie also committed one of those Hollywood sins that damned near everything in Hollywood set in Louisiana does. The sheriff had a cajun accent. He was 200 miles north of any real Cajuns.

Even if you're skinny, 106 days in a 1934 Ford chasing bad guys when you're 50 years old is gonna be less than a blast.

OK, thanks. I was just going by something my friend in Choudrant, LA told me.