Grayson County TXGenWeb

My Life with Bonnie & Clyde
by Blanche Caldwell Barrow

In 1932-33 Blanche, widow of Clyde Barrow's older brother, Buck, worked as a beautician at the Cinderella Beauty Shoppe at 430 W. Sears (on the corner at Fannin Ave) for about a year, early 1932 - early 1933. The shop was owned by Blanche's sister-in-law, Artie Winkler, oldest sister of the Barrow brothers. Google shows it to be a vacant lot now, with only a set of concrete "steps to nowhere" to indicate that a house was once there.

The Cinderella Beauty Shoppe
430 West Sears Street
December 1932
from Barrow, Blanche Caldwell. My Life with Bonnie & Clyde (University of Oklahoma Press, 2004)

Blanche recounts the spring day in 1933 when she walked from the shop to the post office and, along the way, passed a Western Union boy on his bicycle. She learned a short time later that he was delivering a telegram
from the just-pardoned Buck, who wrote, "Baby, I'll be home to you as soon as I can get there." True to his word, he and a third Barrow brother arrived in Denison early the following morning to take Blanche back to Dallas.

On May 23, 1934, Bonnie & Clyde met their destiny at the hands of the FBI and Texas Rangers. Clyde's sister, Artie toured Texas theaters with the sister of Bonnie Parker, beginning less than a month after Bonnie & Clyde were killed.

After working at her sister-in-law's beauty shop, Blanche had an adventure that ended with her serving six years in a Missouri state prison. Shortly after her release, she was rumored to have returned to Denison in search of a job. That rumor was the subject of at least one editorial comment in the local press.