Richmond Press, Inc.                          Richmond, VA                          1938

Twenty-Seventh Street Gang

There used to be a gang that hung out at the corner of Twenty-seventh and Franklin Streets and who used the field that was at the northwest corner.

Tanky Vaden, Bob Bennett, Chauncey Marston, Charlie DeVoto, Willie Gordon, Frank Don Leavy (the boys called him Tater-head, affectionately) were some of the members. They had a four-footed member, a well beloved dog by name Dewey. He had formerly belonged to Father McKeefry, but he love the boys; and so the kindly and just old priest gave him to them; and thereafter he was qualified member of the gang. He was a large dog, bulky, able, in color white, with a brindle spot over one eye, perhaps; serious and business-like, stubborn, but oh! how he loved the boys! And how the boys loved him.

Their ambition was great. One Christmas they started a bonfire in "their" field on the forenoon of Christmas Eve and kept it up all day, kept it going all through the night, setting and maintaining regular watches, the watch on duty waking up the next watch, when their time came, by pulling a string, perhaps, that was left hanging out of the window, the other end being tied to the sleeper's toe. Kept it burning all day long Christmas Day and through to midnight Christmas night!

Another Christmas they had more than a hundred ash-barrels saved up. And, taking the boards off two fences that separated the upper end of the field from the blind alley that opened on Twenty-sixth Street between Franklin and Grace, they carried through to the field a number of railroad ties that had been piled in the alley by someone, and which said ties they used to make the basis of their fire. The Barrels were piled on top, both wide and high, and the match applied. What a roaring blaze it made! It almost frightened the boys themselves. And it burned and burned and burned for days and days, leaving at last a big pile of ashes and charcoal.