Richmond Press, Inc.                          Richmond, VA                          1938

The Fifth Street Gang

Down on old South Fifth Street, in those days quite an aristocratic neighborhood, there was a gang, small in numbers, but able in personnel.  Pat Moore, Davy Walker and his cousin, Runt Walter, Fred Scott and his brothers, Louis and Henri de Sibourg (sons of the French consul, Baron de Sibourg, who is buried in Hollywood), Palmer Gray and George Stacy, Hoffman Allan, Moses and Hampton Hoge (they called him Hammy; they were sons of the celebrated divine), and sometimes Gray Wattson would come around from Sixth Street, or Billie McKinney would come down from Third Street.

The Scott boys had a cannon, with an inch and a quarter bore-they used an old broomstick for a ramrod-and once upon a Christmas they had gotten a pound of powder to shoot the cannon with.  They had it on the mantelpiece of their room, next to Cary Street (in the grand old Marz house at the southeast corner) and there it stayed peacefully until morning; when Tom Scott threw a torpedo which exploded and set off the powder, with the result that all the panes of glass in their windows were blown out and there were some very scared little boys that Christmas.

There came to town in those days the first Wild West show ever on the road, to-wit: Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill.  You may be sure that this small potato was in the dress circle to see them, carried thither by his fond father.  We remember well the slim, handsome figure of Texas Jack, his floating black moustache and his skill in shooting and throwing the lasso, in which he far excelled his partner, Bill.  This was apparent to the small-very small-boy, and was confirmed by his revered father, who himself had thrown the lasso on the Western plains.  Jack's name was Omohundro and he was born in Fluvanna County, Virginia. 

Now to the point!  Of course that show aroused the most tremendous interest amongst the juvenile population, of course the Fifth Street gang felt impelled to give, a week later, a reproduction of the Texas Jack-Buffalo Bill show; and equally of course, this small personage was there.  It was held in the largest room in the old servants' quarters of the Allan mansion, that stood at the corner of Fifth and Main and had been the residence of Edgar Allan Poe's foster-father.  Two of the boys were dressed as girls, taking the part of the two heroines of the play, one Indian and the other white, Dove-eye and Hazel-eye.

But small though I was, yet I was able to perceive that, when this imitation Texas Jack threw the lasso, he had to go right up to his man and place the loop around him.  But their costumes were beautiful, their make-up artistic, and their earnestness atoned for all faults.  They had a good audience, too; some thirty or forty, both grown-up and infantile, whose indulgent imagination helped the performance greatly.

Happy days of childhood!