Richmond Press, Inc.                          Richmond, VA                          1938

The Diamonds Hill Cats

Diamond Hill was a long hill that paralleled the river. It had been called originally Trent's Hill; but in the sixties Mr. Moore found a large rough diamond there in a post hole he was digging, which diamond he sent to Belgium to be cut and then sold it for several thousand dollars. Hence the later name. The top of the hill was afterward razed to the level of Seventh Street by brickyards, all except the extreme western part, which still remains west of Semmes Avenue.

There was a small gang in my time living on that hill, but they did not have enough boys to make a baseball nine and so had to go to other territory when they wanted to play anything bigger than short game, Stonewall, or two-old-cat.

They rather looked down upon the boys who lived at the northeast corner of their territory, about the foot of Porter Street, say, down in the bottom, and contemptuously styled them Swamp Poodle cats.

Tom Dorning, Llewly and Jimmie Lewis and their big brother, Ed, Frank Dunford, Hary Calligan, and some others made up the gang.

Once there came a company of men with a big tent, which they pitched on Diamond Hill; and all of us kids thought surely the circus had come to town. It was a crew engaged upon work of some kind in connection with the railroad, perhaps. But a great crowd of boys from the various gangs was there, supervising everything they did, after the manner of genus puer.

They had a cook, too, with a cook stove and pots and pans; and soon we saw him putting into the oven and taking out again big rounded biscuits made of mixed corn meal and wheat flour. Our mouths watered after the biscuits, just as yours would, when you were a kid. At length the cook said: "Which one of you boys will get me a bucket of water?"

No one responded. The bucket he had was a great, unwieldy thing, with thick staves, ironbound, and a great capacity. Besides, the spring was far down the hill.

He looked at a boy named McGruder, from up on Fifteenth Street, and who looked to him as if he was a stout and clumsy lad (of course the little rats called him Gruder).

"If you'll get me some water I'll give you a biscuit."

This inducement was too much for Gruder. He took the bucket and went blithely down hill to the spring. He returned less blithely, toiling up the steep incline. Again and again the cook sent him for more, until all his pots and pans were full and he had a sufficiency. Then, when Gruder asked for his reward, the cook gave him instead a swift kick. At which all of us set up a shout of laughter; and Jimmie Lewis (the little villain) made up a little lay, or ditty: "Gruder--water--biscuits."

Those old days seem so distant!