Richmond Press, Inc.                          Richmond, VA                          1938

The Second Street Gang

Of course, the fact will be easily perceived that the writer can give principally those gangs of which he was a member, or had some first-hand knowledge.  There was, for instance, the Second Street gang.  It was very small in numbers and had little celebrity.  I can recall some of its members:  Robert and Willie Hicks (Wee Hicks), Ash and Anthony Robinson, Rudolph Moesta, Frank Allen, LeRoy Duesberry and one or two more.

Its hangout was on Main Street near the corner of Second, at the mouth of a little blind alley.  Here we would pass a long summer's forenoon in agreeable conversation, varied, perhaps, by some boy standing in his bare feet on a small boulder against the wall of the carpenter shop of old Mr. Quistorf.  The boy would rock back and forth on the boulder, which was unstable on its foundation.  This would drive Mr. Quistorf wild and he would come rushing out after us in a fury, to our great joy.

Once we had a circus.  John Atkins, the handsome, the athletic, whom we imported from around on Cary Street, served as our acrobat.  Everybody else was the clown.

We put up signs all over the neighborhood, on all corners-Grand Circus in Anthony Robinson's Yard.  Admission, 5 Cents.

We had a parade, too.  Dressed up in our costumes and make-up, we paraded around and around that section of town, leading eight shaggy and perfumed goats and followed by a hundred and eight kids, some twenty of whom had the nickel necessary to come in.  The yard was a large one, the lot comprising nearly half of the square at Second and Franklin Streets.  We had laid out a ring and filled it with saw-dust from the saw-mill and Sixth and Canal.  Around this ring we led the goats in the Grand Entry.  Then the clowns did their stuff, Robert Hicks rode the largest goat around, as the bareback act, and John Atkins performed on the horizontal bar and turned handsprings and somersaults-only we persisted in calling them somersets.

Some of the clowns turned handsprings, too, and cartwheels; and so the grand circus ended in a blaze of glory, with all the gang eating cocoanut taffy, both white and pink, and molasses taffy as well, with the proceeds, of "gate."

Billie Hicks was the best skater ever in Richmond, either domestic or imported.  He came to be just a trifle better than his oldest brother, Sam Hicks, who had long been king of skaters-and that goes for the entire country and Canada as well.  It was a skating family, for Robert, the middle brother (who was not nearly so good as his two brothers) was nevertheless the best in town, after them.