True stories of old Houston and Houstonians: historical and personal sketches / by S. O. Young. Page: 18

18 TRUE STORIES OF OLD
equally so. Everybody that had any sense went around the
head of the gully, but there were lots of people who preferred
to risk the gully to taking the walk. Of course, none of the
boys had any sense. As a rule they were barefooted and did
not care much whether they got muddy or not. I remember one
evening when a German "pardner" of mine and I got caught by
darkness on the other side of that gully. We had been out on
the San Felipe Road, had stayed too long and were making short
cuts for home. I can look back now and see that we did not
gain much by our short cuts, but then we thought we did and
that counted at the time.
Finally we came to this big gully. I wanted to go around
its head, but my friend would not listen to doing so. He
announced that he was a goat when it came to going down a
muddy gully and told me to watch him and then I would see
how easy it was to do. I watched all right and he found it
much easier to go down than he had anticipated. About the
third step he took, his heels flew up and he started down with
a rush. Just before he reached the narrow plank near the bottom,
he succeeded in stopping himself, but
the halt was only
for a moment, for the next thing he did was to go head foremost
into the mud and water at the bottom. I could not see him very
distinctly because of the darkness, but you bet I could hear him,
and he was not making a Sunday school address, either. Now
the funny part of the whole thing was that having been whirled
and twisted about so much, he lost his bearings and when he
started to crawl out of the gully, he crawled out on the same
side that he went in. He would dig his hands and feet in the
slippery clay and yell for me to come on, saying that if I did
not hurry up he was going to leave me. He was angry, anyway,
but when he finally reached the top and saw me standing there
and realized what he had done, he nearly had a fit. I wanted
to get home and had no time for a fight, so I refrained from
saying anything to him about being a goat. I knew it would
make him supremely happy if I gave him the least excuse for
starting a war. Finally I started off to head the gulley and he
followed, bringing along with him a surprisingly large quantity
of clay and mud, for which he had no use on earth.
I don't know that there is a single gully left in the city limits,
and there should be none, for of all the useless things on earth
they are the chief. * + +
A SURE THING.
LL the old Houstonians remember Frank LeMott. He
was born in New York, but he claims to be from the
old Huguenot family of that name, who originally settled
in South Carolina. Frank is very proud of the blue blood