The late Bill Coors (1916-2018), who attended elementary school in Golden, used to attend Leadership Golden sessions, telling stories of Golden in the late ‘teens and early ‘twenties. He talked about the social rift between kids who lived on the south side of Clear Creek and the tougher kids who lived on the north side. He said it wasn’t safe for a south sider (like him) to be caught on the north side of town.
Neil West Kimball shared similar reminiscences in 1929. He was the grandson of Transcript founders George and Eliza West. He was born in approximately 1894 and graduated from Golden High School in 1912. Neil, too, had a lot to say about the tough kids.
The Tucker gulch gang, with “Tight” Smith as the leader, was the most fearsome of those organizations. “Tucker gulch, the farther you go the tougher you get, and we live in the last house,” was the motto of this organization. And it made life pretty miserable for other gangs, such as the Dog Town gang, with Paul Hobsen and Fred Gow as members, the Garrison street gang with Alvah Moody, Don Baird, the Parshall boys and others in the membership.
There was lots of class consciousness in those days. If you were a South Sider you were supposed to remain one and woe betide you if you wandered out of your own bailiwick without sufficient protection. The “toughest break” in my career was when my family moved from the South Side to the North Side and as a consequence, I changed schools and became a North Sider, in flesh if not in spirit. And how that flesh did suffer.
Regularly every evening I was chased from the school yard by the North Siders who considered me too effeminate for them. Pete Read, he with only three fingers, was, as I remember, the acknowledged leader of my tormentors. Luckily, I had a pretty fleet pair of legs in those days and they generally carried me to safety. About the only joy in my life in those days was when Pete turned his chasing activities to Earle (Bridget) Develon and gave me an opportunity to regain my wind.
But enough of gangs or you’ll think Golden was a miniature Chicago.
Reprinted from the November 14, 1929 Colorado Transcript
