The Legend of The "Do" Boys

  Writing about my first dog Mittens made me think more about growing up in Webster, NY, fifty + years ago.  One thought had only a bit to do with Mittens, but a lot to do with how myths and legends, even minor ones, come about.

One place where Mittens always accompanied me was a hill that was great for sled riding not far from the Big Woods.  The slope was called "Do Boy Hill," and it featured two fine places to slide, a gentle slope for the sissies, and a steep trail through some trees, which we called "Old Suicide."  Old Suicide brought about the untimely demise of many toboggans.

Do Boy Hill was both a fun and noisy place, what with all the kids laughing and shouting on their sleds, and their dogs barking happily as they ran down the hills beside them.  The only problem about Do Boy Hill was its name.  Kids wondered just what was a Do Boy and why was there a hill named after him.

And this wonderment birthed a legend, a legend that existed even before I moved to Webster, a legend that my friends who had lived there longer, and other kids from nearby streets, were eager to share with the new kids that moved onto Pineview Drive or Apple Orchard Lane or Adams Road.  The Do Boys, legend had it, were a gang!  A gang of big boys, teenagers probably, that prowled the streets of our neighborhood and the paths of the Pines and the Big Woods.  Why were they called Do Boys?  Why because they "DID" things, of course. Did things to little kids.  Awful things!  So awful that no one knew what kind of awful things they actually were.

It's not like we little kids spent a lot of time worrying about the Do Boys, but their frightening name did occasionally come up.  I remember one time when a friend of mine said, "Did you hear that the Do Boys burned down a garage last night?"  "No," we all said in hushed tones, fearful that a nearby Do Boy might hear us.  And it never crossed our 7 or 8 year old minds that no garage had burned down in the area in recent memory.  Heck, most of our houses didn't even have garages.  Another time, I asked one of my friends just what he knew about the Do Boys.  He told me that he thought they wore numbers on their backs.  I almost passed out one day when I happened to turn around and see bicycling toward me, a big kid wearing a football jersey.

But time goes by, and the legends of little kidhood are put aside.  No one mentioned the Do Boys as we grew older.  I guess we had all decided without conferring that the Boys had either grown up and joined the Army or had never existed at all.  One day, when I was about 17, I was driving down Klem Road.  "Do Boy Hill" was quite nearby.  I happened to glance at a mailbox in front of an old farm house.  On the mailbox, in fading paint, was the word "Dubois."  Suddenly, a legend from my youth was demystified, or perhaps, demythified.  Do Boy Hill wasn't named for a gang of psychotic, number-wearing, garage burning teenagers.  It was named for the owners of the property, the Dubois family, who had apparently chosen to Anglify the pronunciation of their last name to Du-boyse, rather than sticking with the French Du-bwa.

I'm glad I was 17 when I found out about it.  If when I was 7, someone had said to me, "Hey, idiot, there's no gang called the Do Boys.  The hill belongs to the Dubois family," I'm sure I would have been really disappointed.  Legends and myths are important to little kids, and one that's right in your own neighborhood, no matter how scary, is pretty tough to give up.