All About Badgett, McCulley
and Sis, the Belching Tractor

If you know anything about Galveston’s past, you surely know that it’s always been the town’s hobby to cover up one body of water while opening up another.

For an example, 25th Street used to be a canal. For some reason it was filled in, then named Bath Street.

And then there’s what’s known as English Bayou. It’s the big pond that’s on the east side of 61st Street. It’s man-made. The dirt and sand and stuff that were there was dug up and used to raise the area to its east. From that came streets like Bayou Shore and Borden.

My lifelong friend, educator and tennis champ Bob McCulley, passed away in late January. He was a great storyteller. One time he told me this one.

Ellis Badgett was the father of the famous Galveston quadruplets, Joan, Joyce, Jannette and Jeraldine. But he and his friend James R. McCulley, who was Bob’s dad, also owned a small heavy equipment company.

They dug, dredged and filled in holes all across Galveston Island. Built an entire company around this island obsession of finding water in one place, hiding it in another.

One time they were digging a big hole in the sand just after the west end of the seawall. The sand was being used to fill parts of the undeveloped area around Harve Lafitte. And like you’d suspect, they’d hit the water table and the water was rising around Sis, the old tractor.

The hole had grown in its perimeter to a gargantuan size.

McCulley was operating Sis; Badgett was driving the dump truck. Sis began belching smoke and coughing even more than usual. And then wouldn’t you know, one morning just before noon, Sis coughed, wheezed, bounced up and down a few times, then died.

McCulley and the tractor now were sitting in this huge water hole, neither of them was moving.

“Ellis, what do we do now?” McCulley yelled at Badgett.

“Aren’t you about ready to retire?” Badgett responded to McCulley.

“Yep,” McCulley said back.

“Wade on over here. I’ll take you home in the truck.”

Badgett and McCulley and their loyal friend Sis retired on the same day.

But the tractor they had named Sis and that they had left behind became a monument in that big hole of water, because Sis stayed there knee deep in muck, and all alone for many years thereafter.

Bill Cherry's Galveston Memories
February 7, 2010 column
Copyright William S. Cherry. All rights reserved