The Adventures of Janie Tippett

When I was seven years old, growing up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, my girlfriend Sandra and I buried a coffee can full of treasures (several Digger Indian arrowheads, found in our field, some pennies, a turquoise earring, a squirrel tail, a ring from a box of cracker jacks, and some quartz rocks) in some sand near Doty's Ravine. We marked the spot with large granite rock. A year later, we returned to dig up our treasures, but never found them. There they remain…near an oak grove, next to a blackberry thicket beside the creek.

Oftentimes my childhood chum and I would shinny up the trunk of a limber digger pine and wait for an approaching slow moving car, then swing out on a limb into the middle of the road...scaring the driver to death.

Our neighbor Mr. Bear, who was a bachelor man a bit queer in the head, drove a stutz bearcat car...very slow moving, and one day he caught us in the tree and put-putted his car into our ranch and told my daddy what we'd been up to.

Daddy was the only man in Hungry Hollow where we lived who could get along with Mr. Bear...and I don't recall what he said, but Mr. Bear went away laughing. I do remember that we gave up that form of recreation and went on to bigger and better things, like stealing apples from neighbor Wally Allen, another bachelor.

I remember years later Wally Allen telling my father it was a wonder his wild daughter ever amounted to anything...why...one time, he said, he heard laughing and splashing and there she was...swimming naked in the creek. Dirty old man!

We children were too poor to own toys, so we created our own fun. Having watched my mother can peaches and pears, I took some of her canning jars and filled them with acorns, added water, and sealed them with lids. After a few days of August heat, those acorns began to ferment, and oh my...the smell. I don't recall ever being punished for this, and to this day I still enjoy canning.

Welcome to The Adventures of . . .YOU!

In the spirit of this year's Big Read book -- Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer -- please join Fishtrap in collecting stories of your favorite childhood adventures. Did you love exploring caves? Playing kick-the-can in your hometown alleys on a late summer's evening? What kind of mischief did you get into? Share it with us!