Show 5 W INGS By ly IRIS SYN Although It isn't a legal holiday most children chil chile dren put tAlt the last day of ot school second only it t to Christmas as the years year's happiest event hl The gift gin they receive is a glorious three months of freedom j i I MY OWN childhood summers linger In Ine e memory as a succession of ot sunny lazy luy days daysi P i when my friends and I wandered over the thet t countryside I and of ot warm evenings spent playing the can the kick can or roasting marshmallows lows over a bonfire Even casual thought tells me my memory has things up a lot At an altitude of plus feet teet the evenings evenings evenings eve eve- were NEVER warm and as one of ot a ar r family of ot nine I must've been caught and put tAlt to work once in awhile i But Dut we did have days of ot leisure Most of ot them were ordinary but a few tew of ot them were ri Ii I downright dangerous LIKE THE summer afternoon when Eloise 1 i Margaret and I decided to explore an old mine shaft The mountains above Our Town had several of ot these old abandoned work- work Ii Ings A few tew prospectors had thought mistakenly mistakenly mistakenly mis mis- that there was gold in them that hills hilts We knew the supporting timbers weren't in the best of ot condition They were rotten is what they were but we ventured in anyway The rough rocky floor noor of at the tunnel had hada a trickle of otley icy ley water running along it and little streams slid down the walls and dripped from the timbers overhead Besides the shaft bent after alter 50 feet teet and we had only a sm small U flashlight It got awful dark in a hurry NONE OF us wanted to be first to say we were nervous so we slithered onward By Dy Bythe the time we covered another hun hundred red years we had slowed down so much we were all allbut allbut allbut but moving backwards I was in the lead and when I aimed the light ahead I saw a lot lotof lotof lotof of nothing Right light in the middle of the tunnel was a vertical shaft We didn't stop to see how deep it was We got out of ot there But Dut only just We were barely back in the good bright world when we heard a thundering crash Dirt and rocks billowed from tram the mouth of ot the tunnel WV n we peered Inside in inside inside In- In side we saw that the whole roof root had col col- lapsed That it didn't collapse on us was we agreed unanimously altogether a GOOD THING TilING Another afternoon Margaret and I went swimming We knew a place in a wide field where the Irrigation ditch attained a depth of ot three in spots even four tour feet teet We paddled around awhile dried out on the warm grass and were thinking about dressing to go home when the bull came snorting along IT WASN'T a strange bull We knew it by sight sound and reputation A thickset Jersey Jersey Jersey Jer Jer- sey with heavy horns and a nasty disposition disposition disposition tion it decided straight off ort it didn't want us in Its territory It set out to get rid of ot us altogether if 11 possible With no preliminary discussion Margaret and I scooped up our clothes and made for tor forthe forthe the tall tali timber As luck would have it It there was only one timber Umber near enough and it turned out to be a pine tree tall enough by bythe bythe bythe the mer merest st whisker But Dut up it we shot with the bull breathing noisily at our heels There we clung swaying perilously back and forth covered with sticky sUcky pine gum overlaid by the dust the bellowing bull buU pawed up AFTER A very long time the persistent fellow hurried off oU for tor a drink We dropped from the tree dashed through the field and across a road and s scrambled cram bled under a wire barbed-wire fence tence The bull hot after alter us only missed us an inch but we figured that was enough Later the owner of the bull bawled us out for upsetting his bIs prize animal Given a choice between facing the bull or its owner we de decided decided decided de- de we preferred the bull |