It was some time during these years when I was in the little corner store on West Avenue and I stole a five cent candy bar. I was scared for months that I would be found out. It affected me so much that the feelings have remained with me throughout my life. It was a great lesson because I never did anything like that again. Jack VanBrooker ran the store and when he had bananas that were too ripe to sell, he would tell Ray and I that if we could eat them all we could have them for free. We would sit on the lawn by the store and watch the cars go by while eating bananas until they came out of our ears. We never did have to pay for any. We had many other enjoyable pastimes outdoors. We would cut the cover off a golf ball and unwind some of the miles of rubber bands inside. By putting half on each side of the street we could stretch it across and when a car came down it would stretch the rubber about a quarter mile. We would also go to the top of Arsenal Hill and hit golf balls with baseball bats. They really go a long ways. We found our golf balls in the bottom of the creek down by the golf course. On the west bank of thad Chapin Street there was a row of black oxhart cherry trees belonging to Doctor Behan's widow. When they were ripe we could not resist trying to get some. As soon as we got in the trees, "Old Lady Behan" as we called her, would come running down the street yelling and waving her arms. Guess she watched those trees all day long. One night Ray and I went over and filled our pockets with cherries and ran through the tall weeds back to the tent in our backyard. To our utter dismay, we had run through the weeds where a skunk had just sprayed and we had to throw away all the cherries and change our clothes. During the harvest season the wagon loads of pea vines passed up Thad Chapin and, when we saw them coming, we hid along the road until we could run up behind the wagon and pull off a big armful of pea vines. Sometimes we would get enough to take home to our mothers. You understand this was not like stealing candy from a store to our way of thinking, so we were certainly not doing anything wrong. There is a big difference between stealing and mere survival. Besides, we had to have something to do to keep us out of trouble. There were many sheep pastured in the open fields around Camp Woodcraft in the summer time. They were taken to the farm barns north and east of town during the winter. The herders drove the flocks down the road by our house every spring and fall. They were driven down West Avenue and up Main Street. There were so few cars at that time that traffic was not a problem.