Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III EARLY DAYS IN SACRAMENTO Money in Plenty for Boys as Well as Adults—Boyhood Adventures—The "Old Swimming Hole" Nearly Scores a Victim—An Epidemic of Gunpowder Explosions Explained To Return to the experiences of my childhood in Sacramento. In the '50s it was easy for boys to make spending money. As peaches were selling at from 25 cents to 50 cents apiece, and a dollar for extra large, choice fruit, the pits had considerable value. I do not remember how much per hundred pits the fruit men gave, for most of the youngsters like myself preferred to trade in to the fruit men a dozen pits as we accumulated them for a peach or two. Peach pits therefore were a medium of exchange with the boys of that period until the orchards became more extensive and the market for pits was glutted for all time to come. It was a common thing for the boys after school to drift around the business section of the city, where the fruit stands were located, and trail a purchase of peaches to recover any peach pits that might have been thrown away. There were no "rags, bottles, and sacks" men in those days, so the boys had the business all to themselves. Empty wine and champagne bottles sold to the liquor men for $1.50 per dozen. As money was plentiful and everybody received large profits on whatever he sold, and received big pay in compensation for all services rendered, many wine and champagne bottles were emptied to the gain of the youngsters ever alert to gather them up. A good burlap or potato sack had a ready market value of a "bit" apiece, which might be 10 cents or 15 cents, according to the convenience in making change. Everything of value of less than a dollar was priced in "bits," that is, "one bit," "two bits," "four bits," etc., the "bit" being one-eighth of a dollar or 12y... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.