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Published on 11/16/1998 All articles from this issue

A Voice of the Past

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Local attorney tells tales of skipping school, catching breakfast trout in Adobe Creek

Growing up with his brother and parents on Orange Avenue in Los Altos during the 1910s-20s, Colin Peters said he knew everyone in town, knew where all the fishing holes were, all the rabbits and all the other animals. The longtime attorney said every morning his family ate trout that his brother caught from Adobe Creek.

Peters' father started the first Scouting program in Los Altos, and his brother was the town's first Scout. His father had the first telephone and real estate office in Los Altos.

Peters told the following story about his boyhood idol during an interview at his home in 1992:

There used to be an expert trapper in Los Altos who made his living in the woods. He trapped coyotes, foxes, raccoons, bobcats, etc., and at least in my group of three or four guys, everybody wanted to be with Jimmy Griffin. If he would just talk to you, you'd feel pretty good. He was kind of a strange guy. He did things that would tend to liven up the place.

As a kid, I was completely devoted to him and his style of life. Nothing else made any sense to me. He was my idol, and I stuck with him. I knew when he was going out, and when he was coming in. I was always hanging around, and finally he befriended me.

I was sort of like his caddie, and I learned how to trap. That was the high point of my childhood, to be his caddie, I guess.

I cut a whole year of grammar school to be with Jimmy Griffin. I'd leave home in the morning with my little lunch pail, and I'd go down to Jimmy Griffin's place, and we would go right off into the woods. I'd come straggling back at night, and my parents never asked where I'd been.

Finally, the teacher said something to my mother, and she talked to me about it. She didn't say anything very loud. She asked me, "Have you been going to school?"

And I said, "No."

And she said, "Where have you been going?"

I said, "With Jimmy Griffin."

And she said, "All year?"

I said, "Yes." She paused, and then she said, "Well, you probably learned more than you would have in a whole year at school. But, don't say anything to your father, and I won't either."

So, my father never found out about it. But I had to skip that whole year of school to make it up.

- Courtesy of Town Crier staff writer Linda Taaffe and the oral history collection at the Los Altos History House