How Treasure Hunting Found Jimmy

The first chapter in Jimmy’s 50-year plan, whether anyone approved it or not.

Welcome to a new Lost Cabin Mine series about the experiences, strange detours, successes, failures, and questionable decisions that helped turn Jimmy into a treasure hunter. Some stories worked out. Some very much did not. All of them left something behind.
There were warning signs.
Jimmy was four.

Black-and-white illustration of young Jimmy jumping from a cabin roof with an umbrella toward a pile of old mattresses and carpet. — At four years old, Jimmy had an umbrella, a landing zone, and complete confidence in the research. Gravity had apparently conducted its own study.

While other four-year-olds were mastering shoelaces and crayons, Jimmy was apparently conducting independent research into human flight.
This particular operation began early in the morning.
Jimmy snuck outside armed with an umbrella and a plan.
Getting onto the roof wasn’t a problem. Jimmy had already figured that out about a month earlier.
There is a story behind that.
It will be told later.
Maybe.

Embarrassment currently has it under review.
Outside the house was a pile of old carpet and mattresses waiting to go to the garbage.
Adults saw junk.
Jimmy saw infrastructure.
There was a roof.
There was an umbrella.
There was a mattress landing zone.
Jimmy had also recently watched a certain movie.
We aren’t naming it.
Everyone knows.
And Jimmy refuses to accept sole responsibility for the number of children who watched that movie and immediately began questioning the untapped aviation potential of household umbrellas.

The plan was beautiful.
Climb roof.
Open umbrella.
Jump.
Float majestically to earth.
Become four-year-old aviation legend.
Jimmy jumped.
For one glorious fraction of a second, Jimmy believed the research was sound.
Gravity had apparently conducted its own study.
Jimmy dropped directly onto the mattresses and knocked the wind completely out of himself.
There is a special moment in childhood when you’re lying on a discarded mattress, clutching an umbrella, unable to breathe, and realize perhaps additional testing should have occurred before launch.
Jimmy survived.
The umbrella’s contribution remains disputed.
And somehow Jimmy did not walk away thinking, Perhaps I should stop experimenting.
No.

Jimmy learned something far more dangerous.
Sometimes you have to try the ridiculous idea to find out what happens.
Nearly fifty years later, the umbrella has been replaced by old maps, forgotten trails, historical records, and treasure theories.
Otherwise, management has made remarkably few improvements.
See something interesting. Get curious. Figure out how to reach it. Try the idea. Occasionally discover why the idea was stupid. Continue anyway.
Maybe treasure hunting didn’t find Jimmy later in life.
Maybe it was already there.
The treasure just happened to be flight that morning.
And the equipment budget was one umbrella.
Present-day Jimmy would like to add that jumping off roofs with umbrellas is not recommended.

Jimmy already tested this.
They don’t work.
And the story of why four-year-old Jimmy already knew how to sneak onto the roof?
That’s coming later.
Assuming Jimmy can survive telling it with what remains of his dignity.
The raccoon would also like the historical record to show that all of this happened decades before his arrival.
He’s requesting immunity.
Frankly, he has a case.

More from How Treasure Hunting Found Jimmy will be waiting in Adventures at:
www.lostcabinmine.com/adventures

Jimmy is a fictional treasure-hunting persona created by M. Hayward. Stories in this series may be inspired by real experiences, with details adapted or exaggerated for storytelling and humor. Nothing Jimmy does is intended as a recommendation or instruction. The raccoon insists he is real.