 After an incident at school, Aunt Bee decides that the jail is a bad influence on Opie and Andy has to tell him the courthouse is off limits from now on. Bee gives Opie the job of planting "spinish" but his heart s just not in it. He misses his father, and Andy misses him just as much. Tired of watering his garden, Opie walks to the courthouse but Andy sends him home where he wanders off again, this time kicking a can, which takes him first to the old Johnson mine, which caves in while he s trying to enter, then to a house where he trades the can for apples. He eats his fill and promptly falls asleep in the back of a pickup truck and winds up in Elm City after dark. In the meantime, Bee has noticed his absence and called Andy, who starts searching. After a call, Andy retrieves Opie and after he tells Aunt Bee of his adventures she decides that he needs to see more of his father at the courthouse.