In God We Trust Read Online Free

white sand that was poured into the funnel. The sand tricklingout of the bottom into the gondolas set the belt in motion. As each gondola was filled, it moved down the track to be replaced by another, which, when filled, moved down another notch. And endlessly they went, dumping sand out at the bottom of the track and starting up the back loop to be refilled again—on and on until all the sand was deposited in the red cup at the bottom of the track. The kid then emptied the cup into the funnel and it started all over again—ceaselessly, senselessly, round and round. How like Life itself; it was the perfect toy for the Depression. Other kids in the neighborhood were embarked on grandiose, pie-in-the-sky dreams of Lionel electric trains, gigantic Gilbert chemistry sets, and other totally unimaginable impossibilities.
    Through my brain nightly danced visions of six-guns snapped from the hip and shattering bottles—and a gnawing nameless frenzy of impending ecstasy. Then came my first disastrous mistake. In a moment of unguarded rashness I brought the whole plot out into the open. I was caught by surprise while pulling on my high-tops in the kitchen, huddled next to the stove, the only source of heat in the house at that hour of the morning. My mother, leaning over a pot of simmering oatmeal, suddenly asked out of the blue:
    “What would you like for Christmas?”
    Horrified, I heard myself blurt: “A Red Ryder BB gun!”
    Without pausing or even missing a stroke with her tablespoon, she shot back: “Oh no. You’ll shoot out one of your eyes.”
    It was the classic Mother BB Gun Block! I was sunk! That deadly phrase, used many times before by hundreds of mothers, was not surmountable by any means known to Kid-dom. I had really booted it, but such was my mania, my desire for a Red Ryder carbine, that I immediately began to rebuild the dike.
    “I was just kidding. Even though Flick is getting one. (A lie.) I guess … I guess … I sure would like a Sandy Andy, I guess.”
    I watched the back of her Chinese red chenille bathrobe anxiously, looking for any sign that my shaft had struck home.
    “They’re dangerous. I don’t want anybody shooting their eyes out.”
    The boom had been lowered and I was under it. With leaden heart and frozen feet I waddled to school, bereft but undaunted.
    At Recess time little knots of kids huddled together for warmth amid the gray craggy snowbanks and the howling gale. The telephone wires overhead whistled like banshees while the trapeze rings on the swings clanked hollowly as Schwartz and Flick and Bruner and I discussed the most important thing next to What I’m Going To Get For Christmas, which was What I’m Getting My Mother and Father For Christmas. We talked in hushed, hoarse whispers to guard against Security leaks. The selection of a present was always done with greater secrecy than that which usually surrounds a State Department White Paper on Underground Subversive Operations in a Foreign Country. Schwartz, his eyes darting over his shoulder as he spoke, leaned into the wind and hissed:
    “I’m getting my father.…”
    He paused dramatically, hunching forward to exclude unfriendly ears, his voice dropping even lower. We listened intently for his punchline.
    “…  a new Flit gun!”
    The sheer creative brilliance of it staggered us for a moment. Schwartz smiled smugly, his earmuffs bobbing jauntily as he leaned back into the wind, knowing he had scored. Flick, looking suspiciously at a passing female first grader who could be a spy for his mother, waited until the coast was clear and then launched his entry into the icy air.
    “For my father I’m getting.…”
    Again we waited, Schwartz with a superior smirk playing faintly on his chapped lips. “…  a rose that
squirts!”
    We had all seen these magnificent appliances at George’s Candy Store, and instantly we saw that this was a gift
anyone
would want. They were bright-red celluloid, with a white rubber bulb