My grade school years were spent in South Denver. Today, the old neighborhood is a slum. At the time I lived there, the people in our area might best be described as working poor. There were no shopping centers, and if you needed something you went to the Montgomery Ward or F.W. Woolworth stores on South Broadway.
There was a mom and pop drug store on the corner, about a half a block from our house. One day I looked in the display window in the front of the store, and I saw a squirt gun. It was the coolest squirt gun I had ever seen. I had to have that squirt gun. It was selling for $2.00. I didn’t have the money to buy it.
I asked my Mom for it. The folks were always broke. She said, “Save your money.” My only source of income at the time was from mowing my parents’ lawn. They paid me 25 cents to cut it, when Dad had it and remembered to pay me. It would take all summer to save two dollars.
I visited my grandparents, (in a small town about 60 miles from home), for a couple of weeks every summer. When the visit was over my grandfather, or “Pop” as I called him, would give me two dollars. It wasn’t payment for chores, but sometimes I cut their lawn or did other work like carrying in coal for “Gram’s” cooking stove.
The last time I saw Pop alive, I was looking forward to the money he gave me at the end of each visit. I was planning on buying the water gun with it. It was not forthcoming. Got impatient and asked him for it. He probably was not feeling well, because he became cross and said, “Alright, if that is all that matters to you.” I did not know that those were the last words he would ever say to me. I loved him, and I felt a little bad when he said them. My guilty feelings, however, were soon overcome with joy at the prospect of finally being able to buy that squirt gun. I was certain that it would make me invincible in all water gun fights.
That winter Pop died. The next summer, I visited my grandmother as usual. I was playing with an older cousin, and we were having a squirt gun fight. He soaked me. I couldn’t believe it. It was not supposed to happen, now that I had my good squirt gun.
My cousin was four years older, a head taller, and a lot stronger than I was. That was why he won. He convinced me that it was because his water gun gave him the advantage. It was a cheap piece of junk, but suddenly I wanted it. He secretly coveted my really cool water gun, so he offered me to trade straight across, his water gun for mine.
I traded. Then he soaked me with the gun I traded him. I said that I wanted my old gun back. He just laughed at me. He said, “A trade is a trade.”
I went home to Gram’s house and told her what happened. She started to go for her telephone to tell my cousin’s mother to make him give me my squirt gun back. Then, she stopped. “No,” she said. “Let this be a lesson to you. Be happy with what you’ve got. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”
A lot of confidence (con) games work this way. First the con man will create doubt and
discontent with what you have. Then they
will convince you that they have something better to sell you. They will get you to believe that you need it
to make life better. It is usually “ocean
front property in Arizona.”
The Democrats are trying to create discontent and dissatisfaction with President Trump. They are trying to get us to believe that what they are offering is better, and that we need it to get us out of the mess President Trump has gotten us into. They lie, spin half-truths, and play on our greed and covetousness. They depend on our desire to have someone take care of us, and our failure to be able to recall the abject failure of the Obama/Biden years. They hope that we will, in our ingratitude, fail to remember the good things that President Trump has done.
Please do not make the same mistake I made when I was 10 years old. We are better and smarter than that. Don’t let the Democrats con you. Reelect President Trump and Vice President Pence. Give them Republican majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
