In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [89]
“The Assessor! For crying out loud, quick. Unplug the radio! Take it down to the coal bin! Hurry up!”
More than one four-year-old kid was crushed under a refrigerator that was being quickly grappled down the back stairs into the basement.
My mother, after the first shock, hissed:
“Don’t open your trap! Don’t say a word, either of you! Do you understand? Not a WORD!”
In came the Assessor, scanning our worn Oriental rug as he nodded curtly and began to put a price on our world.
“How old is the rug? How long have you had that umbrella stand made out of the hollowed foot of an elephant? How much did it cost? New, that is. I don’t have that bridge lamp on last year’s list. New, eh? How much is that Flexible Flyer over there worth?”
All over the house, room after room, closet after closet they went, my mother keeping up a running counterpoint:
“Oh, why that’s just an old thing. My sister was going to throw it out and I just thought I’d bring it home. Didn’t cost anything. We got that refrigerator at the Salvation Army. It burns out all the time and makes a funny noise. This is the first time in months that it’s stopped making that funny noise.”
“Sounds pretty good to me. Sounds good.”
“I can’t understand it. We can’t even sleep when it’s going. We’re thinking of giving it away. It’s not worth the four dollars we paid for it. What a gyp!”
“Sounds pretty good.”
He made a note on his clipboard, smiled thinly, and moved on. He never even bothered to remove his lumpy gray hat.
We had a prop radio that we showed the Assessor every time he came. Our real radio with the magnificent Gothic Cathedral cabinet was lurking under piles of old tires in the basement. We showed him an old battery set that Uncle Tom had had and that was surplus from the Civil War. It had received some of the very first messages that Marconi had tapped out, using a magnetized railroad spike and Edison jars. My mother extolled its virtues:
“It’s a sentimental friend of the family. But it’s our radio. It uses dry cells and has a propeller on the side that is wind-driven. Since the creek dried up, the battery doesn’t work. We get nothing but whistles. But my husband likes it.”
“Hmmmmm. That’s a genuine Crosley Bandbox. Beautiful carved cabinet there. Bird’s-eye oak. Looks hand-rubbed.”
“Look where the mice ate out the back here. See, I stick this Sears Roebuck catalog behind so nobody can see it.”
She banged the cabinet hollowly, hoping it would crack. Another enigmatic smile, and then the rug:
“Say, that’s not a bad-looking rug you have there. Oriental, isn’t it?”
“Now wait a minute. Look, here’s the place where the hole was burned, where Uncle Carl dropped his pipe and burnt the hole in there. Where the beer was spilled.”
She moved the rickety, moth-eaten overstuffed davenport back to show him the place that she tried to hide from the rest of the world.
“Oh well, they could fix that. A couple of dollars and they’ll reweave that like nothing. Oriental, isn’t it?”
He plucked at the fringe, fingering it appreciatively like a connoisseur of fine linens and tapestries or an Armenian rug dealer coming across a rare find. My mother’s panic rose.
“Say, that’s a nice picture up there. Look at that—a sailboat, isn’t it? That’s a lovely picture. It’s an original, isn’t it?”
My mother fended off this blow:
“Original my foot! Original Woolworth.”
On it went, my mother systematically degrading our lives by simply telling the truth. She invented nothing. Before the Assessor came, we always pretended that the holes in the rug didn’t exist and the picture wasn’t an original Woolworth; the refrigerator not a crummy piece of tin that soured milk and curdled cream. Here she was, laying it down—the truth. And I am hearing it; a kid. Who loved his home and the things in it.
“No, Ma! Ma, it’s our refrigerator! It has great ice cubes! And our great rug! I lay on it and follow the pattern with my eyes! It’s a beautiful rug! With gold