The Key West Citizen Newspaper, December 22, 1952, Page 14

Page 14 THE KEY WEST CITIZEN Monday, December 22, 1952 FLASH GORDON RUN?... THERE'S KO [ PLAGE TO RUNS THE NEXT BLAST WILL BLOW \ AAS RAIN WASH OFF OYE. YOU FAKER! \ \ oe TLL TRY, BEN...BUT a HE'S WAAL--1 BEEN -GoiN’ NIGHT AN! DAY SINCE \ TH! NEW YOUNG-UN GOT HERE, AN’--ANy’ ~-IT'S AN ABSOLUTE OUTRAGE. NOW YOU GO BACK TO MR. JiISSS AND TELL HIM EXACTLY WHAT HAVE HIM ARRESTED | 'F HE DOESN'T STOP: | YES, OEAR.’— YOUR FATHER TO.O ME TO TELL YOu THAT iL SimPry DIE wT OONTGer | ANKLE’-Bur ABO OUR /THATS BOYS~ DANCE SOON! / NO CONSIDER: YEP--RIGHT AFTER YE DO TH’ DISHES--FETCH IN SOME WOOD--WASH UP RALLY?) By Paul Robinson} U THATS THEIINO OF DAD TO HAVE.-ONE NEW YORK —You can’t buy Santa Claus. The true spirit of Christmas isn’t for sale. But that doesn’t keep a lot of people from trying to do it every year. One of the absurdities of the cur- rent season is the report that $50 neckties of velvet and gold are having a brisk sale in North Car- olina. They are designed to be given as presents for “men who have everything already.” It would depress me if someone sent me such a necktie (and, if you were planning to do so, please send the cash instead). For one thing I hate a bargain basement gesture. Anyone who sends you a $50 necktie isn’t trying to please you so: much as he is trying to impress you. And only a piker would be im- pressed by a $50 necktie today. After all there are $150 neckties on the market. Who wants to be bought cheap? Economists and sociologists now regard gifts like $50 to $150 neck- | ties as not only wasteful but economically immoral. To me, even when sent by men of wealth | to each other as a joke they can well afford, they are just sad. They may make fine ‘“conversa- | tion pieces,” but what kind of con- clusion can you draw from the conversations? Only how easy it is | to throw money away on something useless. I hate this conclusion be- , cause I have a vast respect for | money and the wonderful good that can be done with it. The evidence 6f what money | cannot do is all about us. And one of the times you see this best is at Christmas. Many a wife who gets | a $4,000 fur coat from her hus- | band would rather know the | warmth of his old love again than the warmth of his gift. What makes a real Christmas present? The thought and under- standing behind it. Only that kin-. dies the bonfire of the heart, not the number of dollars spent. This is particularly true of children, whose rich relatives often try vain- ly to make them happy with costly gifts but fail because they do not know there is a better way. You cannot bribe a child long if he discovers you don’t really under- stand him. I remember as a child a poor little rich boy who lived up the street in a fine apartment build- ing came to our house on Christ- ‘mas morning. “What did you get?’ he said practically. “An orange, a sweater, a sled,” I said, ‘‘and’—I held up a squirm- ing puppy—‘“this!” The rich kid went crazy over the puppy, and we played with it for @ Jong time. Later we went up to see his presents. The floor was covered’ with toys—fancy electric trains, chemistry sets, an indoor golf course—and all were expen- sive. I felt a kind of dumb wonder, there were so many. The other kid, his dad and I got down on the floor and began operating the electric train. Sud- denly the little rich boy looked up and his face crinkled in passionate erying. “Daddy, why couldn’t I have a puppy, too?” he wept. “It’s what I asked for. “Son,” said his father, ‘you know dogs make your mother nervous.” And remembering that long-ago scene now, I wonder what that | rich kid, now a middle-aged man, will get for Christmas this year. I hope someone puts something in his Christmas stocking besides a $50 necktie. HY crossed the Colorado|™” vhile the morning was still H= high, he rode away at a gray mist on the rim of the east- a canter, outwardly as jaunty ern horizon; an endless, exhaust-| and refreshed mt n — Rl ing drudgery that demanded the| arisen from a sot 's sleep. last ounce of strength from the ) pcagentiphg Bet Be papers jaded horses and haggard men. | like that of a million bumblebees, Garcfa’s outriders came trotting} but wore rakes: stim and i: s in the le, in before the crossing was com: Until he was so far from the crose- pleted, and Clay crossed_ the| ing that the men beside it dwin- stream to hear their report. They died to minute black dots. Then, had found the mesa, less than five] and only then, he allowed himself miles north and west of the cross-| to slump in the saddle and rode “Very steep, muy alta,” the reeves Heeni sergeant in charge reported.| dull and insensate the fever “There is a pass like stair steps| tha: had descended upon him dur- going up. Perhaps it reaches the ing the night. top, perhaps it does not. Two of| Slowly the round tower of the my men are still there, working] mesa crept up above the rim of their way toward the top. When| the horizon; stark, straight-sided, we arrive, they will be able to tell|flat-topped, as impregnable as us if the road goes all the way.”|some ancient castle carved from “We can’t gamble on it, Web,”|living stone and soaring high he decided tersely. “They'll keep| above the plain. Grimly he pulled going as long as there's some| himself together and trotted to- ope, but if they get to the mesa| Ward the narrow opening that was and find they can’t get to the top,| like a gash in the wall of the they'll be so disappointed they'li| mesa. As he drew closer, he saw wane ae down and die. We've ee wera ised & gully, eS ow before they go too winding away into the interior Web nodded slowly, his eyes of the mesa, ascending steeply, red-rimmed from lack of sleep, his body slack in the saddle from| 72:5 and erosion. fatigue. ‘ There was no sign of the two “You want me to push on ahead| men Garcia had left behind to and see what Garcia’s boys have) explore the trail and the sh pps by ths time?’ fear ran through his mind that Tl go.” It was torture to force| they had been ambushed or de- out the words. It meant a break-|stroyed by some wandering tribe neck dash across the prairie, per-| of Comanches that might even haps a gasping, stumbling explo-| now be skulking in the dim re- ration of the mesa trail, and then| cesses of the mesa gulch. He loos: another heartbreaking scramble| ened the two revolvers that he to return to the regiment before| wore, and his eyes sharpened as it had marched too far along the| he moved Pres forward. The trail toward the plateau. Every| trail turned and twisted so sharp- bone and muscle in his body was|ly in its ascent that his field of throbbing with the aching pain/ vision was limited to the fifteen of utter exhaustion and mounting] or twenty feet of open space di- fever. The saber cut across his| rectly before him. Anything might shoulder had been hastily washed|be lurking behind one of the “and dressed and it burned like fire jagged corners he must pass. He whenever he turned in the saddle|reined in abruptly, as he heard and every time his horse’s hoofs| voices far ahead. struck the ground. He felt his eye-| He slipped out of the saddle and lids dropping like leaden blankets| tied the gelding he rode to a sharp —but he was the Colonel, outcrop of rock. Crouching, he “Tll go, Web.” There was a new| scuttled forward beneath the firmness in his voice now that he|shelter of the overhanging rock 5) rock by centuries of had forced his weakness behind| until he was past a point him. “You stay here and get the| where the trail twi sharply men across. Give them an hour’s| to the left. There was shelter there rest when the job’s done and then| behind a mammoth boulder that start moving out toward the mesa.| overlooked the rise ahead. He T'll try to get back before you’ve| held one gun ready in his hand, gone too . Then we'll know! his breath ebbing and flowing si- News Briefs VENICE, Italy (®—An explosion in a hydroelectric plant at Belluno, near here, cost the lives of three workmen Saturday. BERLIN # — Stenotypists and secretaries are signs of “‘capital- ism,” the Communist East Ger- man government said today, Therefore, after January 1, they will be called “production helpers.” MANILA (#—Thick smoke clouds | that resembled an atomie explo- sion Saturday boiled from Mt. Hibok Hibok as the Philippin “killer volcano” underwent a mi- nor eruption. Masses of rock tumbled down the side of the crater, on the southern island of Camiguin. Philippine news service said people were warned to evacuate the danger area. SUNNYVALE, Calif. (@—A giant Navy Constitution—largest land plane in the world—landed safely last week after a fire knocked out one of its engines in flight. The plane, carrying 130 passen- gers and 18 crewmen, came in at a slower speed, but the pilot, Navy Lt. J. R. Rader, said the 92-ton carved and hollowed out of the wind and’ hot: lently in light breaths that could not be heard a yard away. The murmur of voices came a and he could hear a suddem® clatter of sound as a shifting just} rent of rocks was dislodged to tle and re-echo against the granit@ walls of the ravine. The fever Mh burning in his head, setting bla spots dancing before his eyes, turning his throat and tongue a8 dry-as old leather parched in the sun. He closed his eyes for an im- stan‘, fighting against the swirling weakness that threatened to en- gulf him. When he opened them again, he saw that two men emerged into the open passage- way before him. For an instant that seemed for- ever, his blurrec vision would not bring them into focus, and it seemed to him that they were strangers, enemies that he had never seen before. Then the fog of fever broke apart for a mo- mentary breath of time and he recognized them as two men of Garcia’s troop, the men who hai been left behind tc try to find @ nathway to the top. “Pedro! Antonio!” His voice was cracked and harsh. He saw their heads jerk up in sudden alarm and caught the ee of metal as their guns leaped from their holsters. “Quién?” The challenge was as abrupt and uncompromising as @ ‘ rifle shot. {He got slowly to his feet, feeling ie walls of the ravine swing in {slow circles around him, as the thot fingers of the fever clutched {his brain again. He threw out an jarm to brace himself against the } Touch stone wall beside him and saw the troopers advance toward {him like two fantastic figures | poaving erratically through the fog. Fine top of the mesa,” he said. “Does the trail lead to the top?” Dimly, he knew that Pedro was speaking, caught disconnected words and phrases. “Rough . . ." Pedro was saying, and then there was an interval of blackness, and then the words “Men and horses . . . reach the top’... . wagons .. . only part = there was a path to the top of the mesa, an avenue of safety for his men. He tried to turn back toward the entrance, stumbled, felt him- self falling as the earth spun in flashing circles about him and the clanging of ten thousand anvils rang and thundered in his ears, (Ze be continued) SLICE OF HAM craft was operating normally. nautene'iict = wee Read The Citizen-25e Weekly | gines. Bs ,