SHOW DAY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 272, 17 February 1941, Page 4

SHOW DAY

Sir, —Show clay, like Christmas, comes but once a year. What a pity our far-seeing YVhakatane shopkeepers cannot see further than the ends of their nasal organs. If they could—then I 'think they would declare a whole holiday on Show Day, and then they and all their country customers would be at the showground as soon as the gates opened. As it is, our shopkeepers are so keen on the needs of country people they sit in their , shops till the Show is nearly over., Then some of them (not all) saunter out to the showgrounds in time to see the Grand Parade, or maybe it is the side showmen packing up to go home. This i.s all wrong. Show Day, should be Whakatane's day of days. Le/t all—town and country—■ make a holiday of it, like the old song ''Come to the Fair." You know how it goes- "Come in the pride of the morning," and not after 1 p.m., as our Whakataue citizens do. What happens is that country people (who should be at the. showgrounds looking at the pedigree cows) are tempted into the Strand, and after wasting all the morning there they drive like Jehu (furiously) down Commerce Street—not so much to get an education at the Show, but to use up their members' tickets. All they see is everybody else standing around obstructing the view.* '! beilieve things are better in U.S.A., where they call their Show Day "The County Fair," and they get a bustle on and make it a fair. Ours here is not "fair"; it is only middling. Well, Mr Editor, "them's my sentiments," and I hope some other pen than mine can prove that I am all wrong. All the same I think there are plenty of other days in the week or month for people of Whakatane town and country to do their shopping other than on the morning of Show Day. Yours etc.,"* SHOW DOWN.