THAT WAS CLOSE!

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 24, 4 March 1942, Page 5

THAT WAS CLOSE!

THE TALE OF A SHORN LAMB

Citizens whose affairs took them abroad in the starry darkness of Sunday 'evening Avere surprised to

see one of the local small retailers puffing and perspiring as he pedalled homewards his weary way.

It. appears that after 20 years of contemptuous neglect the bicycle has reappeared in the little shopkeepers life as a means of transportation. Not for him a preliminary canter around the block but a full fledged expedition to Poroporo.

A strenuous hour on the tennis court proved the hardness of- concrete upon the feet, and a wild splurge in the swimming hole with the kids re-emphasised the sharpness of youngsters toe nails upon the flesh —and then to steal the heart for the ride home in the darkness.

An attempt to ride out to the main road with a kit full of kumi kumi, sweet corn and other vitamins resulted in a spectacular Chinese, threepoint landing, and the host genially proposed to ride the two-mile homeward stretch as convoy and kit-car-rier also shining a necessary light over the darkened roadway. At the city limits there appeared a coupe with an, illuminated "Inspector" sign and the shopkeeper groaned "First hike ride for twenty years looks like costing thirty hob and costs for being lightless." Sure enough the coupe stopped and a crisp official voice exclaimed, "Hey. didn't you fellows hear the siren?" "Put that light out at once, this is a trial blackout!" The convoy pedalled quietly awav —both of them thinking "What a break."