"OUR TOWN"

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 75, 8 July 1942, Page 6

"OUR TOWN"

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

(X.Z.Ji.F. Oil'ieial News Service)

This is a picture of our town. It isn't real]}" ours of course, but for a brief lime it is a familiar part of our lives. For three thousand years before us soldiers have trod its streets —Assyrians, the armies of the. Pharaohs, Roman centurions, knights of the Crusades,, soldiers of the Ottoman Empire, New Zealand Mounted liiiles and Australian Light Horse of the last war, men of La Legion Hlrangere. The country might be Central GtagC' but you miss the wire fences and the road signs are by the Touring Club de France instead of the Automobile Association. The lines of poplars and the bare, snowcapped mountains are there though, and sometimes a nostalgic creek and willows. Under tlie walnut trees on the outskirts of the village poppies are just raising tlieir heads above the barley. Three gaunt red cows, like local edition Polled Angus, stand together in the shade. Opposite, the branch of la Banque de Syrie et du Lilian stands white and still in the afternoon's heat. Lorries going north suck at the sticky bitumen. A donkey laden Avith flour from the mill by the river gently picks his way among the gravel of the roadside. Two New Zcalanders walk by like school boys on their way home, swinging their bathing togs in their hands. At the corner you see a relic of the previous occupation. Above the battered wooden door of a small flatroofed stone building are the words "Aussie Bar Fair Dinkum Prices Icecold Beer Good Wine Come In." Two Arabs sit at a cafe table on the footpath playing tric-trac, or back-gammon. Past them is the Ao-ite-Arca Bar, "Kia Ora Katoa Haeramai" scrawled on its Avindows. A wheezy, gramophone on the wooden bars grinds out "At the Balalaika." The room. Avith Avails and lloor of stone, is empty except for three Arab boys gravelj- playing pinocale at a corner table and the barman polishing the glasses. Myrna Lo3 r looks down from above the rows of bottles. "Entree Autorisee aux Troupes" says a red poster. "How much the beer?" Ave ask. "No beer.'" This would be distinctly discouraging to mostNNeA r Zcalanders if thej r had not got used to it by now. "Well, what is there?" Vin blanc, vin doux, curacao, creme de menthe, lemonade, vermouth. So for 50 Syrian piastres, or just over a shilling, we get two glasses of creme de menthe. Outside a three-tonner from one of the battalions pulls up and the chaps jump down stretching their arms and legs and grinning as a platoon marches down the sides of the streets, sweat leaA'ing clean streaks in their dusty faces. Saoud Chabcoul follows two of the leaA'e men through glass doors into his "Salon de Coiffure—Beaute Perfection—Coiffures Dames et Messieurs." Others cross to the schocl which now La> the reel triangle of the Y.M.G.A. hanging outside. In a few minutes tluse New Zcalanders are absorbed into the life ei' the village. Just past "Genuine Antiquities and Oriental .Souvenirs" is Fred's Wailemata Bar. There isn't any beer here either at present but few come here to drink beer anyway. Farid Braclia's greatest achievement is "Fred's Specials." Two lingers of vermouth, a dash of Cassis, a hcaA-y sweet fruit syrup, and the glass tilled up with lemonade. '-You like it?' - he asks anxiously. Memories oi high school French are recovered. "Bien."' "Ah, vous parlez Francais." Perhaps it would have been better if those memories had remained as memories. In the dusty narrow street shadows lengthen. An army truck stops and two Tommies get out, attracted by the name of the Rose and Crown Bar Cafe. A gendarme hitches his shot gun on his shoulder, tilts his cap back and has his boots cleaned by the Arab boy. A New Zeaiander

in battledress on the corner unbuttons his tunic with the heat. A tired military traffic policeman scratches his elhovr and waves a despatch ruler on. From a secondhand shop comes the faint tunc of an incredibly old waltz record. On the roadside a blind beggar sit.s against a poplar and -chants "Allah. Allah."

When we Avalkcd slowly back to the barracks an hour later he was sli 11 silting there.