SOME JOKES.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 34, 24 February 1937, Page 12

SOME JOKES.

i IXN. Most people like jokes, "when not directed against themselves, but sometimes jokes on an extensive scale are ; planned an.d suecessfully carried out, usually to the great delight of many people who participate in them. One joke which comes to my mind was, I think, probably carried out'on the most elaborate and complete scale of any joke ever perpetrated in Napier. I think it was a little over thirty years ago, after one of the periodieal iiooda which visited the district, During thia flood, which extended over a fairly lengthy period, the .Tutaekuri river ha.d brought down enormous quantities of Bilt. The maia channel, from the Westshore bridge to past the entrance to the Iron Pot, was full of sandbanks, some being quite uncovered by the water at low ti^e, and the depth of water in the whole oi the channel had been greatly decreased. At 'the samo timfl a very large sand-bank had formed in the iron Pot, and this covered such an area that the trawling and lightering fleet, which usually berthed in the. Pot, wero nnable .to get out, Bepreaentations were mad® to the Harbour Board by those.intexested in the trawling an.d lightering interests and by others having business interests at the Port, to have a sufficient space dredged in the Iron Pot to enable the small vessels to get in and out, but no notice was taken of these requests for the reason that the board's dredge, the J.D.O., was kept busy in dredging in the m'ain channel to piovide a depth of water sufficient for the trading steamers to get in and out of the port. Even the main channel could not be kept quite free from sand-banks, so the Iron Pot was left nntouched. The Port people were very wrath. . Some Port fri.en.ds approaehed me with the idea of initiating a newspaper correspondence to see if this would move the board to action. I could not do this in the Herald, it being foreign to the policy of the paper for any member of its stafE to take part in correspondence in its columns. However, I suggested a huge joke which would tend to bring the board into ridicule. Eventually this idea was adopted, and it was decided to stage on a most elaborate ecale the annexation of this sand-bank as a newly-discovered land, and take posaession in the name of the Queen. These plans were duly. carried out. Napier at that time possessed a very good Naval Briga.de, with the late Captain F. G. Smith as captain, Paul i'ranklin, lieutenant, and, of course sundry other officers. . Oue Sunday morning, just after 11 o 'clock, when the tide was at its lowest, and the whole sand-bank was high and passably dry, a tent was erected on the sandbank, the whole Naval Brigade in full uniform, paraded on the small island which had been formed in the Iron Pot, the naval cutters were drawn up alongside, the Union Jack hoisted on top of the tent and another planted in the sand, a proclamation was read, and the island was duly taken possession of. There was a large crowd of onlookors and, Mr. H. [W. Frost, a dentist, with a good camera took several picyture8j I was the reporter, but not for the , local press. I wrote up that annexation in very reahstic fashion, giving the latitude and iongitude of Port Ahuriri, as the latitu.de an.d Iongitude of the so-called island, The name of the vessel which had .discovered this new island in the South Pacific was given as H.M.S. Invisible. There were so many warships at the time whose names commenced with "in" or "im" that the .name aroused no suspicion The Commodore was given as Commodore S. A. Meless, and here again few people read the initials and name together so thoughtfully as to discover that they ' spelt "nameless." The proclamation was in due form, and all the requirements of a xeal annexation were carefully carried out. The article .detailing the discovery and annexation of the island, together with photographs of the actual ceremony, were sent down to the Christchurch Weekly Press by; myself, but without explaining the yoke. I suggested immediate publication as. I proposed to send the article to the Auckland Weekly the following week, but desixed the Weekly Press (to which. 1 had occasionally siipplied sporting information) to have the xepoxt flrst. The article and pictures duly appeared, and as evesy ship's captain on the coa3t knew the latitude and Iongitude of Port Ahuriri, it was quite clear that the xeported annexation and naming of the island— it had been named Ormondwick Island, in honour of the Hon. J. D. Ormond, at that time chairman of the Napier Harbour Board— was a huge joke, and most of the captains quic'kly grasped the xeason for it. The joke epread, and was brought so prominently nnder the notice of the HaTbour Board that they were impelled to do something to remove the saud-bank, and within some three weeks of the publication of the annexation, Ormondwick Island had really and truly disappeared from the map. But the publication had done some good, and although it is hardly likely that the Weekly Press would have puDlxshed - the story had they known it was a joke, they accepted the thing in a nice spirit, and merely wrote me a note saaying thev hoped I would not discover any more islands which were only mirages, so we left it at that. Another joke for which I was responsible was taken up much more seriously than I imagined it would _ be at the time, and gave xise to no little amusement. I was Teporting a military dinner, which was bemg held in the Cafe (now the Trocadero) oi which at that time a Mr. George Glassford was the proprietor, and Mr. W. Beading his chief pastrycook. When reporting these functions I invariably liked to say something nice, if I could, about the decorations on the tables, whicli were generally carried out with bowls of prettv flowers. On this evening, however, most of the vases contained nothing but sunflowers, not the pretty miniature sunflowera, but the large sunflowers with a mass of seeds in the

centre. I thought — not much to be said for the decorations, I am afraid, but while I was idly listeuing to some of the fine speeches which are not required to be reported in connectiov with these functions, a mischievous idea occurred to me. I would have a joke about tho.se sunflowers, but I would not call them sunflowers, but some suppOsed rare flower. So in the Herald the next morning I praised the table .decorations, c and stated that prominent among these were several bowls of that rare' and beautiful flower, the " golden-rayed Lily of Levant." If roses could grow in Sharon's Valley, and lilies by the pool of Siloam, I did not see why they could not grow elsewhere in the Levant, so I coinbd the name for sunflower. The effect of this paragraph was even greater than I expected. Mr. A. B. W. Laseelles, a solicitor, who lived at Clive and who had read his Herald in the train coming to town, was flrst on the scene, having come direct from the station to the Cafe. A seareh was made for the flowers. Most of them had been thrown in the'dust box, and this had been emptied by the rubbish collector. Mr. Glaassfiqrd promised to iaake inquiries of the gardener from whom the flowers for decorations had come. A little later Mr. Ansel Tiffen (whom I have already mentioned ia connection with a previous story) came in. In his breezy voice and jocular manner he said, "I would like to see these flowers, Glassford. I don't know them by that name. I suppose you don't know their botanieal name, do you?" "No, I do not," said Mr. Glassford, "and I have no flowers to show you; they have all been clear ed away. Beading gets all the flowers for me, and he tells me he got them from Skelton, of Taradale. You may see some out there." "I'll go out," said Mr. Tiffen, "but are you sure you have none left? Where do you put thoso you clear off the tables?" "In the dust box," said Mr. Glassford, "an.d that has been emptied." However. Mr. Tiffen went upstairs to the big diningroom, where he found some sunflowers still in the bowls, but no trace of the mysterious Lily of Levant. He went into the yard, poked about in the dust box and drew a blank. Mr. H. S. Tift'eu came in shortly, after. He had been looking up i authorities of flowers, Hooker, Buller, and other scientific leadiug lights who know at once what family a flower belongs to, an.d whethor it originated in China or Khamseatka. He had been unable to trace any such flower as being of Levantine origin. A Mr. W. W. irates came next. He frankly pooh-poohed the name of Gol-den-rayed Lily of Levant." He would not beiieve in such a flower uulcss Be saw it: i I popped into the Cafe about noon. "Had any inquiries about flowers, Mr. Glassford?" I asked. "Yes," he said, "quite a lot. They all want to see the same flower, Goldeu-rayed Lily of Levant. Do you know any thing about it?" "Yes," I replied, with a smile. "I am the originator of that flower, but not the . grower of it. That is just a fancy name for a sunflower." "Great Scottl" gasped Mr Glassford, "What, a devil of a mess you have got me into. I have written to Skelton for some speeimens, an.d have promised some old ladies to get them some seeds.. What am I to say to them?" "Anything you like," I said. "Put the joke on to me if you like; it's mine, and I don't mind standing the consequences. It cannot be a very severe penalty. If you want to carry the joke further, say the plant only flowers once every seven years, and thos© you had were the last of that period. As for seeds, well, get some eunflower seeds, dip them in boiling water for a time to kill germination, .dry them, put them in ink or indigo to colour them, and then distribute them free. They won't grow, so no one will be any the wiser." Just what excuse Mr. Glassford made I never quite knew, but both Mr. Ansel. Tiffen, and Mr. H. S. Tiffen learned that I was the culprit, but they thought the joke a good one and had a hearty laugh over it.