"NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH."

Shannon News, 4 December 1925, Page 3

"NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH."

AS TOLD TO A TRAFFIC "COP." In New York motor-cycle mounted police are used to cheek speeding motorists! An interview with one of these men in the "New York Times" quotes some amusing exeus'es offered by offenders, from which we extract the' following:— "Each time I catch up to a speeding car and wave it to the kerb I wonder what kind of yarn I'm "going to hear. I've made a sort of collection of the stories that have been forced on me, and I'm always on the lookout for new ones.

"For the first two or three years ou this job I would drink in every word before filling out. the summons, but now I've learned how to listen and write at the * same time. Asking a driver for his license is like requesting a bedtime story. The card comes slowly, but th'e yarn comes fast. "I used to like the one in which tho speeder had just had the engine completely overhauled and had found that the car moved thirty miles an hour with the same pressure on the accelerator that had hardly yielded fifteen in the past. • The yarn about the new shoes through -which the driver hadn't yet gpt the feel of the gas pedal was another favourite. The fellow who had recently received a rise in pay and just couldn't make his feet behave was entertaining. "It has been some months since I met the last man who was so overjoyed because his wife had presented him with a baby boy that he really could not be expected to move along at less than (fifteen miles an hour. I let two or three of them get by with that yarn, but when 1 hear it now I am likely to hand out a ticket for reckless driving as well as for speeding. "You see, I once took down the address of one of these new fathers t\nd made a little investigation. After my tour of duty I went to the house. I rang the bell and a woman came-to the door. I mentioned the name of the man I was inquiring for, and ta«*. woman said that she'was his wife. I got all flustered and finally mauagficl to remark what a nice thing it, was for her to present her "husband with a beautiful baby boy. "She looked at mc funny like km-i said I was rather late with iho congratulations, as the boy had I tea presented to her husband nine /ears before and was in the back of the house playing cowboys and Indians with some of the neighbour's children."