FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 822, 16 November 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” IDEAS WANTED) City Council employees, placing tiieir ideas in a suggestion box, will receive a bonus for each idea adopted by the council. Ob typists who raise such a. clatter As over the keyboard you dash, Come, stir up the cranial matter, Convert your beliefs into cash. Though topics municipal bore you Compared with, say, movies and frocks, The Mayor and the Council implore you To drop an idea in the box. Oh clerks persevcringly totting Tall columns of terrible sums, Forswear your industrious swotting, And pluck from your office its plums. Just jot down a list of your strictures, Append your suggestions and knocks. You favour municipal pictures? Then sow the good seed in the box.

Each notion approved and adopted Will win you a harvest of cheques, And once your ideas are co-opted _ There’s nothing you may not annex. You’ll rise to the top of the tree, Si Accumulate cartloads of pelf, And then, a successful old geezer. Be placed on the Council yourself! DISTANT GOAL

Tile generosity ot cigarette manufacturers is now taking another form, and by dint of much frugality and foresight it is now possible not only to acquire complete collections of footballers, actresses, or beautiful rural scenes, but also to save enough coupons to return, in the fullness of time, anything from a pack of playing cards or a silver spoon to a gold clock. We happen to have a friend who is aiming at a gold clock. He is a provident sort of fellow, and has at the same time taken out a new life insurance policy just lately. In the effort to attain the gold clock he is smoking so heavily that the extra life insurance cover seems only a reasonable precaution. MORE GI.A PI ATO RS The promised arrival of four more wrestlers by the Aorangi conveys the heartening impression that the wrestling season, which has as many farewells as a prlma donna, may not terminate just yet. It will be remembered that the season was originally scheduled to close a fortnight or so ago. An affair of honour arose between Messrs. Alley and Walker, and the season was reopened. After thn match Is was closed again, but Peselc is coming along on Monday, so it will be reopened. There are three other wrestlers with Pesek. They are Browning, Zigmund, and Bonaski. Zigmund is known as “the Polish Pachyderm,” but nothing of this nature is known against his cultured colleagues, and in literary and art circles locally there is a suspicion that the first of them may be a distant relation of the poet, who in “Porphyria’s Lover” was unsportsmanlike enough to exploit the stranglehold. PUMP GUARDS THE GATE In grim defiance of (he pious hope of several local bodies and an automobile association or two, the Government has let the triangle at the corner of Great South Road and the Howick Hoad for use as a petrol station, and one of these essential ingredients of modern civilisation is now taking shape. It may be doubted whether this particular corner might not have been better sanctified for a higher purpose. There are interesting associations about this part of the Great South Road. Nearby stood the old Harp of Erin, a tavern that made history in its day. In its tap room jostled bearded old soldiers of fighting regiments alongside raw colonial levies and whiskered countrymen from the farms of Tamald and Pakuranga. This corner, where four or five roads meet, is really the gateway to the Great South Road, and though on oue hand the gardens and shaded lawns of Mr. Arthur Cleave's fine home give a certain grace to the scene, on all others it seems to be decreed now that commerce shall enjoy free sway. THE MODERN OASfIS Nevertheless, the petrol station as an Institution cannot be condemned out of hand just because at this particular corner it is to occupy land that might better have been devoted to a more aesthetic purpose. The petrol station has a certain charm quite apart from its delightful aspect to the motorist whose benzine gauge is getting perilously close to zero. To begin with, the corners on which many of them are built have been rounded off, and the array of brightly-coloured pumps makes a brave aud vivid showing in a dull suburban street. Most of the depots are new, well-kept, and sprucely painted. In among the tall iron pumps there are sometimes pot plants, flowerbeds, even palms. At nights the glow of lights adds glamour to the scene. Before the era of the petrol pump, these coruers were frequently occupied by untidy little shops, or else were vacant, grassy. ! and unkempt. The petrol station has ! altered all this, and each depot is a | pleasant. little oasis in the urban I desert.