BOY’S POCKETS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 December 1938, Page 8

BOY’S POCKETS

SOME AMAZING COLLECTIONS. “PROTECTION FOR MOTHER.” “What? Lost my sixpence change? Turn out your pockets, Tommy, and see if you can find it.” The small boy who had gone on an errand for me dived cheerfully into each of his 12 pockets. I stared amazed as their contents emerged, says a writer in an English weekly. There were six heavy nuts, eight different lengths of string, 35 grubby cigarette cards, five pencils, a piece of rubber tubing from an old hose pipe about 4in long, a large art plate of Alec James, the front page of a sporting paper, a bad apple, three walnuts, two safety-pins, a mouth-organ, seven small nails, a large jack-knife, a reel of once-white cotton, a block of dye, eight used penny stamps, an empty tobacco tin —and my sixpence. Because I give away thousands of soiled cigarette cards I have many friends among boys under 13. From them and from head masters, teachers, leaders of boys’ clubs, and policemen, I have learned that this experience as to the contents of boys’ pockets is the rule rather than the exception.

But what uses they can find for all the junk they collect is something that they alone can explain. My old school master told me that he once found this collection in a boy’s *pockets. A rubber gas-pipe 2J feet long, the spiked top of an iron railing weighing fuliy 41b, 30 loose pen nibs, 10 loose pins, an unprotected razor-blade, 4yds of bandage, and three heavy bolts. When asked why he carried the long piece of tubing, the boy replied: “I thought it would make an opium pipe like you see on the pictures!” This same school master also remembered a boy who carried the head of a stuffed owl. When the smell gave him away he cried bitterly because his “mascot” was confiscated.

A month ago, in Madeira, I saw a policeman exploring the’ pockets of a boy aged seven. He was suspected of theft. The policeman’s }‘bag”,‘ in/ eluded six partly-smoked cigars, a dirty tape measure, a picture of a battle scene from Spain, 12 buttons, a grim-looking dagger—and an R.C. Prayer Book. Another boy, an eleven-year-old half-caste in Casablanca, obliged by snowing me the contents of his pockets for one penny. He offered to show me his mother, his sister, and his aunt, all dancing, for another penny! He was the dirtiest boy I have ever teen. I am certain he had not washed. for months. His collection consisted of 18 coins of various countries, a pawn-broker’s 4in pin, the foot of a baby camel, six rusty old tins (to sell in the market-place, as all tins, however old and rusty, were marketable), a thick piece of solid rubber —one blow with it and . “good night, everybody, good night”—a length of wire, a pair of spectacle frames, and —the bones of a man’s first and second fingers! He refused to tell where he obtained this grim relic.

A friend in Rabat (on the Sahara border) told me his son, aged seven, used to carry about '.an antique pistol (weight 81b), a large coil of rope, a heavy knife, and many odd lengths of wire.

When my friend asked why he carried his heavy load, the reply was: "To protect mother in case you get drunk like Ali.” ' (Ali, the merchant next door, was perpetually drunk.) The boy’s father told the story with great zest. And as I walked about perspiring, in shorts and thin jacket, I could not help wondering where this child found the strength to carry all this “protection for mother” in such heat!

The only record I know of where the contents of a small boy’s pockets foretold his career was when a certain vicar at a Sunday school class heard mysterious squeakings as he passed one innocent-looking lad. His pockets were at once turned out. In them were found: Two white mice in a cigar box, six flies in a metal box, a bumble-bee in another box, and several worms wrapped in tissue paper. And the whole menagerie was alive!

This boy now has a job in the Zoo.