BROKEN BRIDGES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 816, 18 March 1955, Page 16

BROKEN BRIDGES

bY

SUNDOWNER

FEBRUARY 18

WISH shepherds had nothing to do but stare at sheep; and that in a sensible society would be the case. If we had a better sense of values we would not think it important to have good gardens and tidy homes, to visit cities at intervals to buy books and call on the barber, to have a motor and seven suits of clothes, to spend more time getting and spending than standing and staring. Shepherding

a few hundred years ago must have had its drawbacks: cold,

wet, hunger, vermin and dirt. The days must have been long, the diversions few. But it is not on record that Spenser’s shepherd grubbed gorse. If he planted potatoes he did it seeretly. He never lay on his belly under a truck gouging out a hole for a jack, He cut no lawns and painted no sheds. He never had to sneak in a back door, wash, and shave, and dress to meet a visitor. He had gnats to fight but no white butterflies. He was "gentle"; lived with his sheep; had time to mark which did bite its hasty supper best. Today, I fear, no shepherd lives like that anywhere in the world. I thought_

David Ben Gurion was going to do it when he turned his back on_ politics about 15 months ago and at 67 went to be a shepherd on the Negeb hills. But after he had rested there a few monthsin a strategic corner of the country. cynics said----and had his photograph taken carrying a lamb, he went back to Tel Aviv. I have just heard it announced over the air that he will be Minister of Defence. I will go back to the pine stump that I have been trying for three days to dig out (with the assistance of Will and Jim). But I hope I will never meet the man who started the legend that pines have no tap root.

FEBRUARY 19

[F we may believe the bridge engineers the most useful accomplishments in 30 or 40 years will be swimming and operating punts. New Zealand, they tell us, is 375,000 feet behind safety level in wooden bridges. Its annual rebuilding

capacity is 410,000 feet. It will therefore take 371% vears

to reach the safety line if no bridges in the meantime wear out.

Of course nobody ‘does believe the engineers. We admire and _ mistrust them. We know that dramatics are one of the weapons they use to persuade the rest of us to put our hands in our pockets. Long before 199212 they will be congratulating themselves and us on a miraculous escape from disaster. They will have found the method, the rest of us the men and the money, to replace 20,000 or 30,000 féet of bridges annually without disturbing the safety programmes

at railway crossings. But they will not be able to tickle our vanity then if they don’t give us nightmares now. In the meantime I have been re-read-ing the roads and bridges chapters in Jusserand’s Waytaring Lite in the Middle Ages. Bridge-building 600 years ago was a method of serving God. It was a charity like alms-giving. You gave your labour or your money or both to help those in distress on the toads and yourself on the way to Heaven. In the Vision of Piers

the Plowman rich merchants are urged to repair "wikked wayes" (bad roads) and "Brygges to-broke by the heye weyes." Then, when they are about to die, St. Michael himself will be sent to them to drive away devils "that they be not tormented by wicked spirits in their last moments." . tk * *

FEBRUARY 20

NGELS and Devils are not as numerous as they used to be, or as active, or as formidable, and I don’t blame the Commissioner of Works for neglecting to invoke their aid. But if it is true that his Report calls the bridging position

"impossible," it ‘would have been logical to try other

than possible methods of dealing with it. Dunedin had a surgeon once who would not operate until he had asked God to guide his hand and steady his nerves, and the younger surgeon who told me about him said that the old man was "miraculously successful." I don’t know whether it is harder or easier to take a shilling out of a taxpayer’s pocket than to remove a stone from his gall-bladder, but I would like to see the supernatural method tried, There was a religious order in the 12th Century founded for the express purpose of building bridges, and their bridges still stand today. I wonder if they know about it in the Ministry of Works-if the Commissioner has one of the Bridge. Friars over his desk and the famous arches of Avignon confronting him when he opens his door. If they are not there the reason perhaps is that faith and works no longer

go together, but I would like to see an | attempt made to unite them again at the Waitaki. I think I might go to church again if faith built a chapel on the banks of the river and brought all the farmers from both sides to work as well as worship. It is not many years since one of our Prime Ministers rejoiced publicly that the Holy Land had returned to a kingdom whose ruler was of the seed of Jesse. If there are not 375,000 people still in New Zealand who could be persuaded, for the Glory of God and their own eternal welfare, te restore one foot apiece of our derelict bridges, I know nothing about the potentialities of my countrymen. * %* %

FEBRUARY 22

WE have seen our young cuckoo again, this time without any warblers. It was in the same kowhai tree, and when disturbed it flew only a few yards to a nectarine tree from which it watched us for several minutes. When we tried to

examine it through binoculars it flew off into Jim’s trees 50

yards away, but was back in the kowhai half an hour later. Although we can’t be sure that it is the bird we saw with the warblers, we know from its feathers that it is a young bird, and its return to the same group of trees makes other possibilities unlikely. I hope it remains alert enough to evade the cat. It is safe as long as it keeps to the trees and is satisfied with caterpillars and moths. But that is like saying that I will never become a drunken driver if I am satisfied with tea and coffee. | (To be cantinued) |