PLAIN SPEAKING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 10

PLAIN SPEAKING

BIT disgusted with myself for being soft enough to prefer comfort I stayed home for the last Test. The radio did all right. Somehow sixty thousand worshippers steamed it up to a high pressure of emotional communication. When Peter Jones scored his try we all sighted the Ark of the Covenant and the shout of Hallelujah! rose from bursting hearts. The hour had struck for miracles and the mass liberation of joy. I nearly burst with joy when Peter Jones had the last word after the game. What a word and what an audience for it! Hours later I started to wonder why it had made me feel good. Obviously it was something Inhad wanted to do myself. I suppose most people connected with the broadcasting trade get an occasional urge to create a large audience and shock it. But I was also pleased to know that ‘his plain piece of speaking originated from Auckland, the nearest thing we have to a metropolis. Big towns breed double talk. Words come rapidly to. ruin. Phrasemakers dress themselves in sincere neckties to sell something to other phrasemakers. Rodent exterminators one pace forward. Rat catchers stand fast. But in me the surge of release liberated by Peter Jones’s truly sincere remark swept into consciousness-dogs. I love dogs: I love plain English. Therefore let all dogs be called dogs, and bitches, bitches. I recalled with pleasure the seven-year-old daughter of the house coming into breakfast at a farm where I used to ‘stay, announcing: "Sal’s had seven pups. Four dogs and three bitches. The runt’s a bitch. Can I keep her? Pass the sugar, please." Later, in foreign metropolitan areas where words are in ruin, I met people who said they loved dogs and showed me cards they had sent out to mark a similar occasion: a little of pups. One card read: "Our Momma Dog has had six babies; two little boy dogs and four little girls. . ." Until Peter Jones’s plain speech released the emotion I had_repressed when reading the card, I had no idea it was so violent Test football is violently wonderful: all metropolitan areas should be initiated! Sunday Money ot | SURELY did my best to spend a pound in this town last night," the gob said, fishing notes and silver out of his breast pocket, "but no can do. Lookit all this I got left." "Well, if you can’t spend it on Saturday night, you’ve no show of getting rid of it on Sunday afternoon," I said. "About all you can buy is ice cream, and I know what you guys think of our ice cream." The gob grinned pleasantly and handed half a crown to his buddy, who was going back to his ship to catch up on sleep. I’d accosted them on een Street-two of several hundred visiting victims of strange weekend customs, the ones who’d missed out on invitations to private homes, who hadn’t hit out by bus for Rotorua or Wairakei. I offered to drive them somewhere. They looked polite but dubious. They’d already been up Mt. Eden. Parks, gardens, monuments and museums had been visited or purposely neglected. They knew a place where you knocked three times on the back door for a bottle of beer, but the beer was warm. It seemed silly to suggest the zoo to a couple of fellows who’d been stationed at San Diego and 4 knew Balboa Park, It wasn’t, yet the | ceason for beaches. Where to go? One

chose sleep and made for the Devonport ferry with his half crown. I drove vaguely north with the other, listening to his light Kansas voice (urban Kansas), which a year before, with all the other regional voices, had been daily . accustomed cadences to my ear. Near Kumeu I remembered I wanted to order half a gallon of wine. I explained that you can’t buy wine on a Sunday, but you can suggest a delivery later in the week, and if the vintner wants to offer you a drink as a friend, you may take a little for your stomach’s sake without breaking the law. Down in the cellar with my friend the vintner, we found our friend the gob from Coffeyville, Kansas, preferred his wine on the sweet side. He talked a blue streak, ambling restlessly round the barrels, tapping to see how full they were. Back in the car, he sighed, and remarked that he was married the day before his ship sailed from San Diego, beginning of August. "Darndest thing,’ he said. "I met this girl back in Kansas when I was home on. leave. Seventeen she was. And me twenty-three. I asked her for a date, and then I got to thinking what does a gal of seventeen want to do on a date? Heck, I didn’t know. I mean like say you dated a gal of-er (he surveyed my time-eroded map) twenty-five. You wouldn’t know what type entertainment she liked, huh?" "No," I said, "I guess I wouldn't. Maybe even one of thirty." "TI was kinda nervous," he went on. "Handled myself very carefully, Left her at the door real polite. No smooching. I guess I spent ten, twelve bucks that evening." "Coffeyville’s not Auckland," I remarked. "You said it! Well, I dated her again. Took her home to meet my folks. Then one afternoon we were driving down tthe road in my old man’s carstill no smooching-and when I was doing 80 I just had to kiss her. Right then. Darndest thing! I jammed on those breaks and we were right off the road, but I kissed her, yessir!" He nodded wisely. "I started to spend my money then. Bought a car, a 1950 Buick, for 400 dollars. She drove back to California with me. We were in Riverside the day before I sailed, and we decided to get married. Well, we had to drive (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) to San Diego-hundred thirty, hundred forty miles-pick up my mother there. She don’t live in Kansas, She and the old man were divorced in 1941, Then we drove to Yuma, Arizona, and got martied, Four hundred miles, round trip. We had ten hours, and we did it in nine and a quarter, Darndest thing! She’s gone back to Kansas. She says everything’s O.K. She’s eighteen now." He wasn’t sure what he’d do when he got out. He had another 18 months to serve, "I’m a boiler tender," he said. "T been offered a job at hundred and fifty a week doing the same work in Tijuana." "Any Mexican whuld blow you up in a cloud of steam for a tenth of that," I said, "Are you going to take it?" He didn’t know. He had a hankering to get back to Kansas, even if the winters were cold. "I dunno what my wife wants to do," he said. "She don’t say much when she writes." I stopped the car in Queen Street near a bunch of his shipmates, He sat a while looking at his pound notes and silver, "I sure have appreciated meeting you," he said. "I guess I’ll never spend this dough." I shook my head, too, over this sorry town, and I was nearly home when I suddenly remembered all he had to do was get up at three o'clock next morning and call his wife in Coffeyville. He could spend a pound a minute at that caper-but not Sunday! The transPacific telephone closes on Sunday, too,

G. leF.

Y.