ROOF-TOP HOMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 4, 6 January 1938, Page 9

ROOF-TOP HOMES.

CITY CARETAKERS.

LIVING ON THE SKYLINE.

A COLONY OF GARDENERS.

Citizens who swelter and perspire through the heat of an Auckland summer on the lower levels of the city ajust envy the fortunate people whose elevated dwellings ensure them the maximum of fresh, air, with only one drawback—the minimum of space. These are the roof-dwellers •of Auckland— guardians of the city skyscrapers, who, with their families, live "high, wide ana handsome" above the dusty pavements.

More than 60 caretakers with their families adorn the tops of Auckland buildings, and a visitor who takes tne trouble to wend his way skywards either by foot or elevator will find that these miniature colonies are made up ot people who are hospitable and human. They have only one besetting interest a passion for gardening. Just as and lusty sailors are rumoured to cherish a secret love for the knitting needle or the crochet-hook, so do these rbof-dweller# revel in producing tne gentle strawberry or the more hardy mint and parsley. Their gardening, it is true, is done mostly in boxes, but tne roses, pansies, passion-fruit, nasturtiums, geraniums, hydrangeas and fuchsia that flourish at the higher levels; look none the worse for that. The strength of toe roof-dweller's love of Earth is realised fully when one considers that Mother Earth must be carried bodily from the lower levels. One's reward tor labour well done is the privilege of pickr ing one's own strawberries- fresh from the barrel or box, or ones New Year lamb with one's own homegrown sprig of mint. ' ' .

For the housewife, too, there are compensations in this life on the heights. True, she is limited to a scenic view of the tops of other buildings with an occasional glimpse of the harbour, but then what back-door pedlar will brave .the rigours of six, seven or eight storeys to

sing the praises of the latest thing in mops or the beat way to put that shine on the linoleum?; There is, of course, that eternal problem that haunts the life of the roof-dwelling housewife -»-tbe washing. Shipfe .funnels and city chimneys play havoc with "the whites," and curtains get grimy inside a. half hour. But there is a simple solution to that trouble. Fortunately, civilisation has evolved the bagwash. Sailors and Sea-serpents. Some of these people' who live on the heights are interesting personalities. There is, for instance, the one who served for 16J. years in the Royal Navy and during the Great War served as a leading torpedo-mari in. H.M.S. BenbOw at the* Battle of Jutland. He is full of | reminiscences. If one catches him in a good mood he may talk about the seaserpent that he saw in the Pacific—or was it the Indian Ocean? —when he was serving on H.M.S. Pearl._ "And you "can tell them I hadn't had a shot of rum either," is the way he clinches his argument. The impressive way in which he describes the undulating curves of the monster carry conviction, and the fact that he loaded the 4.7 gun that fired a shot at the beast—and missed—rings true even to the journalistic mind saturated and jaded with stories of seaserpents and giant gooseberries. Or per-i haps he will tell you the 6tory of the Boer general who tried to escape from British hands in South Africa in a pianocase, only to be undone when the "piano" was loaded upside down by mistake. . ' r

This skyline raconteur, after roaming the world for years, is content to settle down—or is it "settle up"?—above the trouble line on' one. of Auckland's leading landmarks. Father of a husky family and a keen follower of all spouts, in addition to being a modest exponent of the glove game, he spends such spare time as is at his disposal in teaching his ten-year-did "baby" son how to avoid ; the "fast ones" at cricket. The numerous marks on the wall of their roof-top Utopia testify to the vigour with which the lessons are pursued. An imposing array of barrel and box gardening accounts for the rest of his efforts. - Some DiKws Philosophy. > Or perhaps some may prefer to discuss philosophy. If so, there is ascertain caretaker in the region of. Queen Street with whom one may spend happy

|hours discussing everything from supermen and The Ideal to the workings of something that goes by the name of dialectical materialism, which means— well, what does it mean, anyway? One thing is certain, this philosopher of the heights doesn't neglect his flower garden. He has a weakness for cinerarias.

There is knother caretaker who has a fondness for cats. He also knows all about the Mendelian Law, and has a most imposing library on the sort of stuff that most of us always tried to dodge at secondary schools. One time he Used to be a farmer.'

One man finds it an almost impossible job to grow anything at a height, but he blames the wind, as he is in an exposed position. Most of them, howevejr, seem to cultivate their soil with a fair measure of success, and are only too delighted to discuss the ternperamentl of their various plants. And a skyline gardener - fighting for the honour of his agricultural specialties is a different person from the suburban dabbler who merely throws a few potatoes into a hole and trusts to luck to get something up before Christmas.

But those who thus live above the street levels are agreed on one thing. "This is the life," they say. "In the and yet not of it." Few of them would go back to flats again or even to houses of their own. There is a peace and quietness about their unusual mode of living that can be found nowhere else in the city.