COUPON WORRY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 279, 25 November 1941, Page 10

COUPON WORRY

MOTOR NOTES _

MOTORISTS' TRIALS

PROBLEM OF HOLIDAYS

Motorists, once gay and carefree folk, light-hearted and jovial in all their undertakings, have now become a moody, sombre race lost in a maze of mathematical calculations, thwarted desires and general repressions.

The reason, of course, is the petrol coupon business. No longer does one jump gaily into the family bus and buzz off to Taihape. Tangiteroria. Te Aroha or Te Awamutu for the weekend. In years gone by one came home and rattled off glibly to one's friends how one had "run down to The Chateau" or potted a couple of pedestrians over the holidays. Noi so these days. Indeed, no.

Apart from the fact that pedestrians are getting much shrewder, the fact is that The Chateau is getting much farther away, measured in terms of petrol coupons. Holidays are. therefore, something of a problem.

For instance, it is ieuced annoying to find that after one has planned a holiday to Tauranga. worked out the hotel tariff, read the eminently readable publicity pamphlets about the sunny East Coast and. in anticipation. enjoyed all the pleasures of bathing along the golden beacho= of the North Island Waikiki. one must spend the holiday aL Katikati or Te Poi because there isn't enough "gas" to make the distance.

That is the why and wherefore of the troubled expressions of motorists nowadays. Now and again one snaps himself out of his gloom. He has remembered somebody who may have a coupon to spare. But the majority of them remain sunk in the depths of despondency, victims of despair, shunned by their fellow men and lost to the delights of sparkling conversation.

For who can tolerate a fellow who waits for a break in the flow of intellectual repartee in order to say plaintively, "I don't suppose you've got a coupon to spare?" or "Do vou know where I can raise a couple of gallons of juice?"

With the coming of the summer months the question is becoming more acute as can br seen bv the increasing number of offer's to

"swap" November coupons for December coupons, the increasing gloominess of the knights of the accelerator and the envy with which they watch the lucky owners of gasproducer plants flash by. In fact this seems a definite season for the hiker or the cyclist, for whom the petrol restrictions hold no terrors and who can pass a bowser without that aching feeling that overcomes the inveterate motor car addict. Which is the reason why motorists hate Hitler with a hate greater than that of the proverbial woman scorned.