"GREETINGS!"

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 7339, 14 February 1920, Page 3

"GREETINGS!"

To the Editor. (and the Inhabitants of Cowaronger.)

Lest you awaken too suddenly from your slumbers, I'll whisper it —"Greetings!" I've heard it said that it is not advisable to awaken a sleeper too suddenly — shock, bad results and all that sort of thing you know. But surely there is a time limit for sleep. Surely it is time at least some of you wakened. Or is it you have dozed off to that last long sl«ep ■wrr'ch there is no awakening on this queer old sphere. If you are awake (or is it possible you should awake sometime in the dim future) may someone draw your attention to the following : — Some time ago I wrote drawing your attention to whac would re suit if the railway were allowed to run along the foreshore. You still sleep, and have not raised any protest. 7ou call yourselves God fearing people, and yet you allow the most beautiful thing that God could have given you to be de faced and polluted. Wnere is your civic pride if you have so far. forgotten yourselves as to have no consideralion for what the Good God has endowed you with ?

Some t'">-ne ago your City Fathers ruled certain regulations regarding cows on the streets of the town. Have they ever taken steps to see what a farce it all is ? I know I'm treading on delicate ground, but why allow any cows at al! on the streets. No other town allows it, and if it is necessary to have cows on tne streets for *he sake of invalids and children, why is it that other towns and cities can rear healthy children and get ill 'people well, when they have to draw their supplies from dairies. Dairies are subject to a rigid inspection, but your house cow —supposed to supply only one family, yet in reality supplying two or three — has no inspection to undergo. You say ;t k- 2ps the streets from becoming ovtrgrown with grass. Yet you buy hay and fodder for your borough horses. A most peculiar idea of economy. Some day —or come night—some poor unfortunate car owner —with a car load of children possibly—will run into one of your pet cows and i:hen well it will be another case of locking the stable door after the horse has been taken.

And yoar roads (save the name)! Are they not monuments of foresight, skill, and economical expenditure How long has it taken to metal the Te Puke Road from the junction with Cameron Road, and what has the expenditure been? How long has if taken, and how long will it yet take, to tar and sand your town footpaths? In several places you haven't even got your curbing at the correct permanent level. You certainly put a curbing in but you never considered the levels when you did so. Result, a big waste of time and material, and no one even took enough interest in it to sea that it was done correctly.

Your main arterial roads are a disgrace to any town or county. The expenditure of money on borough improvements (?) makes a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera look like a pathelic dramn, and yet you have not the public spirit, the energy, the local patriotism, to see that it is done right.

Take your county even. When I came here some of your prominent people drew my attention to the fact that certain parts of your district suffered with " Cattle Sickness." Probably ihey meant weil, but isn't it a beautiful advertisement for your district ? And since I've been here. I've made numerous enquiries throughout the district, and haven't been able to trace one solitary case. If your readers know of a case — or any number of cases — Yd rea)Jy like to know just where it maybe seen. Three of my friends have been tolauranga lately, friends with any amojint of money and energy who! were prepared to invest the:r money and energy here. But you generously cold them that the disHcr was caicle sick, and they left. Dame Rumour is a vtry b:tter old creature. She is just.a big bundle of malice, and yet yon apparently take what she says for the truth without using your own thinking apparatus, or con-mon sense, to find out the real facts. YouTaulangaites a re always so solemn and s'ncere, but at the same lime so delightfully inconsistent that you appear humorous to anyone knowing the outside world as it is to-day. Surely some of you can wake up and take a little intelligent interest in your own beautiful town instead of allowing it to become known as "Sleepy Ho.low." —l am, etc., "THE LOST-SOUL."