RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30219, 26 August 1963, Page 17

RANDOM REMINDER

SKID ROW

This is perhaps one of the least romantic stories of married life it has been our doubtful privilege to relate but it probably goes to show, or something. He was a very large and very practical man, highly skilled in the use of tools, but, at the time he became engaged, light patter, and poetry to pay tribute to his beloved’s graces, were not his forte. But conscious of the need to do the right thing, he took to his fiance a large bunch of red roses, to mark the occasion. She thanked him, in a brief speech of one word, thinking to herself it would have

been better had he made a down payment on a washing machine or a refrigerator—for she too is of a highly practical turn of mind. Then she produced her present, a pair of long-nosed pliers. He held them to the light, turned them over, thanked her, and said they were no good, and should be exchanged for something else. He then read her a lecture on the best makers of particular tools, the need to distinguish between them and between the long noses and the short, and similar variations in the manufacture and use of other implements. So they settled down to married life. But soon

he changed his vocation, and left his tools idle in their neat rows above the work-bench. He has no time, now, to use them. But she had already absorbed something of the atmosphere. So that when he does have a free moment, he tries his hand at cooking. And she is not idle. In the last few months, she has constructed three sledges for the children of a neighbouring family, two for her own children, and she is at present making two more for the children of another neighbouring family. But her pride and joy is the especially big sledge she made, for herself and her large, practical husband.