RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30485, 6 July 1964, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

NO HANDS TO THE PUMP

In Wainoni, they are no less neighbourly than elsewhere, but one of the residents there thought otherwise on a recent Saturday afternoon, when he was threatened with catastrophe and no-one raised a finger to help. It was a normal, peaceful sort of Saturday, and the man was engaged in the. leisurely chopping of kindling wood. Next door-, the children played fairly happily at cowboys and Indians, a pastime which inevitably led to one of the smaller girls being tied to the fence in lieu of being burned at the

stake by the fearsome Redskins. And then, apparently, it occurred to the combatants that it would be more fun to have a real fire. They were thoughtful enough to remove the small girl first. But that was how the man looked up from his chopping and saw his fence in flames. It was not, at that early stage, a spectacular fire; but it threatened to become one -in short order, so the householder naurally became perturbed, and expressed his dismay by running about' shrieking for help. Here it was that a sense of disappointment was

thrust on him. For on one side of him, a man mowing his lawn merely looked up and then got on with his work. A couple of doors away on the other side, a man painting his roof offered nothing more than a cheery wave. The frantic shoutings and darlings of the fellow with the fire produced the reaction of a TV commercial. Indeed, the others might well have thought the man was advertising something. For he is Dutch-born; and in his excitement he fell back on his native tongue. Instead of “FireFire!” he shouted “Brand! Brand!”