RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31754, 10 August 1968, Page 23

RANDOM REMINDER

TWO’S COMPANY

The long stretches of the main road south from. Christchurch can be lonely fori a motorist without a passenger, and if the traffic is light, a man can be left to his own thoughts for considerable periods. But it was not merely a reflection of the gregarious nature of man when a Christchurch journalist kept company with a man in another car going south the other day. Our journalist friend steamed up at his usual brisk speed toward another south-bound car, and discovered as he

drew near that it was a white-painted Ford Zephyr. The journalist, wise in the ways of the world, was determined not to fall into bad habits and get a speeding ticket, for it was clear to him that the man in the white Zephyr was in fact a plain-clothes traffic officer. So, at a speed of 55 miles an hour, which these days passes as sedate, they went in line astern from Rolleston to Temuka, where the man in the Zephyr pulled in to a service station. Our man also needed petrol.

The two drivers alighted and eyed each other. Our man asked the other if he was in fact a traffic inspector. “Heavens, no,” was the reply: “but aren’t you one?” Of course, there had been no traffic speeding past at 80 which, by going through unchallenged, would have told each of the drivers that the other one was not a plain clothes officer. And of course the man in front was hardly to be blamed for taking life seriously. The car our journalist friend drove? A white Zephyr.