RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33515, 22 April 1974, Page 16

RANDOM REMINDER

TO CATCH A MACKEREL

When you have children of your own, and gazing rapturously in 'he mirror you observe your hair turning slowly silver with the stupid and dangerous things they do for amu. ernent, you marvel at the patience and forbearance of their snowyheaded grandfather who, you happily remember, suffered similarly and stood the strain so well. This story conies from Tauranga and concerns a man and his nine-year-old son whose mother fears he is already showing signs of taking after his father, who has long been addicted to fishing. One Saturday. just after midday, father came home from work feeling tired after his four hours overtime work, and immediately on his arrival

he was accosted by his

wife and son to give a decision on whether the latter should be allowed to go fishing in the Kaueranga River.

The Kaueranga is a small river, but nowhere near a immaculate as our quietly-flowing Avon. The Kaueranga runs dangerously deep and has a menacing muddy bottom. Most un-Avonly. And the local youth crawl precariously out along old. prostrate tree trunks sombrely jutting out. over the swirling murky waters of this angry little river. And sometimes they catch sprats, or eels, or colds. Father accepted with gravity his responsibility as titular head of the house and for greater concentration closed his weary work-worn eyes;

and there before him the limp body of his little son helplessly drifted downstream. And the loss of so much Family Benefit had LOthing, if not very little, to do with his swift decision to ban, absolutely and irrevocably, any fishing in such a place.

But after much pestering and pleading he was more than time and a half tired and young son guessed as much so he mercilessly pressed on with a blitzkrieg of bigger and better arguments, battering and scattering father's faltering thoughts until he finally succumbed.

“All right, son.” he said, “but you get drowned and you wont be allowed back there again.”