Random reminder

Press, 5 August 1983, Page 26

Random reminder

THE MAC’S OF MARLBOROUGH COUNTY

Young at heart, and avid “Dukes of Hazzard” fans, a certain couple bestowed upon their trusty but ageing Austin truck, the title of “The Major.” Packed with selves, two smallish boys, and Rusty a large totally blind dog, they would yahoo around the streets and suburbs of Blenheim, at never more than the legal 50kms of course. And all were most adept in their pronunciation of “yeehaw Granpaw.” The accoutrement most notable by its absence, however, was an air horn to play “Yankee Doodle Dandy”; theirs was the ordinary “toot toot” variety. Came the day of the Major’s compulsory six-monthly check-up, and she of the couple was amazed to be knocked back on the grounds of a non-operative noisemaking device. It had, she declared, been functioning perfectly, not two hours earlier. She and her husband fiddled, but to no avail, and eventually they locked away their trusty steed, in the garage burglarproofed with padlock, chain and bolts. They, and all neighbours in a 100 m

radius, next morning were awakened at 3.00 a.m. by an eerie wail emanating from the tin building. The husband (of the slow-moving variety), groped under the bed, passed the: torch to his wife and said, “Do something quick.” She, with athletic grace, leapt from the bed, raced down the hall and collided, shins first, with the coffee table he had jammed across the doorway to prevent Rusty from wandering into the bedrooms. Not to let a small matter of blood and guts worry her, in true Dukes style she picked herself up, threw open the back door, and fell over the boots he had left conveniently right there. Almost mortally wounded, in need of a blood transfusion, she reached, and was fumbling with the first of the security devices, when the noise from within ceased. Alone in the kitchen she bathed her wounds, then staggered back to bed, whereupon her husband awoke (well, with one eye anyway), and inquired, “Is the Major 0.K.?” What she replied will never be heard on the original “Dukes of Hazzard.”