Routine never palled

Press, 2 November 1984, Page 1

Routine never palled

By

CRAIG DOWLING

Mr Les Smith has driven a lot of people out of town. But this will stop on Sunday when Mr Smith, a bus driver, retires after 23 years with the Christchurch Transport Board. He has driven along the same route to Templeton for the last 16 years but said he did not get bored with it.

“I enjoyed driving on one particular route mainly because I got to know so many of the passengers,” he said.

“You start off passing the time of day with them, then exchanging a few words, and soon you get to know them personally.” The last run on Saturday nights, which some bus, drivers fear, is a run Mr Smith said he would miss.

“It is quite a hectic run and normally one of the chaps plays his mouth organ and gets some singing going. “I. don’t know if it is ethical but it’s entertaining.”

Mr Smith, who .is 61, started bus driving a week after coming to New Zealand from Kent, England, in 1961. He had previously worked on his family’s dairy farm and emigrated because he thought the grass might be greener in New Zealand.

Although far removed from dairy farming, Mr Smith said he had no regrets about his bus-driving. A quarter-acre garden at

his home in Templeton has including a tour of the South kept his interest in the land Island with his wife, Bertha, active and will keep him and relatives. , busy in his retirement. Will it be a bus tour? “No He has other plans, too, way.” Les Smith likes to when he hands in his keys, drive.