Good Friday Fun

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 154, 27 March 1937, Page IX (Supplement)

Good Friday Fun

About 76 years ago, a man came over the Rimutaka Mountains. How he came I am not sure, for there were no aeroplanes, or trains, or rail cars or road ears or motor lorries. But he came somehow, bringing with him a lot of young blueguin trees. They all got planted at different places, but the section he lived on just before he died had three beauties. He had watched them grow, and they repaid with sheltering him from the south-westers. On October 1,1934. a great gale came, tearing those trees right out by their roots: the beautiful trees were all lying down on the ground, their roots high. Their glory was gone, finished by one wind’s breath. Their fail took the fences some feet in the air, and their roots left three huge hollows, like a valley in miniature. But it meant just adventure to the children. Within the standing-up roots the most useful look-outs could be made, and oh, how we all learned to climb the mighty trunks now flat, but still high from the ground. The old garden hose made a jolly rope to slide down, and it was a natural fortress to protect and guard. The long, tough bark made lovely leanto tents and dug-outs. Small wonder then, that our playacting was so good. We’d don our rigout at the house, and shoot ap arrow at the others, as if in olden days, a pirate I always liked to be, roaring out, “Yo ho. yo ho, and a bottle of rum, Come on, you fellows, come, come, come!” Of course we “robbed” anybody, and “Robin Hood” usually robbed us. That meant some hiding in the trees’ ends, and walking off the “plank” blindfolded, right off tlie end into the “valley” of tree root spaces, is thrilling, like the real thing at sea must be. We had a great time on last Easter Friday, when we decided or pretended we were hunting for treasure. So half of us boys looked around among the young shoots of one side branches. The others were scraping like rabbits, but no treasure could we find. “Lot of nonsense, this treasure business,” I said, “Bang, bang! You’re shot,” and just then I saw something down the pathway. “Oh. boys, boys, here's the treasure,” and didn't we dash for “the treasure.” It was—can you guess? A plate of hot cross buns, and a big jar of orangeade, of course, quietly put there by Mother. —Original, Dad’s Cobber (10), Carterton.