"FARMERS ONLY”

Dunstan Times, Issue 3499, 15 December 1930, Page 3

"FARMERS ONLY”

OTHERS SENT TO COVENTRY / Visitors to Coventry have to stick straw in their hair and the inhabitants have to wear false whiskers when they want a drink on a Friday afternoon. The Watch Committee selected eight hotels, and decreed that they shall open from 2..T0 p.m. to 4 -TO p.m. every Friday, hut only for farmers attending the corn market. The committee did not extend the licensing hours to include this additional time, but simply granted an exemption from closing during the two hours. The onus of serving nobody but farmers attending the corn market is thrown on the publican, and if he serves an acetylene welder or French polisher he may lose his license. To ensure that this docs not happen a police inspector and a sergeant each Friday make a tour of the eight hotels, and solemnly examine the customers to make sure that they arc farmers. Apparently, if a man wears a slouch hat, cloth loggings, a white smock, and chows a straw, and says “ OiTl be gormed,” he is accepted as a genuine product of the farm. Should he betray any of the well-known characteristics by which a poppet-valve grinder or a traveller in bitumen by-products can be recognised, he is yanked out, sternly reprimanded, and sent away drinkless. The landlord of one of the hotels said: “The difficulty of picking out the genuine farmer increases every day. Some of the farmers ride in high-pow-ered cars and look like solicitors, while there arc many professional men who look like typical farmers. We cannot serve our regular customers unless they disguise themselves so that wo could not reasonably be expected to recognise them.”

Commercial travellers whose business brings them to Coventry on Fridays say that their thirst is as great as the farmers, and they are demanding that the privilege of quenching it shall he extended to them.