TRADE MARKS

Evening Star, Issue 21518, 16 September 1933, Page 2

TRADE MARKS

[Written by Mary Scott, for tho ‘Evening Star.’] Last week my hot water service went on strike, and 1 sent for a plumber. Now, it is years since I have had any dealing with a plumber, and I sent my message light-heartedly, airily, with the cheery confidence that it would meet with "the attention it so urgently required. Of course, I knew what the plumber used to be; I have not read my ‘ Punch ’ for nothing; nor have 1 forgotten certain acute crises of a decade ago. But that was an old story. People are only too glad of work today. Even the plumber must have ceased to humbug and begun to plumb. So I thought. To-day the front of ray hot water service strews the kitchen floor, the cistern sits drunkenly amongst my early cabbages, and pieces of hob water piping strew the back lawn like daisies. But the plumber himself still eludes me.

If only he had let well—or ill—alone. It was hard to do without hot water, but it is harder to do without a stove altogether. For a week a hungry family has been supported by an electric kettle and an open grate alone. It is rather like the fare wo had in Napier in February, 1931. But then at least we could say wo had suffered from a terrible earthquake. To-day we can only say that we have suffered from an elusive plumber. It is possible that I have struck—metaphorically only, as yet—the sole survival of an early tradition. The extraordinary thing is that he should be running so perfectly true to type. I should have thought that, having been the victim of all the best ‘ Punch ’ jokes for thirty years, he would have been a little sensitive about it. I should have expected him to suffer from one of these modern complexes on the subject of punctuality and dependability. On tho contrary,' he appears to be affected neither by the jokes made at his expense nor by the scarcity of work in these days. He seems to rise superior to all criticism, all unemployment. I realise sadly, as 1 gaze at the ruins of my kitchen and of my back garden, that it is I alone who suffer from an inferiority complex. The plumber has set me speculating. Is his tardiness the result rather than the cause of so many accepted jests on the subject? Is he, perhaps, the slave of tradition? Has this unreliability been subconsciously inculcated, bred perhaps in several generations of plumbers. simply because it has so long been expected of them? Is it beyond his control now, a product of ruthless convention and tradition? If so, how careful we should be! The psychologists and scientists are always telling us that we can make our children, and even ourselves, what we wish. Are we, then, to accept the responsibility for having made my plumber what he is? I am beginning to feel that I owe him an apology. There is no knowing where this would end. The very attributes which we are wont to consider an indispensable part of the professions have possibly been induced by our view of them. The doctor, for example, perhaps originally adopted that famous bedside manner simply because he was expected to be a comfort and a sedative. His natural instinct was probably to heave stimulating bricks at the patient, laugh at his symptoms, snap his head off.' But as soon as he entered he heard tho familiar words, “ Oh, doctor, it’s such a comfort to'see you,” and the spirit of fiery initiative dropped from him. Ho bent kindly over the pillows, smiled his famous and charming smile, and became in a moment the beloved physician. Let us hope that ho could work off steam at home and be occasionally really snappy to a tolerant and understanding wife. Then there was tho well-known school teachers’ manner. Wo all know how easy it onco was to recognise the pedagogue at play. Despite his most determined efforts at .lightness, there was an arbitrary gleam in the eye, a commanding furrow upon the brow, a touch of the austere about the mouth. And then he always knew so much about everything, and ho did so love to inform his less well-instructed friends. Unconsciously he put you in your place. He took' the load in all activities and organised the most light-hearted gathering until it drooped in passive obedience. The ladies of the profession were supposed to dress badly, wear spectacles, lay down the law. “ She looks a regular school marm,” we used to say, so that the more sophisticated and youthful members of the profession hid the halo as though it had been a stigma. But to little avail. Their neat attache cases, their serviceable gloves, and inevitable fountain pens betrayed them.

»And so it went on. The farmer was supposed to bo tho fool of the family; more especially was the dairy farmer the food for ribald mirth. The sheep man was more tolerated; he has even been seriously described by one New Zealand writer as “ tho aristocrat of the land.” He was supposed to hunt a little, to live upon horse-back surrounded by a pack of dogs and flourishing an immense stock whip. His language was reputed racy, where his brother of tho cows was merely bucolic. His women-folk, according to this strange tradition, spent their time riding over tussock plains or green hills upon faultless thoroughbreds, playing tennis, and dancing in each other’s woolsheds to the glamorous light of many prodigal candles. The dairy farmer’s wife was traditionally downtrodden, a slave and a drudge, dragging out an inglorious life in a smelly cowshed.

This was how it once appeared to the uninitiated. But times have changed and tradition gone overboard. The dairy farmer's lady lias the best of it now, and it is more often the sheep farmer’s wife who is to be found in the hastily-improvised cowshed helping her husband with a scratch herd hurriedly collected to pay the grocer’s bill. Nor is this the only accepted tradition that has gone west. The doctor of today laughs at tho old bedside manner. Ho is inclined to bo brusque and breezy, a trifle casual, and very slangy. But the stereotyped professional manner is out of date. Your school teacher, too, is almost unrecognisable in 1933. He has ceased to be a pedagogue and become human. He has even carried his bonhomie into the classroom and found it paid. The Olympians are no more. No, times have altered, and the old familiar trade marks have gone with them. Only my plumber remains aloof, rigid in his self-imposed code. As 1 look at my cold stove and send out for another pound of cooked ham 1 seem to see him solitary, superb, alone upon a pinnacle which slumps cannot reach nor criticism shako. He alono remains faithful to tradition. The plumber nines not to plumb. He is the last of the bulldog breed.