LAWN MOWER COMEDY

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 July 1923, Page 2

LAWN MOWER COMEDY

WELL LAID PLOT’S SEQUEL. (Special to "Star.”) CHRISTCHURCH, July 23. A good story —a gem oi its kind —is being told in -Lyttelton. It concerns a waterside worker, who having successfully sown a lawn in front of his house, found that the fawn mower would be his next item of expenditure, unless other means were found of procuring one. He decided to adopt the cheaper, if less honest means, and hided his time. One day his chance came. A steamer was discharging hardware and in the hold in which the waterside! was working, were cases of particularly attractive looking mowers. The next problem war how to get one ashore. A lawn mower obviously cannot be slipped in a pocket or under a man’s singlet like a few plugs of tobacco or packets of cigarettes, and the ever vigilant Customs watchmen are always suspicious of any appearance <of bulkiness of clothes. This was a matter that required thought and patience, so the watersider carefully took one machine to pieces and took ashore a little , at a time, sometimes a wheel in his ' pocket, and the next time perhaps the ’ blades in a parcel of broken dunnage, which the companies usually permit f the men to take home for firing. Ihe handle he had to saw in two, and this also came ashore as dunnage. The 5 work of transportation was completed ~ on a Friday night. On Saturday afternoon, the waterside! assembled the machine and f mowed his lawn, and on the Saturday c night someone stole it out of his shed j and he has not seen it since. It is said that the lawn plot is now under cultivation as a kitchen garden. n