“NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH”

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2307, 27 November 1925, Page 5

“NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH”

AS TOLD TO A TRAFFIC “COP.” In New York, motor cycle mounted police are used to check speeding motorists. An interview with one ot tnese men in the “New York Times” quotes some amusing excuses offered by offenders, from which we extract the following:—

"Each time I catch up to a speeding car and wave it to the kerb I wonder what kind of yarn I’m going to hear. I’ve made a sort of collection of the stores that have been forced on me, and I’m always on the lookout for new ones.

“For the first two or three years on this job I would drink in every word before filling out the summons, but now I’ve learned how to listen and write at the same time. Asking a driver tor his license is like requesting a bedtime story. The card comes slowly, but the yarn comes fast. “I used to like the one in which the speeder had just had the engine completely overhauled and had found that the car moved thirty miles an hour with the same pressure on the accelerator that had hardly yielded flf-, teen In the past. The yarn about the new shoes through which the driver hadn’t yet got the feel of the gas pedal was another favourite. The fellow who had recently received a rise in pay and just couldn’t make his feet behave was entertaining. “It has been some months since I met the last man, who was so over- 1 joyed because his wife had presented him with a baby boy that he really could not be expected to move along at less than fifteen miles an hour. I, let two or three of them get by with that yarn but when I hear it now I am likely to hand out a ticket for reckless driving as well as for speeding.

“You see, I once took down the address of one of these new fathers and made a little investigation. After my tour of duty I went to the house, I rang the bell and a woman came to the door. I mentioned the name of the man I was inquiring for, and the woman said that she was his ■wife. I got all flustered and finally managed to remark what a nice thing it was for her to present her husband with a beautiful baby boy. “She looked at me funny like and said I was rather late with the congratulations, as the boy had been presented to her husband nine years before and was in the back of the house playing cowboys and Indians with some of the neighbour’s children.”