A WATERSIDER AND HIS LAWN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 24 July 1923, Page 4

A WATERSIDER AND HIS LAWN

A LYTTELTON STORY

(By Telegraph.—Special to The Mail.)

CHRISTCHURCH, This Day.

A good story—a gem of its kind—i.*> being told in Lyttelton. It concerns a waterside worker who, having successfully sown a lawn in front of his house, found that a lawn mover would be his next item of expenditure. Unless other means were found of procure one, he decided to adopt a cheaper, if less honest means and hided liis time. One day his chance came. A steamer was discharging hardware, and in the hold in which "the wat-ersider was working were cases of particularly attractive-look-ing mowers. The next problem was howto get one ashore. A lawn mower obviously cannot be slipped in a pocket oz under a man’s singlet like a few- plugs of tobacco or a packet of cigarettes; and the over-vigilant Customs watchmen are always suspicious of any appearance of balkiness 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 lime—sometimes a wheel in his pocket, and next time perhaps the blades in a parcel of broken dunnage which the companies usually permit the men to take home for firing. The handle he had to saw- in tw-o and this also came ashore as dunnage. The work of transportation was completed on a Friday night; on Saturday afternoon the watersider assembled the machine and mowed his law-n; and on the Saturday night someone stole it out. of his shed, and he has not seen it since. It is said that the lawn plot is now- under cultivation as a kitchen garden.- 1