THE DAYS WHEN WE GOT OUT AND WALKED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22955, 5 February 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DAYS WHEN WE GOT OUT AND WALKED

By ANON

TT was an amazing hill. To describe it as "like the side of a house" seemed scarcely an exaggeration. What was its grade, and how it came to persist in these days of levelling and tar-sealing, I cannot imagine. But it troubled us little for of course the powerful engine of the car made nothing of such trifles. Up we sailed, smoothly, effortlessly, triumphantly, while below the neat farms with their patterned fields and brightly modern villas fell away like a swiftly unwound spool. Such, thought 1, is travel to-day. And then, as though I had spoken aloud, came the gentle, soliloquising voico of the little old lady who sat, prim and unnoticed, by my side in the service car. "Dear me, we're up in the blinking of an eyelid. It took an hour in the old days; but then of course we got out and walked the whole three miles." "It was All Clay" I glanced round and in a moment sympathy sprang up between us; the same background was ours, the same memories united us; for I, too —how often and how ploddingly I—had "got out and walked." Not that hill, perhaps, but others as steep, as strenuous, as unending. "It was all clay then," she told me, "and those farms just unfenced scrub and native bush. Very heavy going it was for tho horses; so, unless you were too young or too old—or too ill, maybe —you never thought of sitting in tho coach. Indeed, you felt yourself lucky if the driver didn't ask you to carry some of your light luggage. But all that's an old story—thirty-five years ago, and more." • My own memories did not go bacK so far; nor need they, for it is only 15 years ago that metal came to our highway, and even to-day chains and an obliging draught horse are necessities of our own mid-winter travel. 1 know all about getting out and walking—pushing, too, in these degenerate machine days. But such are the woes of those foolish enough to iive on by-ways. , , . "It's your own fault for taking up land on a clay road," said Authority, helpfully, in answer to our plea for metal; meantime, the problems of the main roads have been solved. The old coach has been off for 10 years, the journey that once took eight hours is now accomplished in two and a-nalt and who dreams of getting out and walking f In the Day's Work

But 12 or 15 years ago it was all in the dav's work. No one, for example, thought of sitting m the labouring coach while it climbed the long hill that brought us to the highest point of the dividing ridge and then dropped, almost as suddenly, to the coast below. On that long stretch ot uphill road, with its shady corners where the mud lav deep and undried all winter, its furrowed surface where the ruts ran like torrents on a wet day, its hairpin bends and its cruel grade, it was being merelv humane to remove one s weight from the burden of those gallant horses. Regularly at the foot of the hill on winter mornings Sam would bring his sweating team to a standstill; and always good-humouredly, but for form s sake grumbling a f,ttle-we would tumble out, grasping in one hand a

Travel That Had Its Compensations

fragilo parcel—the new lamp shade, oi that mirror we; had coveted so long—and in the other the v wrist of an adventurous child, set our faces to the slope and tramp steadily in the wake of the swaying, creaking old coach. "If wasn't so bad on a frosty morning, murmured that insidious voice. "It warmed you up nicely to walk a bit." Was the little woman a witch? In a flash summer's dust had vanished; gone the powerful service car with its roomy seats, its trailer for luggage, its begoggled and dusty passengers. Instead I saw a slippery, frost-bound road where the horses slid and skidded, felt the tang of that early morning start, the harsh cold that bit into the marrow, while around us the world lay white and untouched as from the Creator's band. Not Unwelcome I remembered tho magic of frost that turned every straggling hedge into a poet's dream and every rotting stump into a thing of breathless beauty. Dimly aware of its loveliness, but with senses dulled by the bitter cold, we huddled close on the springless .seats, clinging with numbed hands to the straps that eased tired bodies from the grinding bumps of the road. Not unwelcome then that suggestive Eause of Sam's at |he foot of the long ill, that scramble down from uneasy Eerches, that vigorous stamping on the ard road that presently and most painfully restored circulation. The coach lumbered on and we after it, red-faced and a trifle breathless but full of vigour again, the blood leaping in our veins, life once more a vivid adventure. "But it wasn't so good on a wet day, was itP" murmured my neighbour. Not

so good? A miracle of understatement! I shuddered as I remembered the mud that oozed above goloshes, the rain that invariably discovered that gap between hat-brim and collar, the slippery road where one slipped back half a step each time, the morass at the bad bend where one hesitated too long, only to leap at last in the wrong direction. Yet such trips, if a misery to the passengers, must have been a nightmare to Sam and his team. Thirty miles before lunch and its welcome chance of horses; thirty miles, largely uphill, and with only nine of those miles metalled. To-day we congratulate ourselves on the excellence of our driver: "understands his engine and is quite a mechanic —jack of all trades in short." Nature and Horseflesh Sam was no jack of all trades, but he was master of one. Two things only lie understood —human nature and but they were enough to bring his load through that dreadful journey day in, day out for eight years. "And there was always the top of the hill to look forward to," said the little old ladv beside me. Ah, that top of the hill! How certain we wore that always it was round the next bend! Hut it came at Jast, and when, panting, tired, a little disgruntled, we struggled up that last steep place, we had our reward, for a new world—our world—lav at our feet.

Gone the pleasant plain-land with its sophistication and its safety; gone the region of fertile farms and flourishing settlements. Instead range after range of rough bush-clad hill rolled down beneath us, the surface of the country grotesquely scratched here and there by little farms; a land where noxious weeds and human kindliness flourished, and land of unsuccessful farms—but our own. "It's different to-day," said the old, tired voice. "Very comfortable, very easy, but something's gone." I sat silent. How tell her that it was youth that had gone—youth with its gaiety and adventure, its incurable optimism ?