FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 749, 23 August 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

THE JOKER Grim Jest.—The Mayor of Otahuhu has suggested a free plot in the cemetery «s a prize for a neat frontage competition. Meet a cheerful optimist— The Mayor of Otahu’. He’s the man you want to see If you’re feeling blue. Should your troubles weigh you down With their grievous load, Take my tip, and take a ride Down the Great South Road. He will buck you up no end— He’s the chap for you. Talk of sepulchres and tears. Caskets on their serried biers: These are envied, it appears. Out at Otahu’! RIKKO. JUST EHOUGH Otahuhu rarely contributes to the gaiety of nations, but attention is drawn to its library. Let pampered city folk complain of their cold reading rooms, then glance at Otahuhu, where there is a prospect of only 4s for the purchase of new books. Ah, well it might be worse. This, at any rate, ought to suffice to buy a shopsoiled copy of “All Quiet on the Western Front.” WHY WORRY The philosophic attitude of the gentleman who remarked, on being consigned to the dungeon, that Mount Eden was not such a bad place after all, should commend itself to all who endeavour to cultivate an equable outlook. No doubt it is true. After all, although Mount Eden is externally gloomy, inside the forbidding walls life goes on much the same as it does outside, only without the trimmings. It may be that the trimmings are the only things worth while, but at any rate it is refreshing to find a prisoner ready to meet the slings and arrows of the Bench with a contented smile. FREIGHT AND FRATERHITY Just another instance of the many irritating little things that may intrude between a prudent Finance Minister and a balanced Budget is the disclosure that when the Railway Department declined to take a hand in a maritime dispute, and would not allow non-union watersiders to unload from its trucks at Onehunga, the shipping firm concerned promptly-sent the goods' to Onehunga by motortruck. Thus the Railway Department has the barren satisfaction of knowing it has stood shoulder to shoulder with unionism, but has lost the business. Of such trifles are deficits compounded. There is a lot in that proverb about mice and men. BLUE LIGHTS Ail Auckland knows, or should know, the blue light that shines through the night from its lofty perch above Bycroft’s bins. Well, there is now a second one, spreading its message from the topmost height of the Farmers’ Trading Company building. Adoption of blue lights in these cases, and also for the beacon light on the tower of the St. James Theatre, suggests that there is a mysterious potency about blue lights for advertising purposes. It was not ever thus. Blue lights and other kinds of lights have had a significance all their own. Why, the mariner lights a blue flare when he wants a pilot. Let benighted revellers consider this when gazing at the new blue stars in the heavens. > DARE DEVIL

Hats off to Carricola, the daredevil speed king who averaged 72 miles an hour over the 400-mile course in the international motor race recently held near Belfast. Hats off, also, to Mrs., Madame, or Signora Carricola, the gentleman's wife, who favours none of the drooping lily stratagems occasionally adopted by wives in such circumstances, but instead stands by the side of the track with a stop watch in her hands and an approving light in her eyes. The ear that carried Carricola to spectacular victory was a Mercedes-Benz, a make of which there is reputed to be only one specimen, and that of pre-war vintage, in New Zealand. When the German ship Emden was recently in Auckland, one of her officers was asked if German naval officers ever carried cars on their ships. The Hood, it will be remembered, had a small fleet of them aboard, from a Rolls-Royce down to a cycle-car. He replied that only the admirals took their cars with them when they went a-voyaging. And the make of car they favoured? Ah, there was only one car fit to be an admiral’s car, and that was the great, powerful, clipper-nosed Mercedes-Benz. If there were to be a second choice, it would fall on the Meybaeh, a make that supplies the engines for the army zeppelins. But there would be no second choice. To a loyal German there is no car quite in the same class as those roaring giants of the road, the Mercedes-Benz.