SEES WITH HIS EARS

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1929, Page 14

SEES WITH HIS EARS

BLIND. BOY’S FEAT. KNOWS MACHINES BY NOISE. Sydney, December 21., A remarkable instance of a youth s triumph over blindness is contained in a story featured - in a Sydney paper this week. The youth concerned is Eric Anderson, 13 years old. and he has been without eight since ho was 18 months old. . , Through all the years intervening he has been like other blind children, shut off from the full contact with the world in which he lives, and looking into tne future without any hoi>e of improvement. But the sound of a racing motorcycle engine has brought real sunshine into his life at last. 'Ho has become Sydney’s only blind dirt-track enthusiast,. He can conjure up in his mind an almost accurate idea of the racing track and ho can pick up from a group of machines, but tho purr of the engines, those which ho knows belong to - his friends who race at tho Wentworth Park speedway regularly each week.. He knows all of them personally, and it is indeed touching to see them all go up to greet him each time a meeting is held. It is a fact that he can sense their position in a race from the throb of their engines, just in the same manner as a doctor senses a temperature from tho throb of a pulse. Ho follows an event unerringly from start to finish, calls out tho positions of the riders, and from the mere throb of the engine he tells those about him the name of tho winner. Each time the speedway is open Eric Anderson is the centre of an admiring and marvelling group, who pay more attention to the changing expressions on his face than to tho,racing itself; ——- To him, the speedway is light itself.— Auckland Star’s Correspondent.