LIGHTER SIDE OF FLOOD

Taranaki Daily News, 23 February 1935, Page 6

LIGHTER SIDE OF FLOOD

VARIATION OF PROVERBS TERROR OF WANDERING DRAKE. TWELVE STRONG MEN WHO FLED. TROUT REPLACES GOLDFISH. “Good weather for ducks,” teid .fe number of people when the torrential rains began to fall. But on positive evidence ducks tire of their good weather. In the dark sinister hours of yesterday morning when the flood was gurgling under shop floors and swishing along the street a group of excited wanderers met a drake. He was flapping his wings before a broad expanse of water, tossing his head and squawking in obvious terror as one Who would say, “Tod much of good weather.” Another old adage that bears alteration is that of the ill wind. The frothing Waiwakaiho as it rushed past the lily pond of the New Plymouth Girls’ High School snatched up the principal’s tWo favourite goldfish. It left instead a fine trout. In the same way the Huatoki hands out its little gifts. A very old man in Devon Street yesterday was wading through the storm water. < He stooped laboriously and put his hand in the tide. “Fish-o!” he said and held up a wriggling eel. Besides eels and pumpkins there Were other habitants in the famous river. Dogs every now and then dashed in for a short dip, though one, like a new Canute, refused the appeal and barked for three-quarters of ah hbur at the strange oncoming muddiness. Floods are disasters but they bring their crop of laughter. Twelve strong men of the first score at New Plymouth to hear of the deluge were chatting together in the very young hours yesterday and peering into the flooded shops. The pavement under them was gently breathing and a low thunder was murmuring in the depths. Suddenly there was a roar like the bellow of a bull and a discordant splutter. The twelve strorig men gave a frantic look at the foundations, and fled like children in a panicstricken mob. Spectators nearby chuckled quietly as they watched the car that had just Started drive off. Undoubtedly great events change the outlook. For instance, When before at stolid New Plymouth has it seemed not unconventional for girls to walk about the main street with bare legs and dresses tucked into their bloomers? One woman in her anxiety for Salvage even went further. She was seen in the yard at the back of a hotel wearing a large hat and a woollen cardigfen. That was all. With superb sense of proportion a linotype operator set as a “catch line” for the spectacular catastrophe the phrase “Taranaki drizzle.” And on the day of the great flood a subscriber complained at long length to a newsboy that his paper was wet.