ABOUT A LAWN MOWER.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15887, 27 July 1923, Page 4

ABOUT A LAWN MOWER.

“DOG EATS DOG.” A good story —a gem of its kind—is being told in Lyttelton. It concerns a waterside worker who, having successfully sown a lawn in front of his house, found that a lawn-mower would he his next item of expenditure, unless other means were found of procuring one. He decided to adopt the cheaper, if less honest means, and bided his time. One day his chance came; a steamer was discharging hardware, and in jhe hold in which the watersider was working were eases of particularly attractive looking mowers. The next problem was was, how to get one ashore. A lawn-mower obviously cannot be slipped in a pocket or under .a man’s singlet like a few plugs of tobacco or packets of cigarettes, and the ever vigilant 'Customs watchmen are always suspicious of any appearance of bulkiness 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

time, sometimes a wheel in his pocket and the 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 two, and this also came ashore as dunnage. The work of transportation was completed on a Friday night. On the Saturday afternoon the watersider assembled the machine and * mowed his lawn —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.