BLACKBERRIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19990, 5 November 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

BLACKBERRIES

WHAT WILLIAM SOUGHT

AND WHAT HE FOUND. A TALE OF THE IRON WAR. (By W. G.) Every year Westville hald what was in part a Feast of Tabernacles and in part a Saturnalia. It lasted from Febwhen the first berries (the squashy sort) darkened from scarlet into purple, until May, when the last stragglers, hung with beads of moisture, were snapped for the pie that wound up the season. Respectable citizens of that railway centre who normally thought in terms of connecting-rods anri- slide-valves six days a week and choir sermons and an-' niversaries on the seventh, were drunk with the blackberry lust at this time, and might be seen slinking home on Sunday evenings, pursing their stained lips as if in meditation, and hiding their empurpled hands beneath their coat tails. The permanent way department enjoyed all the luck. The engine-driver, leaning on the side of his cab, sighed as he passed through untouched vistas of brambles. The signalman, chained to his box, gnashed his teeth as he saw the loaded bushes just across the line stripped bare by earnest enthusiasts who left no leaf unturned. The mechanic at his lathe dreamed of clutching handfuls of ripe berries, and sworc to find) them iron filings. But the platelayer, especially on branch lines, was reasonably free to Indulge the blackberry complex. Mushrooms in their season were also his, but mushrooms cloy as blackberries never do. It was these circumstances that decided; William Albert, who reached his fourteenth birthday in February, to become a platelayer rather than any other kind of company’s servafnt. William Albert had a nose for blackberries comparable only to the nose that some people have for old pewter or scandal, and he did not wish to enter any sphere where his talents would not find free expression. Breaking in an Apprentice. His apprenticeship began inausplciously enough, as all apprenticeships have since the time of the craft guilds. He was given various heated articles to hold, and; cuffed when he dropped them; inscriptions proclaiming him worthy of stripes were chalked on the back of his overalls; he was sent to the clerk of the stores for a penn’orth of strap oil (duly delivered); and finally he was engaged in single combat with his immediate senior. By light affliction here he won a great prize. He blacked his immediate senior’s eye, and was rewarded by being sent out next day with a gang to a remote siding. William Albert was aware by this time of the nature of the rubber hammer, the left-handed screwdriver, the fifty-six-inch file, and all the other stock jests with which new apprentices are beguiled, and expected that his work as a platelayer would now begin in earnest. He was surprised to find that in a gang with a roving commission the apprentice was a combination of whipping-boy and scullion. Before the gang began work tlio foreman recite . the orders of the day. They were that William Albert should light a fire, finding his own fuel, that the fire should burn till dinner-time, and that fourteen tea-cans should simmer thereon. Sanctions to be enforced in case of non-compliance were included. There were also copious footnotes to the effect that William Albert should order himself lowly and reverently before his betters, and do his duty as well as could be expected from one of sucn an obviously low mental category. The gang, who ‘had heard it all before, rolled up their sleeves and prepared to root up sleepers, and William Albert, suitably impressed, melted into the landscape to look for firewood. He Found Something Else. He did not find any. He did not get any further than the first plantation. There he found an Alladin’s Cave, a Goiconda, a Manoa of blackberries. Bursting bunches of blackberries thrust themselves into his face, begging to be picked. Brambles laden with blackberries, attactively cob-web-bed like old wine, swished against his legs in a seductive manner. Corpulent single blackberries, as big as sugar plums and infinitely more fascinating, swayed to and fro above his head, impudently inviting him to leap up and seize them. Wherever he looked there was a treasury of blackberries, all ripe, all shouting, “Come, pick me!” At dinner-time the gang knocked off work and found fourteen cold tea-cans and a deserted hearthstone. Firod with the revengeful spirit that only disappointed appetite can rouse, they armed themselves variously, the foreman, with a magnificently disregard for consequences, taking off his beft for the purpose, and started in pursuit. The offender was wearing new boots, and they followed his spoor to the enchanted grove. William Albert, surprised at his work —he had hardly moved from the place where he started, —made a bald statement on the lines indicated. Gastronomic enjoyment hadi chased fear from his mind, so that he felt nothing but annoyance when ‘he wa sdismissed with a hasty cuff and bidden bring the fourteen tea-cans. Symptoms of mutiny were dissipated by the silent exhibition of the foreman’s belt, and the tea-cans were hastily brought and emptied. Work began at once. Consequences. The job at the siding took three days instead of one, and it was noticed that every man brought his dinner m a market basket and his tea In a gallon can. Some even brought two baskets and two cans. When the job was finished William Albert was retained by the gang as official smeHcront of blackberries, a post in which he continued to give satisfaction. By a curious coincidence the siding needed

fresh attention every September. There were not wanting those who hinted that thy could tell the head of the department a thing at which t)oth his cars should tingle. But the thing was never told. There was a code of honour in these affairs. A German saw William Albert within an hour of his first arrival in the line. He had climbed half out of the trench, in the dim light of dawn, to see whether the bushes in front were '.really brambles. The German’s bullet knocked a pound of wet mud into William Albert s eye, and William Albert now complains that with one eye he cannot judge a blackberry’s distance so well as he used to do with twOb

I A consignment of American owls has just left San Diego, California, for Lord Howe Island, off Australia, where ihey will be used to exterminate a plague of rats which threatens to ruin local crops. Lord Howe Island has a population of 111 persons, whose principal occupation is the production of palm seeds. The rats, which now swarm over the island, are believed to have come from visiting steamers. The rodents have multiplied so rapidly tha* they now threaten to destroy the palm trees on the island;. Attempts Were made to combat the pests by the use of cats. The cats were a failure, and the owlg have now been called into service.