Humour

MASTERTON IS PUT ON HIGH ALERT

In 1956, Basil purchased a number of large second world war search lights from an

Army surplus auction at Waiouru military camp. He kept this purchase a secret and

had his staff at Reliance Tyre & Rubber Co. in Dixon St. assemble the search lights in the open concrete service area of the building one quiet evening. When they started the generators and the lights lit up the sky with huge beams of light over the town, absolute mayhem broke out with hundreds of cars, bicycles and excited people

running down the footpaths looking for the source of these war time lights. The search lights could be seen as far away as from Greytown which added to the traffic congestion.The Police in a panic had to call out reservists (Legion of frontiersmen) to help with the traffic jams all over the town. Basil allowed the public to operate the lights making the beams move all over the sky illuminating the clouds over Masterton.

Next, Basil moved the search light to Riversdale Beach for a new year’s party celebration. Again, the lights in the sky created much excitement with the locals, campers and farmers. However after running them  for and hour or two an emergency call from the Wellington Harbour Master explaining that the search lights were confusing ship captains not knowing what to take notice of - Castlepoint light house or the search lights, Basil had to turn the lights off. The search light generators were very powerful so Basil installed them at the Riversdale Beach Store to supply electricity for the shops refrigerators as at that time there was no electricity supplied to the resort. He also ran wires underground to his own house opposite the shop continuing the wiring to the neighbour’s houses being John & Barbara Bunny and John &  Githlian Maunsell.

Basil one evening came back to his house after a hard day’s work and decided to make himself a tomato sandwich for dinner. It was getting dark but he was too hungry to be bothered walking across the road to the shop and starting the search light generators for light. On making his sandwich in the dark he found the salt and sprinkled it onto the tomatoes in his sandwich. On eating the sandwich he felt there was not enough salt so sprinkled a lot more. After eating his sandwich he went across the road and got the generators started. Returning to his house and turning on the

lights he was shocked to find he had sprinkled Ajax Cleaning powder on his sandwich and in a moment of panic rang Trish Taylor the district nurse and after telling her of his dilemma she just laughed and said it would not hurt him, but he will have the cleanest guts in New Zealand.