Humour
Humour.
Reading much of the Web site it becomes evident of the negative
opposition, the family interference and hardship with Basil trying to
develop his dream.
There was however a positive humour side to the resort and here are
some of those stories.
Basil Bodle was known for his great sense of humour and he had
great repertoire of jokes. He had the philosophy that he should try
and make all of his guests and friends when leaving his presents to be
laughing or smiling by telling them a joke or saying.
This sense of humour extended out into the wider public an example
of this was in the early development of the resort. Basil planted
several fruit trees in a bare sand hollow alongside his newly built
beach house, he had Barbara (his daughter) and Gary ( his youngest
son) to tie fruit onto the spindly looking plants. The fruit included
oranges, grapefruit, lemons. Because the fruit trees were just off the
main road it was seen by hundreds of people as they walked to and
from the shop. At any one time there would be 10 or more pointing
their finger showing others what they saw. Many photos were taken
in disbelief.
There were many phoenix palms that Basil had planted just outside
the shop and over the road on Basil’s property. The palms grew a
massive bunches of green berry size seeds all around and high up on
the palm. Basil instructed Gary to take an extension ladder and
climb a good fifteen feet and spray paint all these berry size seeds
with bright red and pink florescent paint. At a distance these painted
berry seeds looked like flowers and gave a great colourful effect
adding to the atmosphere.
One day Basil had a knock at the door, a very well over dressed
Englishman addressed Basil and asked him who owned the palms.
Basil said he had planted them. The Englishman explained he was a
professor of Botany at an English university and wanted to know
what sort of palms these were as he had never seen nor heard of
phoenix Palms flowering with such amazing colours. The poor
professor was taken aback when Basil burst out laughing, but joined
in the humour when Basil explained about the florescent paint.
Basil’s house was used for Surf Club meetings, Progressive
Association meetings, police lookout and many other activities
including Sunday Church services in the early days at the resort.
When the Vicar Ted Dashfield arrived Basil would rally everyone he
could and would send Gary over to the surf club and gather the
members. Gary often did not tell the surf club members what it was
for, so most of them came over in their their swimmers.
Shock and horror when they realised it was a church service and
couldn’t escape, their embarrassment became obvious with their awkward body language. To make their embarrassment worse Gary was given the job of taking the purse
around to gather the donations and would purposely stand in front of
the coin less half naked club members, waving the collection purse.
There were many pranks as a revenge on the way surf club seniors
treated the younger members.
Brian Bodle was very tall but very fair and his good friend Wayne
Snowsill were both standing on the beach chatting up a couple of
good looking girls. Brian was wearing his usual yellow Speedo
swimmers. They could be seen very clearly from Basil’s house, as in
those days there were no sand hills out front. It was observed by
those watching in Basil’s house that the boys seemed to be making an
impression on the two girls until Brian felt something wrong with his
swimmers. He felt the back of his swimmers and to his horror felt
bare skin, the seam in his swimmers had failed. His embarrassment
was instantly realised and his red blushing face/neck could be seen
from Basil’s house, there was an immediate retreat walking
backwards away from the two girls. Poor Wayne couldn’t
understand why his mate Brian was giving up on their conquest and
backing off so soon.
humour.dochumour 2.doclongs.docMASTERTON 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.
If you have stories of humour at Riversdale Beach let me know address below.
Would appreciate feed back too on any of the pages of this Web Site.