The members of the Otago team had a rough ride into Invercargill on Friday night. The cars left Dunedin at 1 o’clock, and some of them did not get into Invercargill till 9 o’clock. The car in which the Times reporter returned to Dunedin on Sunday had a varied experience. Passing Clinton the car had a desperate struggle to get through some more ploughed-up road, and nearly capsized once, but the precincts of Milton were safely reached. The main bridge at Milton is not open to traffic, but the cheerful optimist knew all about the route to be taken. He guided us down a muddy side street, till at last we came to a high hedge with a large signboard: "Danger. Go slowly." The car went slowly all right — in fact, it came to a full stop bogged in the mud. A nearby resident came on the scene, and assured us that it was impossible for any car to get through the opening in the hedge, so the significance of the sign is hardly apparent. The car was pushed and dragged out of the mud, and, nothing daunted, the cheerful optimist said he knew all about the route now. The car started back over its tracks, and turned in at another road to come round behind Milton. To call the Dunedin-Invercargill highway a main road is misleading. A main road connotes something a little better than a succession of pot holes and deep ruts.
Illegal after-hours tobacco sales
The Labour Department is at present enforcing the restrictions with regard to the sale of tobacco and cigarettes by those shopkeepers entitled to keep their premises open late at night somewhat more energetically than usual, although the department is always on the outlook for breaches of the sort. It is apparent that a number of transgressors are unwittingly holding the belief that, being fruiterers or confectioners as the case may be, they are within the law in selling side lines at any hour they please.
For the benefit of those people it might be well to explain that, should they sell tobacco, they are under an obligation to observe one half-holiday in the week, and, further, to withhold from the selling of tobacco on certain nights after the hours kept by the tobacconists of the city.
Late night jam sessions
It may be recalled that the amendments to the Shops and Offices Act of last session under which fruiterers and others selling jams were thereby made subject to the hours and holidays kept by grocers caused a good deal of indignation among those concerned, especially to the fruiterers, who pointed out that, by the manufacture of their surplus fruit into jam, they avoided much waste. This was evidently realised by the Government, for the Labour Department seems, irrespective of what may be its policy in the future, to be avoiding enforcing the law where fruiterers are selling only home-made jams.
Dunedin children offer up seats
The school children of Dunedin have never in general shown such a lack of manners as seems to characterise those in Auckland and Christchurch in regard to the retention of seats on the tramcars while adults have to stand. Their conduct has never been bad in this respect, and of late it has become even better. The school teachers have been inspired by newspaper reports to administer some advice on this particular aspect of courtesy, and their remarks have evidently not fallen on barren ground.
ODT, 5.9.1922
