Standout column a window to the region’s past

THE 100 Years Ago column is a standout item in my daily newspaper reading. It helps keep me in touch with what has gone before. For example, small boys with shanghais would not be understood by today’s modern, freerange, two per family, electronic, gizmofiddling kids.

Horses, not any horse, but Clydesdales (ODT, 30.9.20) in a photo. There was once a popular belief that you could sip a glass or two of whisky, smoke a pipe or three, but the only horse worth following was a Clydesdale.

I know this to be true having been the last Clydesdaledrawn Palmerston North coal delivery man in the country in 1975.

Their droppings attracted suburban organic gardeners and the sparrows.

How ‘green’ is that? It should make the Dunedin mayor jump with delight.

Jim Moffat

Caversham