Chicken versus Pork

A Tale of Yesteryear from Graham Ross

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early in 1955, I moved from Whakatane to Te Puke to begin an apprenticeship. Rather than do correspondence, I decided to go to Trade School in Tauranga every Saturday morning and Monday night, for which I required some means of transport.There happened to be a BSA Bantam similar to the above for sale in Te Puke at the time and I thought it would be ideal.  I scraped together 50 pounds and bought it.  This started my motorcycling career.  Until then I had no desire to buy a motorcycle but it seemed the practical thing to do.  In those days there were several chaps in Te Puke who were competitive motorcyclists and they persuaded me to join them in trials, scrambles and road racing and buying bigger and better machines.

But back to riding to Trade School. 

One Monday night about 10pm I was scooting along at about 40 mph (65 km per hour) about 2 miles north of Te Puke when I was confronted by a pig crossing the road.  Bantams have very poor lights and brakes.  I applied the brakes as hard as I could but still hit the pig in the body.  My Bantam had a perspex screen.  It shattered and spread over the road as did the bike and myself.  I'd just picked myself up when some guy driving a Ford Prefect drove by, swerved to miss the debris but drove on without stopping. 

There was a house nearby so I knocked on the front door which prompted the farmer to get out of bed.  "It wouldn't be my pig," he said, "but I will dress and come and take a look."  We searched the road for about 100 yards each way but could not find any pig but he generously drove me home. 

Next morning this farmer found his big white sow, the backbone of his pig farming enterprise, dead in the paddock.  A postmortem revealed I had hit her in the kidneys and the poor animal had slowly bled to death overnight.  The farmer was quite reasonable about the matter and paid for the cost of the repairs to the Bantam. 

But who would have thought a Bantam would kill a Pig !

 

Graham Ross is a Life Member of the Tauranga Motorcycle Club.