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...... on a dark and stormy night, Ritchie
Mounsey was wandering the streets of Cairns
He had a pocket full of cash, and after blowing a large portion
of this in strip clubs thoughout the city,
he ended up in the back corner of a dark seedy pub on the waterfront
Seeing a real 'patsy' just sitting there, a con-man approached
Ritchie and whispered out the corner of his mouth
"Hey, you want to buy some astro turf ... it's good stuff
at a good price"
Almost unconscious in a bourbon haze and having no idea what
the guy was really talking about, Ritchie replied
"What the hell, yep, I'll take it"
Waking next morning with one hell of a hangover,
Ritchie looked out the window and saw this huge roll of green
stuff on the front lawn
"What the $#@%&$ have I done ??" ... were his next
words
Slowly the memory of the previous night came back to him
And he then started to panic ... "How am I going to explain
this to Karen ??"
"The Cairns Hockey Association were updating their fields
and this piece was left over and they offered it to me at a terrific
price"
This is the fairytale he came up with, and though it is pretty
ridiculous, Ritchie has become,
due to his alcohol problem, a very clever story-teller and managed
to convince everyone he spoke to
So life at the Mounsey's settled down once more though Ritchie,
everytime he saw this heap of green plastic lawn sitting in his
yard, swore to never drink again
(but that is a story for another day !!)
The weeks went by, and then the months
At the end of the first year a very nice family of toads had
moved into one end of the roll,
and at the other end, a few million cockroaches had colonised
and developed a nice little country
Now, we all know that Karen is a wonderful very patient person,
but as the First Anniversary of the roll being
dumped in their yard became the Second Anniversary, she wanted
something done and spoke to her husband about it
Another mad thought came to Ritchie
"Maybe I can convince the Baseball League to update their
batting cage
and then maybe I can convince someone to give a Grant to have
the floor concreted
and then maybe I can convince the League that they should have
astro turf on the floor
and I'm even clever enough to convince them to name the cage
after me ... that plan should work"
As you read, a lot of 'convincing' had to be done
and he started raving on to anyone who would listen about the
benefits of astro turf
He actually didn't win over that many supporters as most just
got sick of listening to him and said
"Just do what you want but please leave me alone"
So, after around three years sitting at Smithfield, the astro
turf roll made it's final journey to Trinity Beach
The photos below tell the story ......
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