DENNY'S OINTMENT
You'd be too young to remember Alec Denny, used to be the Rawleigh's salesman in the town.
Rawleigh's don't sell their products in shops, they only sell by door to door salesmen. Alec was here long before I came to town, that was in '51. Used to carry his wares in two cases strapped across the bar of a push bike, he took the pedals off so they wouldn't hit him in the shins. Everyone bought their condiments, medicines and ointments from him, he used to win 'Salesman of the Year' on a pretty regular basis.
He was a small man, lucky to be five foot tall and go six or seven stone wringing wet, bald as a badger's backside, but had a helluva good sense of humour. Alec would dress up as a baby in a nappy with a six-inch safety pin, suck on an oversize dummy and be wheeled down the street in a pram as part of the Christmas Parade, or other special parades.
He finally got too old to walk the town and someone else took over. He went around in a car.
I ran into him a few months after he took over and asked him for some Denny's Ointment “Denny's Ointment!" he said. "If I could only get my hands on some Denny's Ointment I'd make a fortune, every household in town must have had a tin of Denny's Ointment and ran out. I reckon I could have sold a thousand tins, but our supplier has never heard of it, other salesmen haven't heard of it, I contacted Rawleigh's factory in America, they didn't know of it. It appears to cure everything from school sores to bleeding piles. What do you want it for?"
"Copper toes," I said.
"What do you mean Copper toes?" he asked.
"The skin between my toes goes rotten from working underground in copper water, Denny's is the only ointment that will fix it," I told him.
He said, "You've got tinea, I've got some stuff to fix that."
He started to open his case of samples. "You people are strange here on the West Coast, you've got nicknames for everything, you call a wombat a badger, tinea is Copper toes."
"Thought you said you didn't have any Denny's ointment," I butted in on him. "There it is in that yellow tin in the comer, You've got a dozen tins!"
He went on in a very dejected voice, "And Rawleigh's antiseptic salve is DENNY'S BLOODY OINTMENT!"
THE GREENGROCER'S HORSE
As in most mining towns the greengrocer was a Chinaman who took his produce around town by horse and cart. In Queenstown his name was Willie Sing. After several years of pulling the cart around town, Willie put his horse out in the paddock and started working another horse.
"Why did you put your horse out to spell?" a neighbour asked him.
“He no look to good," said Willie.
A couple of weeks go by and the neighbour said to Willie, "I see your horse is still in the paddock. How is he now?"
"He still no look too good," was the reply.
A fortnight later he asks again. Still the same answer. The neighbour said, "I need a horse and he looks alright to me, I'll give you ten pounds for him."
"OK," said Willie with a shrug of his shoulders.
A week later he saw old Alf who was the local authority on working horses. "There's something wrong with that horse I bought off the Chinaman," he said.
After carefully studying the horse, Alf realised the horse was blind. They fronted the greengrocer. Alf said, "You sold this bloke a blind horse."
"I tell him he no look too good, but he say 'I need horse, I give you ten pounds'.” Willie shrugged his shoulders again.