The Little Golden Calf

“Look both ways before crossing the street.”

— Traffic regulation

HOW PANIKOVSKY BROKE THE PACT

You have to be nice to pedestrians.

Pedestrians comprise the greater part of humanity.

Moreover, its better part.

Pedestrians created the world.

They built cities, erected tall buildings, laid out sewers and waterlines, paved the streets and lit them with electricity.

They spread civilization throughout the world, invented the printing press and gunpowder, flung bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and established that no less than 114 tasty, nutritious dishes can be made from soybeans.

And just when everything was ready, when our native planet had become relatively comfortable, the motorists appeared.

It should be noted that the automobile was also invented by pedestrians.

But, somehow, the motorists quickly forgot about this.

They started running over the mild-mannered and intelligent pedestrians.

The streets — laid out by pedestrians — were taken over by the motorists.

The roads became twice as wide, while the sidewalks shrunk to the size of a postage stamp.

The frightened pedestrians were pushed up against the walls of the buildings.

In a big city, pedestrians live like martyrs.

They’ve been forced into a kind of traffic ghetto.

They are only allowed to cross the streets at the intersections, that is, exactly where the traffic is heaviest — where the thread by which a pedestrian’s life hangs is most easily snapped.

In our expansive country, the common automobile — intended by the pedestrians to peacefully transport people and things — has assumed the sinister role of a fratricidal weapon.

It puts entire cohorts of union members and their loved ones out of commission.

And if on occasion a pedestrian manages to dart out from under a silver grille, he is fined by the police for violating the traffic laws.

In general, the pedestrians’ standing is not what it used to be.

They, who gave the world such outstanding figures as Horace, Boyle, Mariotte, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg, and Anatole France, have been forced to jump through ridiculous hoops just to remind others of their existence.

Lord, oh Lord (who, frankly, doesn’t exist), how low you (who don’t really exist) have let the pedestrian stoop!