ISTJC 'XCVI

OX-TAIL: Part 3

Another ten years passed. Hymies was now well into middle age. He still had his lovely wife and had seven children. Three strong boys and four beautiful daughters. He still had his job as Oxford's Traffic Engineer and there was no reason for life not to be good. As he dragged himself wearily; heavily and finally in the Rabbi's room - Hymies looked spectacularly and truly awful.

The Rabbi was well rested and alert from his recent trip to St. Petersburg and Moscow, where he had had the very great pleasure of riding in an open horse drawn sleigh wrapped in great blankets. A system he would recommend to Oxford if only it ever snowed there.

As Hymies started to speak to the Rabbi - at last he wept. "Every road is full of traffic all day long. The motorway system brings thousands of heavy trucks an hour thundering round our ring road. The noise is intolerable. Some of them wander into the City for a detour and some sightseeing. They shake the foundations of the old colleges and the fumes have eaten away half of the stones facing New College. Criminals drive in, commit their crimes and are a hundred miles away before they are discovered. The privatised buses vie with each other for passengers in the pedestrianised shopping areas. There are so many and they leave their engines running - last year a child in a buggy chair died from exhaust fumes. They only have the driver, so as they manoeuvre round they cannot see what's around them. Old people too slow to jump aside are being knocked down daily. The bus drivers take the fares, all following traffic waits while this is done. It takes three times longer to enter or leave Oxford by car than it did when I started the job. Parking is impossible. Drivers fight in the streets for places. Cyclists are unprotected -- accident rates have soared and many of them are deliberate, through Road Rage. Children must wear smog masks in the summer because the air is dangerous to breathe. This is all my fault. This has all happened during my time here as traffic engineer"

Still Hymies betrayed no sign of blame for the advice he had followed. Even in extremis his code and faith was unshaken. The Rabbi looked with both his earthly and his mystical gaze. The first saw a sad and defeated man. The second saw a soul about to bloom. He, the Rabbi would provide the final intelligent, intensive energy for the buds to start opening. But he waited.

"It is all my fault and my friends and neighbours know it" wept Hymies. "Oh, they say nothing but in that nothing is the biggest guilt trip on the planet. I, the traffic engineer of Oxford for more than twenty years, have brought us to this chaos. Magdalen College say traffic pollution costs them over two hundred thousand pounds a year in maintenance. St. Johns' bursar (the Rabbi knew that you could walk to London on land owned by the fabulously wealthy St. Johns College - or at least you could if you find a safe way across the raging city ring road - and that therefore the bursar was an important man on the earthly plane), the bursar says they fight a continuous war against exhaust fumes eating away the eight hundred year old stone work - eight hundred years it lasted for before I got this job - and I destroy it in twenty" he sobbed and hid his face.

The Rabbi leaned forward a little. "Hymies" he said quietly. "This is what you must do". As he spoke, the Rabbi watched Hymies straighten and hold himself up with pride. He saw his soul open and burst into flower as Hymies arrived at the end of his implicit, tacit quest. With that special vision given to some masters in the spiritual realm, the Rabbi could see forward a few months, and the whole of Oxford was rejoicing as they carried Hymies shoulder high round the City.

"You must ban all the cars and buses to the edge of the ring road. You must make protected space for the cyclists and the pedestrians. Let the University cycle and walk and let the City cycle and walk in exhaust gas free streets without fear of being crushed by angry vehicles. The cyclists and pedestrians can mix freely in the centre. They will sometimes fall over each other - but they will do so thankful it was not a Mack Truck that hit them, they will embrace each other. You must build moving walkways, people conveyers on the seven major routes in and out of the City. You must equip the Residents with electric cars and the Visitors with electric cars of different design. You must fit dry goods vacuum tubes to carry goods in capsules to supermarkets - like water and oil flows through pipelines, so must dry goods. Your guiding principles are first to reduce the weight being transported, most is the weight of vehicles not the goods or people who are traveling, and in reducing weight you will greatly reduce energy consumed. And second, to immoblise all energy sources so their exhausts can be more easily cleaned - do you really need and want to cart one and a half tonnes of car and one hundred and fifty pounds of fuel with you when you travel the five miles from home to the library - No you do not - so find away to leave it behind"

The Rabbi stopped speaking for a moment.

"Do this and it will make you and all the people of Oxford rejoice".

Hymies did as the Rabbi had told him and within a year he became the hero of Oxford. The University awarded him an honourary degree and the citizens, marking their pleasure at the clean air and safe traveling, carried him shoulder high round the Bodleian Library. Even College Bursars were rumoured to have been observed smiling - though this was never scientifically proven.

Needless to say, Hymies lived a long and useful life, had many grandchildren and, when it was time for his soul to unravel the no-thing that comprised his mortal frame, he traveled most sustainably on into the next realm in a state of unimpeded bliss.

The End

The Warden of this section has suggested that an appropriately evocative drawing of Hymies and the Rabbi might be useful here, as well as perhaps a few renderings of the different, more or less sustainable Oxfords. All offerings accepted, with of course the usual prize temptations for those who need such.

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