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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 7 (October 1, 1937.)

The Sign of the Zoneiac

The Sign of the Zoneiac.

The safety zone is yet something of a solecism to the time-toughened ped, who has ploughed a lonely furrow on this part and that, for so many moons that he finds it difficult to credit such a sanctuary. He is still inclined to eye it with the shy suspicion of the wild buck who senses the zoo; and who can blame him? For years he has braved the bounding main (street). As a lisping infant he was warned at his mother's knee to look, listen and leap. It is a little difficult for him to retire so suddenly from the heat and burden of the bitumen. For too long has he flirted with peril to realise that there is now a campaign afoot to preserve the pedestrian for posterity. As one of the vanishing races, in common with the bison, the blacksmith and the peanut-roaster, he is to be protected so that, when little Carburetter Jones asks his father, in the year 20002 a.b. (after bowser) “What is a pedestrian?” it will be possible to run one down for the little fellow without taking him to the museum.

In another decade one can envision old gentlemen shaking their heads at one another and wheezing. “Remember how we crossed Cuba Street in ‘34, old timer?” And there will certainly be a Returned Pedestrian's Association where nimble veterans will swap anecdotes of the nifty “nineteens” and recount breathless tales of tip-and-run. Tough old pedestrian petrol-pioneers will deplore the softness of an age that shrinks from plunging into the monoxide and braving the bonnets.