Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, August 9, 1993                   TAG: 9308100071
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WOE ON YE WHOSE TAGS EXPIRETH

In July of the summer that would go down in the Annals as "The Time the Heat Nearly Killeth Everybody," the dutiful peasants mailed in their applications for new license stickers for their carriages and carts.

They had been told by the Office of Carriages and Carts of the Province that they should mail in these applications because this would reduceth congestion in local offices of the OCCP. These were obedient peasants who, when asketh to do so by the OCCP, often paid extra money for cart and carriage license plates that said clever things, like: "WOE-JO" or "4 HOOFS."

But, alas, in this summer of the great heat, the OCCP was late in returning their renewal tags. And the peasants waxed very worried and wondered about their fate.

"Lo," they said. "Have we not done as we were told? And is it not now August of this ruthless summer and must we not now drive with expired tags and thus attracteth the wrath of the constables who patroleth our high roads?"

And some of the peasants who had to commute to work in some of the larger hamlets of the province did, indeed, drive with expired tags.

"What else are we to doeth?" they lamented. "Without our commutes, our families will not haveth the bread to sustaineth them. Nay, we must take this gamble and trusteth our fellow persons who are constables."

It should be recorded that the vice princes and princesses who ran the OCCP put out an edict that would let the peasants drive on July tags until mid-August.

But, alas, many of the constables did not get the wordeth and stopped and ticketed some of the peasants who had tried to do the right thing. This endeth up costing them 15 piasters plus 26 more in court costs.

And the peasants rent their clothes and threw ashes in their hair.

"How can this be?" they moaned. "Do not the constables of the high road have tasks more important than the ticketing of poor peasants, whose misfortunes were madeth by the very state that then persecuteth them?

"Do these constables paint a peasant image on their saddles when they busteth a man trying to doeth the right thing? Do they sit in conclaves and boasteth of such things?"

And the peasants struck back by ordering vanity plates with unprintable messages on them, but they remained peasants in the end.

The chief annalist included mention of this time of great trouble when he wrote: "He who ordererth his cart and carriage tags by mail may be out 41 piasters."