RIVER CITY JOURNAL: FACT: YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH KINDNESS

* With all the good things happening, I'm compelled to say something nice about the mayor. Again.

Let me say this about kindness: It's good.

I know. That sounds like a politician, doesn't it?

One of these days, a politician is really going to say what I always expect him to say. You know, something like: I'll fight till my dying breath for the right to breathe.

Or something like that.

Throughout the year, acts of kindness are remarkable. Is this because we've become a society that always expects the worst, so we're jolted when something good happens?

I hope not.

There have been so many acts of kindness documented in the newspaper this week. So I felt compelled to write something nice.

Let me think.

Give me a minute.

Oh. Here's one.

I've heard the mayor is saying I'm having way too much fun at his expense.

Hizzoner is absolutely, 100 percent correct.

That's why Cape Girardeau is so fortunate to have a good-natured mayor.

See. There's something nice I can say about the mayor.

And here's something else:

He's tall. Really tall.

And he golfs. I never met a golfer I didn't like.

Let me say this about the right honorable mayor: He has good ideas for making this city great.

For example, there are mayors all over the nation who work diligently to get big projects built in their cities. Things like sports arenas. And I mean whole sports arenas. But our mayor is no join-the-pack mayor. He is an original thinker. Who could not like a mayor who wants to save a piece of the old Mississippi River bridge? Not the whole bridge, like other mayors who have obviously turned greedy would do. Just a part of the bridge

Now that's class.

And you've got to hand it to the mayor of any city who has a good solution to traffic flow along the municipal boulevards.

Probably the best thing that ever happened to city traffic was the interstate highway system, which tends to avoid cities as much as possible.

But, let's face it. You still have to get to work and then back home at night. Your kids have to get to school. And you have to eat lunch.

You know the rule for going to lunch in Cape, don't you?

By law, you are required to drive to lunch. It doesn't matter where you are. You must, as a law-abiding citizen, take one of three streets -- William, Independence or Broadway -- to get where you want to eat. And, finally, city ordinances mandate that anyone going to lunch must drive all the way to the other side of town. After lunch, you simply reverse the process if you want to stay out of traffic court.

You don't believe that part, do you?

You think the city wouldn't pass any laws like that.

OK. So maybe you can explain the lunch-hour traffic patterns in this city.

All this driving to get to lunch can create quite a traffic jam. You know what I'm talking about.

Most mayors wouldn't touch this kind of problem with a 10-foot steering wheel.

But Hizzoner is a good and decent mayor. He wants to end the misery of daytime driving in our fair city.

He wants to rid the metropolis of traffic congestion.

He has a plan.

If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. I didn't think there was anything anyone could do about having to wait and wait and wait at congested intersections for as long as 45 or 50 seconds at a time.

But here it is. A good traffic plan. And it saves money too.

What a guy the mayor is.

Instead of driving back and forth across town every day, Hizzoner will have us driving in circles.

See how simple really good ideas are?

The problem with motorists in this town is that they tend to think in straight lines. They need to put a few curves in their lives.

That's how Columbus discovered America. He knew if he kept going, he'd wind up right back where he started. And he did. With a brief stopover in the New World.

As I've said so often before, there are many times when I'm dead sure I'm right about something. And then Hizzoner comes along with something completely different. Naturally, I go along with whatever the mayor wants, because he is, after all, the mayor.

As Random Acts of Kindness Week winds down, I hope Hizzoner will accept this column as a tribute to his genius and as a true act of kindness on my part.

In a roundabout way.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.