RIVER CITY JOURNAL: AS USUAL, HIZZONER IS 100% CORRECT. WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Golly! Did I ever blunder with last week's column.

Now I have to apologize and try to make up for it.

The first I knew anything had gone awry was when word got back to me that Hizzoner, the esteemed mayor of the River City of Roses, was a mite perturbed by what I had to say last week about street work around town.

Of course, you all know that I am behind the Hizzoner 100 percent. Heck, sometimes even 110 percent. Once I know how the mayor feels about something important, you can bet your kit and caboodle that I'm going to be right there supporting him all the way.

That's the only way to run a progressive community, as far as I can tell.

Here's what happened.

When I wrote last week's column, I had no idea Hizzoner was in favor of road rage.

Now that I know, of course, I want to be the poster child for pathologically irate motorists.

Just show me another barricaded street and stand back.

After reading last week's column, Hizzoner -- and I have this from a very reliable source -- said something to the effect that, if that column was any indication, he didn't need supporters like me.

Boy, that really hurt.

There's not a single person in the entire city of Cape Girardeau -- at least not within the boundaries of the 1967 annexation, which is most of the town -- who wants to give the mayor the support he needs more than I do.

I now can see where last week's column was way off base in so many ways. Thanks goodness Hizzoner spoke up, or I would still be misleading the entire community down the path of mistaken notions.

For example, take that slam I took at the roundabout.

That poor roundabout.

I don't think I've ever seen a scapegoat take so much abuse. It's a wonder the Humane Society hasn't called out the National Guard.

What we have here, folks, is a perfect roundabout. You can't go anywhere in the world and find a finer roundabout.

Readers of the Southeast Missourian have been doing some research of their own, which I really appreciate, and I know Hizzoner does too.

For example, one reader sent a clipping from the St. Petersburg Times in Florida showing the roundabout at Clearwater Beach, Fla. This particular roundabout has a huge fountain in the middle of it with water spewing every which direction. The caption on the photo says city commissioners have decided to combat "roundabout rage" by reconfiguring the roundabout at a cost of $2.1 million. "Commissioners said the roundabout overhaul will make it more obvious how drivers are supposed to navigate the roadway, which has become one of the county's most accident-prone intersections since opening in December 1999."

Thanks to Hizzoner and all the good people at City Hall, we haven't spent anything like $2.1 million on our roundabout.

Which just goes to show that if you want to make motorists' blood boil, you have to spend a lot more money than the River City of Roses has in its savings account. Thanks to prudent fiscal management, our fair city has only spent peanuts on our roundabout -- including repairs. So we don't really have anything to fuss about.

Bill Lewis, who ran the world-famous Wimpy's eatery here in the River City of Roses until it closed a few years ago, sent me a photograph -- in color, no less -- of a roundabout in Paris, France. There's a huge arched monument in the center, and the whole thing looks to be about a mile across. I was particularly touched by Bill's handwritten note written on a piece of note paper from the Hotel de Paris Monte-Carlo.

No one ever writes anything about our roundabout on fancy-shmancy note paper.

That tells you a lot right there.

Then there's all that business about the street work being done in bits and pieces and stops and starts.

Have you ever seen so much whining in all your life?

Here's the city trying to make life in the fast lane a little better for all of us, thanks to our generous spending on taxable items, and all Hizzoner and City Hall hear in return is griping and muttering.

Are we miserable wretches, or what?

We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

Sure, any kindergartner on a good day could do a better job of planning our street repairs. But we happen to live in a fair town where the City Fathers have college degrees and stuff. You have to make allowances in situations like this. You can't expect City Hall to send children out to do the work of grown men and women. There are laws, you know.

We really should be singing the praises of the tax on retail sales, which is paying for all those street barricades and orange cones, instead of whimpering about detours and closed streets and bumpy pavement where the surface has been peeled off for days and days waiting for new asphalt.

We should be singing this hymn of civic adoration:

Hizzoner thinks whining is despicable

Even though all the delays are inexplicable.

We mistakenly believe

Our streets should relieve

All those problems that just plain aren't fixable.

When will we ever learn?

Thank goodness we have a mayor who can keep our municipal barge floating in the right direction.

Let's hear it for Hizzoner:

Hip! Hip! Hutzpah!

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