RIVER CITY JOURNAL: GANGS GIVE `LIP SERVICE' NEW MEANING

Uh-oh. Trouble in your favorite home town.

There it is, right on the front page of your favorite home town weekly newspaper: Gangs on Main Street.

This is the town where juvenile delinquency generally runs the gamut from truancy to soaped windows on Halloween. But gangs? Say it isn't so.

Well, it is. It was the big topic at the last Board of Aldermen meeting, according to the home town weekly. Youths are carousing on Main Street. They are saying offensive things to passers-by. Some folks, mostly of the age-advantaged persuasion, say they are afraid to go downtown, especially after dark.

The owner of a downtown restaurant who serves meals after sundown told the aldermen her business is suffering because of the pack of youths that stand in front of her place and give decent folks a bit of lip.

And you know what else they do? (Sensitive readers may, at this point, want to turn to the classified section or some other safe area of the newspaper.) Those hoodlums stand on the sidewalk on Main Street and -- what is the world coming to? -- kiss.

In public. In plain view. On the mouth, you bet.

One alderman -- a contemporary of yours, so you know he's no pup -- said he was unaware of the problem, mainly because he doesn't go downtown after dark. In effect, he was saying he eats home-cooked meals in his home, not at some restaurant advertising home-cooked meals. That part wasn't reported in the home town weekly, but the newspaper gave you enough info to read between the lines.

The mayor, a man of considerable crappie-fishing skills, said something needs to be done about the out-of-hand youths. It ought to be safe, the mayor implied, to eat downtown if your wife won't cook a decent meal in her own kitchen. That wasn't in the home town weekly either, but you have to do a lot of between-the-lines reading in a small town.

What you're afraid might happen is the Board of Aldermen will start passing ordinances making it illegal to congregate on public sidewalks after sunset, which might be something of a First Amendment problem. But, heck, crime has to be nipped in the bud. Or the aldermen might go a step further and ban public kissing, which would sure make a dent in the fund-raising at the fall festival kissing booth run by the Thursday Evening Reading Club (which has met on Tuesdays as long as you can remember).

A suggestion: Why don't some of the aldermen and alderwomen go downtown some night after dark and see what is going on? More than that, why don't they see who is creating this problem and observe some of the nocturnal kissing for themselves? Then go to City Hall and call the parents and tell them to clear out enough room in the wood shed to set some of the town's younger citizens straight.

Times have changed though. For one thing, no one has a wood shed anymore.

And whatever happened to good, old-fashioned smooching on dark lanes? When did it become fashionable to spark in the glare of restaurant lights on Main Street?

That's all your favorite home town weekly had to say about the terrible gang problem. Seems like some young folks have a few things to learn about good manners and necking.

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