RIVER CITY JOURNAL: LOOK, IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME, GO LOOK IT UP YOURSELVES

The question was asked at a perfectly lovely dinner this week for a group of visiting Brazilians.

One of the American hosts, perhaps saturated with Braziliana, wanted to know from me how the World Famous Downtown Golf Course got started.

See? And I thought everyone knew.

It just goes to show how it never pays to take things for granted.

I told the fellow who asked the question that the soon-to-be-constructed golf course, stretching along the artfully designed floodwall that keeps marauding Illinoisans and Iowa rafters safely away from our moonshine and women, was the product of overwhelming popular demand.

My questioner had a skeptical look on his face.

I knew right away that I should tell the whole story, but I wasn't sure a dinner for visiting Brazilians, who can carry on a decent conversation in English -- and who speak excellent Portuguese, by the way -- was the right place to do it.

There are aspects of delightfulness and hard labor involved when Americans try to chitchat with folks whose first language isn't English. Not a single Cape Girardean in the group, for example, knows but a smattering of Portuguese, if any at all. But all five of the visitors could easily charm the socks off us with their easy conversation and wry humor.

I'm sure it must grow tiresome for visitors from faraway lands to come to places like Southeast Missouri and find that most of the burden of exchanging greetings, pleasantries, thoughts, ideas and information falls to them, not their hosts.

But smiles are universal, so everyone grinned a lot during the dinner.

And meant it.

After I left the dinner party, sated with good cooking, delightful conversation and new friendships, I went to bed a mite restless. I stayed awake for a spell -- maybe five or six minutes -- trying to formulate a good answer to that nagging question: How did the World Famous Downtown Golf Course get started?

True, an intense outcry from the citizenry is always good motivation.

But the plain fact is this: The golf course is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

I know, I know.

Who would have thought a golf course was in the Big Plan?

Let me say right here that I detect more than a smattering of arched eyebrows among this morning's Cheerio munchers.

But it's true.

Take your 23rd Psalm, for example.

Most of you know it by heart, particularly that part about "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures."

Now, I don't want to get all technical with eschatology and anamnesis and stuff like that, but the Hebrew word for "green pastures" is "fairway."

I'll bet most of you didn't know that.

And look at the verb there. "Maketh" is an old word. Like most old words, it doesn't mean what it sounds like. Strictly speaking, "maketh" means you have to do something in order to survive the way the Almighty wants you to exist. And if you don't do what he maketh you to do, you better watcheth out.

Then there's that "lie down" bit. Biblical moralists and golfers alike know very well what a "lie" is.

The dead giveaway, of course, is that very next verse of the 23rd Psalm, which you could have figured out for yourself if you had known what I just told you:

"He leadeth me in the paths."

I don't how you could get any plainer than that.

Clearly, this is a divine order to follow the cart paths that cross your life.

I don't know about you, gentle readers, but I'm not one to ignore such obvious divine directives.

Sure, I could have been fully obedient to the 23rd Psalm at any old golf course. But that business about "the valley of the shadow of death" couldn't be anywhere but in Mississippi River valley, probably at flood stage, which is why we're so tickled to have that floodwall -- so we can "fear no evil."

And the way it looks to me, Mr. Creator has swung a few golf clubs in his time. Anyone should know that a rod and staff are a driver and putter, particularly if you know anything about the language of ancient Mesopotamia.

Which is strikingly similar to Portuguese, I'm told.

So I guess we're doubly fortunate the Brazilians came to town. We learned something about the people of another continent. And we learned why we have to build the World Famous Downtown Golf Course.

I don't see any other choice. Do you?

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