RIVER CITY JOURNAL: NIGHT LIFE? WEEKEND REVELERS? IN MY HOMETOWN?

It just goes to prove that a visitor always sees what the natives miss, even though it's as plain as the nose on your face.

Over the long Memorial Day holiday, I have been told, some folks who work in the same building spent the weekend in my favorite hometown. The fellow who told me this thought I would be pleased and was a mite dismayed that the look on my face was one of surprise rather than pleasure.

I realized the message my expression was sending, even though I hadn't said a word. Finally I told him, "A whole weekend? In my hometown? What did you do for a whole weekend?"

It turned out the holiday weekend was also reunion weekend for the local schools. Unbeknownst to me, these reunions are excuses for partying. Let it be said that my co-workers partied long and hard -- so much so they were pretty much forced to spend the night rather than attempt the drive home on Highway 34, which, as I have mentioned before, was laid out by an engineer with some black snake in his blood.

In fairness, my favorite hometown in the Ozarks is a decent place with good folks and a hard-working, God-fearing morality that sticks to its natives like feathers on a chicken. Oh, sure, once in a while you lose a few feathers here and there, but it's nothing a good pew-packing revival can't cure. Heck, if there weren't any career sinners, most of the churches there would have nailed their doors shut a long time ago.

Not that my favorite hometown is a dull place. No, there have been enough marriages busted up by affairs and fooling around to make soap operas look like story hour at the local library. And there have been a fair share of shootings and killings and whatnot, but the prevailing attitude is that bad things happen to bad people.

I remember as a child that there was plenty of excitement to be had by walking alongside the Neighbor's Cleaners building just as the steam shot out of the vent in the wall. A good game of dodge-the-steam will teach you two important lessons in life: Quick reflexes and how to treat minor burns.

With no stoplights or other trappings of helter-skelter life elsewhere in the world -- at least not until a couple of years ago when the 20th century invaded the little town, taking no prisoners and leaving an ATM, a McDonald's and a Chinese restaurant in its wake -- my hometown was just about average on the ho-hum scale.

The fact is, though, that even when school reunions aren't on the schedule of events, thousands of visitors arrive every week. Why? Because of the Corps of Engineers flood-control lake nestled in the hills nearby, which makes my hometown the camping supply, fishing gear and sun block capital of Southeast Missouri.

Most of these visitors are from St. Louis, and they come, whether they realize it or not, because of the natural beauty of those Ozarks hills.

When I was growing up, it was easy to assume that everyone in the world enjoyed similar, although different, scenic vistas and tree-studded panoramas. It came as quite a shock to discover that some folks were stuck in eastern Colorado or southern Minnesota or even the Bootheel because of some pioneering ancestors who decided not to go another step if it was going to be like this all the way to the Pacific.

My co-worker told me he spent part of the weekend reading my favorite hometown newspaper, which will please Harold Ellinghouse, a high school classmate of mine and editor of the paper, no end. Where else can you learn about the latest UFO siting and the next church social in the same column by a country correspondent?

When I go to my hometown, I see it through the eyes of someone who has taken it for granted for so long that I don't appreciate its rich social life and dazzling recreational opportunities. My co-worker, on the other hand, apparently likes attending someone else's 15-year class reunion and taking a drive across the dam at the lake.

I'll bet if he tried real hard, he could visit Neighbor's Cleaners on a busy day.

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