RIVER CITY JOURNAL: TOMATO GIVERS, HEDGE DWELLERS, PINBALL DRIVERS, VOICE MAILERS

This has been a busy week in the River City of Roses. But I can't let it pass without a few observations:

Observation No. 1: If you want to know how generous tomato growers in these parts are, just consider the facts. Many of them gave me bag after bag of wonderfully ripe fruit -- and never once chided me for all the pouting and whining in last week's column.

I did get a bit of a reprimand from Jeffrey Jackson, formerly of the Southeast Missourian and currently the editor of our sister paper in Nevada, Mo. It turns out Jeffrey likes zucchini and took umbrage at my less-than-kind remarks about a vegetable whose only saving grace is that it's a pretty color of green.

This explains a lot, of course. I always knew there was something funny about Jeffrey. Thank goodness he is seven hours away and isn't likely to infect many of us here in the Land of Pure Eating -- which means if it can't be fried, it probably isn't worth cooking.

Privately, I have sent urgent messages to my friends in Nevada, warning them that they may be set upon by this odd man with recipes -- recipes! -- for foodstuffs containing huge quantities of zucchini.

What will Jeffrey say next? That he's partial to grits?

Observation No. 2: The wild hedge that our neighbor, Betty, shares with us on the property line between our homes is a constant source of natural beauty. From our side, the hedge reminds us of ocean waves on a stormy day.

The untended hedge is a hodgepodge of boxwood, forsythia, spirea, redbud, swamp grape, honeysuckle, elm, poison ivy, woodbine, dogbane and that other stuff.

For a long time, I thought "that other stuff" was wild grapevines that had the peculiar habit of never producing any grapes. Now that these particular vines have taken over virtually everything else in the wild hedge, I have had to face a rather unpleasant fact: We've been captured by kudzu.

Since Missouri's lawmakers have deemed kudzu to be a noxious weed, I am consternated that we have joined the underworld of pickpockets, poachers and purloiners. Our hedge now harbors criminals. I presume this falls under aiding and abetting.

My wife, on the other hand, takes a more relaxed view: If it makes the wild hedge wilder, so much the better.

For now, we're going with wilder is better.

Observation No. 3: With all the recent publicity about Attorney General Jay Nixon's No Call list, I'm starting to wonder what all the fuss is about. When was the last time you actually talked to someone on the telephone?

Nowadays, you dial a number and a digital voice answers. You leave a digital message. The person you hoped to speak to then calls you back. What are the chances you'll be there to answer the phone? Zero. So your digital voice answers. On a good day, the person calling back will remember to leave the information you wanted in the first place as part of the return message. If not, you start the process all over again.

So why would anyone, in this voice-mail-caller-ID-message-forwarding-cell-phone age ever be so unlucky as having to talk to an unwanted telemarketer?

Observation No. 4: For those of you who have played pinball machines, you know what it's like to get that steel ball to go where you want instead of where all those gizmos make it go.

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be a steel ball in a pinball machine, all you had to do this week was drive on North Sprigg Street.

I've never seen so many barriers and barrels and barricades on a street where two-way traffic was still considered a legal option.

The good news is that when the pinball-machine decorations are removed, the street should be a little less of an assault on your car's suspension system.

One can hope, at least.

If that really comes to pass, maybe the city could take a crack at all those manhole covers that are either too low or too high in relation to the surrounding pavement on streets all over town.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

Observation No. 5: Four observations in one week is more than plenty.

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