RIVER CITY JOURNAL: WELCOME TO CAPE GIRARDEAU, THE LAND OF ORANGE DIAMONDS

Every town has its claim to fame. Cape has so many: roses, allergies, humidity and barbecued cabbage, to name a few.

The price of progress is a detour sign.

The reward of progress is when it's on someone else's street.

Goodness knows there's a lot of progress in Cape Girardeau right now.

This week I strayed from the streets I regularly take. I followed all the detour signs -- I'll swear I did. In no time at all, I was in Festus.

Maybe everyone isn't as habit-bound as I am about what streets I drive on. I guess I live a pretty sheltered life, but I take the same route to and from work. About the only thing that will make me vary my routine is a decent winter ice storm. Then I try to avoid the big hill up New Madrid Street past the Show Me Center. Any way I go, there is a hill to get home, but I consider some hills to be more ice friendly than others. I don't know if that's really true. It's just another habit I've formed.

There are certain places I have to be at certain times throughout the week. My life floats along on the ebb and flow of these timely tides. I think this is why I enjoy ocean coasts so much. I am a landlocked seafarer, so to speak.

To get to those regular destinations, I take the same routes over and over. When I first moved to Cape Girardeau, I tried experimenting. I gave up after I found it takes the exact same 6 1/2 minutes to get from one side of Cape Girardeau to the other no matter which street you take.

Once, when I had an eye-exam appointment one morning, I found myself at the eye doctor's parking lot 10 minutes before the office opened. So I decided to drive around some parts of town I rarely visit just to see what was happening outside my world. I drove from Broadway to Perry Street north to Perryville Road. I went all the way to Lexington and headed east to check out the newest part of that street. I made my way back down the newest part of North Sprigg Street and meandered through the university campus. By this time I was afraid I was late for my appointment, so I went straight to the doctor's office.

Total elapsed time: 6 1/2 minutes.

Another time I needed to be at an office in Doctors Park first thing one morning. As I left the house, I noticed I had about 15 minutes to get there. I decided to head south on West End Boulevard and then veered off somewhere in the neighborhood of Good Hope Street. I zigzagged through that area and toured the neighborhood around Jefferson Elementary School. I found my way out by that big apartment complex just off Bloomfield Road. I followed Bloomfield out to Mount Auburn Road and entered the Doctors Park maze, finally reaching the parking lot of the doctor's office.

Total elapsed time: 6 1/2 minutes.

Yesterday I made plans to meet my wife for lunch on Broadway near Capaha Park. I remembered that westbound Broadway was closed for part of that stretch and decided to follow the detour signs just to see where they would take me.

I'm not making this up. If I had followed the detour signs, I would have wound up in the parking lot of Rose Theater at the university, which is nowhere near where I wanted to go. Fortunately, I could see other detour signs a couple of blocks away, so I aimed the car toward them. When I got to Pacific Street, another detour sign urged me to cross and enter that no-man's-land around Houck Stadium. Instead, I turned left and went down to Pacific to get back on Broadway. And then I went to the restaurant.

Total elapsed time: 6 1/2 minutes.

There you have it: highly scientific research that proves, once and for all, that Cape Girardeau -- the Rose City, Queen of the River Cities, Allergy Capital of the U.S.A., Humidity Heaven and Home of Pulled Barbecued Pork and Cabbage Toasted Sandwiches (Unless You Prefer Pimento Cheese Instead of Cabbage) -- is a 6 1-2-minute metropolis.

Not that anyone asked.

I'm all for progress. I think we need good sewers. If it means detours and one-way streets and Local Traffic Only signs for the next eight or nine years (the official city symbol, you know, is an orange diamond), it's worth it to put stormwater in the river and sewage wherever sewage is supposed to go.

But that doesn't mean I'm not going to do my share of bellyaching.

Driving through Cape Girardeau these days reminds me of something a popular columnist for the Topeka Capital-Journal, Dick Snider, once wrote after repairs had reduced the Kansas Turnpike to a one-lane torture route for about three years. Snider said the state tourism department ought to erect signs at the state borders along all the highway entrances to the state saying "Welcome to Kansas. Left Lane Closed."

Cape Girardeau's Convention and Visitor Bureau might consider signs like

Welcome to Cape Girardeau

Drive Carefully

(It's One Way All the Way Anyway)

Actually, I might not have mentioned a word about all the detours and one-way streets in Cape Girardeau if the city would have filled in that big pothole in the northbound lane of Sprigg Street right past Broadway, the pothole that snacks on Miatas and Festivas and those cute new VWs.

That's on my way home.

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