GOING TO HIP HOP HEAVEN

The Rev. JoAnne McCauley is blind but she can envision every member of Cape Girardeau's youngest generation having someplace to go and something to do.

For some right now it is Hip Hop Heaven, a lively video arcade next door to the church McCauley leads, the House of Prayer Outreach Center.

The arcade at 632 Good Hope is an attempt "to reach out to inner-city children who don't have any place to go," she says.

Sixteen video games, two pool tables and two pinball machines are crowded into the single room, along with a concession stand at the rear.

The kids come from various sections of the city and some even from outside the city. At 6:30 Friday night, 13 were African American, including 4-year-old Cameron Porter, and four were white, including eighth-graders Teresa Walker and Heather Reeves, there with their African American friend Orita Johnson.

Walker said she comes for social reasons. "All my friends are here."

Before Hip Hop Heaven opened they might have been at the mall on a Friday night or out on the streets, she said.

Fourteen-year-old Charrell Depree, dressed in a Raiders jacket, has been a regular since the arcade opened.

Prior to that, his Friday night pastime was "walking up and down Good Hope," he said.

"This keeps me off the streets."

Hip Hop Heaven had a previous incarnation last summer in the 500 block of Broadway. But nobody came. "They wanted to stay in their environment," McCauley says.

Once the arcade moved to Good Hope in September, attendance shot up to 20 to 25 kids week nights and 30 to 45 on weekends.

Though McCauley is a nondenominational minister who believes "Jesus Christ saves and delivers," Hip Hop Heaven has no pulpit.

"We show a lot of love," she says through her frequent belly laugh. "They all know what we believe in."

Her sister, Shelley Moore, is a volunteer, along with their 65-year-old father, Reese Ware. Her son Leroy, a former standout athlete at Central High School, helps out on his breaks from Three Rivers Junior College.

"They respect the leadership and respect the building," McCauley says of Hip Hop Heaven's young patrons.

"When they come in there they know the atmosphere of this place is a controlled atmosphere. They know they have to come in here and be focussed."

The police have been invited to drop by from time to time just so the kids can get to know them on a friendly basis. "The kids always see the police department when something's wrong," she says.

The stops have helped both the kids and the police, says Officer Charlie Herbst, half of the Cape Girardeau Police Department's new community policing program.

"I've learned a lot myself. And they like you coming to them."

Parents appreciate Hip Hop Heaven as well. "They are peaceful about it," McCauley says. "They know adult supervision is there at all times."

McCauley hopes the proceeds from Hip Hop Heaven eventually will enable the church to open what she calls a "destiny center."

She describes that as a place where they receive moral and spiritual teaching about how to take care of themselves and about living in the world.

"Most children don't have a vision beyond Good Hope," she says.

McCauley, whose family moved to Cape Girardeau from Sikeston when she was 12, was in the 4-H Club as a youngster. The adults in the club taught her useful skills and supervised her time, she says.

"These children don't have that. A lot of times when they come home from school they don't have that."

McCauley, who lost her sight to a disease as a teen-ager, and her husband Leroy have raised three children of their own, but she says of the kids at Hip Hop Heaven: "It's like they're your children."

She's betting that guidance and a place to play are all any child needs.

"Now young people are just with young people," she says. "They are their own law."