Hizzoner's last hurrah

As promised -- and because I don't want to disappoint anyone -- I hereby offer a tribute to Hizzoner, the man who for eight years has steered a steady course for this big boat we call River City.

Before I get to the gushy part, however, I am committed to one last-ditch effort to get Mayor Al to sign an executive order designating the World Famous Downtown Golf Course as the city's official honorary golf course.

Mr. Mayor, you only have a few hours left before some guy whose last name has almost as many consonants as Dale Nitzschke's is sworn in as the new mayor.

Who knows if the new Hizzoner even knows the difference between a divot and a slice?

(Actually, golfers who have seen Jay Knudtson on a golf course say he is painfully familiar with both.)

Now, back to the task at hand.

A few weeks ago, when it dawned on me that Mayor Al couldn't be Mayor for Life because of something called term limits in our city charter, I realized I would have to write this column. So I wanted to be prepared with facts and rock-solid innuendo, the latter being a much-relied-upon commodity in our fair town.

To that end, I thought it would be wise to speak to the folks who know Mayor Al best. This way, I presumed, I would also get some embarrassing goodies about this man whose facade is a well-constructed image of a decent and upstanding fellow.

When I sat down with my deep-background and off-the-record sources at City Hall, they thought long and hard about how to answer my blunt question: What's the skinny on Al?

A couple of my deep throats actually screwed up their faces to make it look like they were thinking hard.

After about an hour of avoiding eye contact, one of my moles brightened up: "Here's something you can use," he said with the expression of a 4-year-old who has just remembered that D comes after C. "I recall one time when the mayor came to a council meeting in a car that obviously hadn't been washed in over a week."

Aha! Now we're getting somewhere.

But, I asked, how was the mayor in the performance of his official duties?

They used words like straight arrow, congenial, down-to-earth, focused on business, problem solver.

Obviously, I was in the wrong city hall. So I hightailed it over to Jackson. Surely all that Indian-Tiger rivalry would slop over into city relations, right?

Wrong.

Cooperative. Solution seeker. Consensus builder.

Hey, I don't need to drive 10 miles out of my way to hear stuff like that -- or buy cheap gas.

Golfers around here know Hizzoner is darn good at the game. And I happen to know that golfers can always be trusted. So I asked a few of the fellows who talk to the mayor in the privacy of a golf-cart ride: What does he say when there's no one else around?

They couldn't think of anything out of line. They said maybe once or twice he had muttered something about a certain columnist who got a little too cute for his own good.

Other than that, they said, the mayor doesn't even cheat on his golf score.

And he calls himself a golfer?

I couldn't even find any clients who had hired Lawyer Al to represent them in court who would say anything worse than "He knows a lot of fancy legal lingo."

So what am I supposed to say about a man who is described as congenial, good-natured, straightforward, honest, concerned, caring, smart, cooperative, focused and a decent golfer?

Two words come to mind:

Thank you.

Thank you, Al Spradling III, for the dignified leadership you have given Cape Girardeau for eight years.

So.

Will you sign that executive order now?

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

BREAKING NEWS - Mayor signs proclamation