NEWTON'S LAW: BREAK UP THE CITIES! IF ALASKA DOES NOT WORK, TRY MONTANA

Friends of mine have fanned out to cities on both coasts, New York and Los Angeles. Yes, that should provide a clue about the rigors of my friendship.

In fact, their moves were prompted by career decisions (that's their excuse, at least). When I talk to these guys now, however, the conversation revolves not around careers but survival.

There are a million stories in the big city, the saying goes. All those stories are ghastly, say my friends.

My friend in New York told me no group of people gathers for more than 10 minutes without the conversation turning to a mugging one in the circle had heard about, witnessed or was a victim in. All nod in accord with the telling, then share their own story of mayhem.

My friend in Los Angeles has had his vehicle broken into several times ... which isn't as bad as his roommate, who had his truck stolen. One day, my friend came home to find numerous squad cars and a covered corpse on his street ... gunshot victim.

Though living in California less than a year, this guy has become considerably jaded by the lifestyle. It's a victim's mentality shared by 10 million others in his immediate neighborhood. The crime situation is no worse, he said, than living in hell.

Switching coasts again, I ran across a wire story carrying the grim news that 10 people died in separate, violent incidents in one night last week in New York City. Ten people. A shooting here, a stabbing there ... it adds up.

Closer to home, it bears noting that the St. Louis homicide rate has increased 57 percent over last year. There were 130 murders in that city for 1991 through last Friday.

Aggravated assaults in St. Louis in 1990 (8,466) were almost double the total of 1980. During those 10 years, city population decreased ... fewer people but more violence.

Cities are a mess. Many of the problems hammered on by the national media AIDS, crack addiction, homelessness, unchecked crime are not exclusive to urban domain, but you might say city folks are majority stockholders.

So, what do you do about it? The problem, boiled down, is that too many people are crammed into a concentrated space. The answer: break up the cities.

Here's how you do it. The combined population of the metropolitan areas of America's five largest cities New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit is 41.2 million. You could ease urban problems significantly by cutting that number in half.

So you enact legislation to move half of them out, the Break Up The Cities Act of 1991.

Where do you put them? Well ... Alaska.

In New York, there are 24,387 people jammed into each square mile. If you took the 20.6 million people exiled from the five largest cities and sent them north, Alaska would still only have 35 residents per square mile.

And if they didn't want to go? Okay, the weather is cold, but the scenery is nice and there's plenty of good fishing, at least for a while. And the federal government could take half the money it's spending for AIDS research, the drug war and other urban problems, then split it up among the urban refugees as an incentive.

Problems of the cities would ease, the financial burden on taxpayers would not change and Alaska's political influence would be enhanced dramatically.

It would work, I tell you. But, thank goodness, these are not the problems of Cape Girardeau. Let the refugees seek a northern exposure and we'll deal with our own problems.

If you ever feel like complaining that there's nothing to do in a small community like Cape Girardeau, you might be grateful there's nothing being done to you here.