SPEAKOUT

Fans were rude

I ATTENDED several games at the University High Tournament at the Show Me Center, and I'd like to comment on how Central's fans acted. I have never experienced anything like this, booing the other team. When Scott City got the second-place trophy, they started booing. I have never seen such poor sportsmanship. I would like for them to realize that it makes the school look bad. Everyone who got a trophy was a winner or they wouldn't have been there. I'm just glad that Scott City doesn't have to play Central that often, because I've never seen anything like it.

Women in the military

JUST READING in the recent issue of Human Events a study by Dr. Laura Miller of Harvard University which confirms something that this old veteran of nine years volunteered service and two wars has believed a long time. The radical feminists and the congressional women in the House and Senate both are the ones who are pushing for women in combat. It's not the women in the military doing it. It's the radicals outside. The 3 percent of the enlisted women surveyed said they don't think they should be treated exactly like the men and serve in the combat areas. Thirteen percent of female non-commissioned officers and 14 percent of female officers said they would volunteer for a combat role if it were offered, but the National Organization for Women and the radicals in Congress want the women to be subject to Selective Service obligations and involuntary assignments to combat arms, which the women in the military are not looking for by a large margin. And I believe they shouldn't be.

Responsibility, not esteem

I UNDERSTAND that now we have projects to teach our children self-esteem. I heard that there was only one area where American children scored the highest, and that was self-esteem. It wasn't English, math or science. I just wonder, way back when children weren't told how wonderful they are all the time and when life wasn't centered around them and all their desires and wants, didn't we grow to be a lot more responsible adults? Maybe our problem is that we're centering our lives on our children. After all, they're going to grow up to be adults, and then who will lavish all the attention on them? Maybe giving them more self-esteem with nothing underneath is not the right way to do things. Maybe responsibility is what we should be teaching them today.

A dying area

I WAS thinking about the building permits that were issued this past year for housing. It upset me that nothing was said about the fact that Cape Girardeau is really losing homes. When I was in school, I took a course in urban sociology, and they said a rule of thumb was that you could figure that you had to replace one percent of the homes every year to maintain the status quo as far as housing goes. Cape Girardeau bragged about having 80 some permits issued for single family dwellings even in the year when they had a whole bunch of those homes down in the bottoms destroyed because of the flood plain. If you don't really tell the truth, what are you doing? The people should understand that this is a dying area. What you're bragging about is really a failure. The best I can figure, it would take a minimum of 115 to 125 homes a year just to maintain the status quo.

Thanks, UE

I WANT to commend Union Electric. We called them one day about the light being out at the corner, and they were out the very same day and replaced it. Two days later, we noticed two more lights out on the other end of the block. We called them, and they replaced the lights the same day. That's very nice service. We want them to know we appreciate it.

Finish Kent Street

I'VE READ several comments recently in Speak Out regarding the completion of Kent Street through to Lexington. I'm always given the impression that there's a lot of resistance to this. Let me explain something. I live on Kent Street, and I would be greatly in favor of completing it through to Lexington. I suspect that the majority of comments you're getting to the negative are from those limited number of homes on what is now a cul-de-sac but which is a portion of the street which would be completed through to Lexington, thereby making their homes on a street instead of a cul-de-sac, and they would lose some of their privacy. They bought these houses knowing what the subdivision plat was -- I hope, and it's about time they finish that in order to complete what the rest of us thought was eventually going to happen who live on that street. I'd be willing to bet that out of the dozens of homes on that street, that there are probably three or four homeowners who are actually against it and probably dozens of people who think that it would be a better way to get in and out of our subdivision.

Cable TV elsewhere

MAYBE THAT fellow who doesn't read those foreign papers like the St. Louis Post Dispatch would get a little more enlightened if he would read a little bit more. If he would, he'd find out that TCI is doing the same thing in St. Louis that they're doing here and that just a couple local phone calls isn't going to do anything. It's a policy of TCI that they're really going to milk the cable business as long as they can, as much as they can, knowing that pretty soon the satellite dishes and the telephone company and other things will take over their business. You know, you're got to be aware of the outside world, not just down here in the Bootheel, because this is a big world.