The missing kink

Pretty soon, motorists heading north on Cape Girardeau's Main Street from downtown will no longer have to worry about barricades and detours.

When the barricades come down, alert motorists will notice something else is missing: the kink in the street.

Getting rid of the kink, of course, was the reason for rebuilding that portion of Main Street.

I'm guessing that the front-end alignment business is about to take a nosedive.

For many motorists, the kink in Main Street -- the sharp turn to the left immediately followed by a sharp turn to the right -- was a pain in the axle. Even careful motorists frequently were unable to steer their vehicles away from the crumbling concrete curbs.

But for a few diehard Cape Girardeans, the kink in Main Street had become a fixture, an oddity worth pointing out to visitors, much like Lombard Street in San Francisco. Leave it to Californians to turn a mistake into a tourist attraction.

For those among us who might feel pangs of nostalgia when Main Street opens, there is some comfort in knowing that Cape Girardeau has its own version of Lombard Street. Is it just a coincidence that it's called Lombardo Drive?

Lombardo goes from Cape Rock Drive (there's a street somebody ought to explain sometime) to Clark Avenue, a distance of three or four blocks at best but featuring a genuine left-right kink.

It's hard to say how these things happen. Archaeologists someday may excavate Lombardo Drive and simply conclude that those responsible for such kinks in the street were either opium users or brain dead. But something tells me both guesses would be wrong.

How else do you explain the other kinks in our streets?

One of the oldest street kinks very likely is the one on Whitener Street, which would otherwise take neighborhood traffic through the living room of Longview, one of the city's prettiest, oldest and most historic homes.

It is pretty safe to say that going around someone's home is a good reason to have a sharp bend in the road.

But then there's the kink in Farrar Drive, the street that turns off William Street so people can eat at Great Wall Chinese Restaurant, Bob Evans Restaurant, Ryan's Family Steak House and Cedar Street at the Drury Lodge.

As soon as you turn onto Farrar Drive, even sane motorists have their work cut out for them. Before you know it, you have to make a sharp left -- not to get on Vantage Drive, mind you, but to get through the Farrar Drive kink.

Which brings me to the roundabout at Silver Springs and Gordonville roads.

(Aha! Some of you just knew I'd work in the roundabout, didn't you?)

Technically, the roundabout is not a kink. It is a collection of four kinks decoratively arranged around a flower bed. Therefore, a true kink can also be considered as one-quarter of a roundabout. The only difference is that roundabout kinks are a sharp right followed by a sharp left followed by who-know-what, depending on where you finally manage to get out of the roundabout.

That's one thing you can say about Cape Girardeau's street kinks: They consistently follow a sharp left-sharp right pattern. I'm not counting the series of curves a motorist must negotiate on Bloomfield Road while trying to cross Kingshighway. I merely chalk that up to a street engineer with too much caffeine or too little nicotine.

The biggest and best Cape Girardeau street kink, of course, is part of the city's biggest and busiest intersection: Kingshighway and William Street.

If you're eastbound on William Street and do not turn right or left onto Kingshighway, you must make a sharp left followed by a sharp right to stay in your lane. Unfortunately, there are no warning signs for tourists and other motorists who might think it's the nature of ordinary city streets to be straight.

That's one thing you can say about our street kinks: They aren't humdrum.

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