Moving to Springfield

I've decided to resurrect this blog which started out as a series of scans of notebook pages from the 1970s. I still intend to do that some, but I thought I would now devote this section of my piece of the internet to remembering the people and places I lived and worked in the 70s and 80s.

Primarily then this is a story of my view of the literary community, small fry division, in Springfield, Illinois.

I ended up in Springfield pretty much because I got lost one day on the way to Peoria. I had been to see the Who at the Mississippi River Festival the previous evening. There was vast quantities of smokeables and drinkables and there were too many people there. It took place in a natural bowl, outside, which comfortably held about 20,000. 35,000 showed up. We went early. Actually our party sent someone out around noon for a nine o'clock show. I went with Russell Mill and his wife and his brother from Texas who had brought a suitcase of pot up to sell to pay for the trip. Russell ran the Akashic Record Store, which was in Webster Groves at this time. The Who had just brought out the album, Who's Next, and they played all of it and most of Tommy, and there was a half hour encore of Eddie Cochran songs. It was great. Particularly memorable for me, lo these nearly forty years later, it was the first time I heard the song "Bargain." It really moved me, and it still does. Of course, I don't remember leaving, getting home, any of that. Lots of marijuana and wine.

My wife in those days was Becky McGovern. We had married in February 1970 because, primarily, Becky was pregnant with the human being Joel Osburn. I was a good catholic boy and abortion was out of the question at this point. Two and a half years later, having struggled to be together and to make enough money to keep going Becky and I drove to Kansas City to get an abortion, in September of 1972. I have no regrets about having Joel, though. He is a remarkable person and has made himself a good life. And he has given me two beautiful granddaughters.

So Becky and Joel were at Becky's parents house in Peoria. I was supposed to get up that morning and drive to Peoria and eventually bring them back to St. Louis. But, to be honest, I got up way late and hopped in the car and didn't really have a clear idea of what I was doing. Anyone who's driven Highway 55 past Springfield knows that the left hand lane goes into town with little warning.

So I found myself on the south side of Springfield, Illinois, lost and a little disconcerted. I remembered that two of my old friends had moved to Springfield a couple of years before. John Knoll, and his wife Sandy Martin, were originally friends of my sister Kathy Osburn. Kathy went to graduate school at St. Louis U., one of the reasons Mother stuck me there. She knew Sandy from the Literature Dept. where they shared an office as Grad Assts. Later she and Sandy both taught at the new community college, Forest Park Community College, by the great St. Louis park.

John Knoll did the coursework for his PHd at SLU. Then he was hired at a new college in Springfield, Sangamon State University. John was the head of the communications department. His specialty was film and he knew much about it. He and Sandy lived on North Sixth Street in the Hatch Mansion, a property they rented from the Marine Bank.

So I called John Knoll from a payphone (remember those?) and his brother from Indiana answered, Jerry. And Jerry said John was out but hey, come on over. So I drove all the way across town to the north side and went in and then John and Sandy came home and I had a great time hanging out with them. I called Becky in Peoria and she was not pleased with me. They'd called the state police. So that wasn't good.

Before I left I was talking with John and told him I was hoping to go back to college. I was working at the post office in downtown St. Louis, 18th and Market, on the graveyard shift. I said I was looking at that crazy school in Ohio, Antioch. And John said, why don't you go to Sangamon. And I said, what's that? So he told me about his school and his gig and how he could get me in and pretty soon it turned out to be a plan.

Becky and I spent the next six months driving to Springfield and staying with John and Sandy in the maid's quarters of the big house and looking for a place to live and getting set for the school.

SSU at the time was a senior college, last two years. So I had to CLEP into the program. Which was no problem. In those days I took multiple choice tests like peanuts. I always did well.

Finally, Becky and Joel and I moved to Springfield in February 1972. I lived there, on and off, for the next 27 years, finally escaping to New Hampshire in 1999.