This farm town of 1,200 people may be willing to forgive its long-sought doctor for an alleged bit of public indecency, but there is one sensational, crude and raunchy act that most Windsor residents simply will not tolerate.
Tabloid television.
“A Current Affair” reporter Steve Langford and his film crew received a cold shoulder and a good shove while in this central Illinois community in pursuit of “yellow journalism,” according to the doctor’s attorney.
Located in Shelby County between Mattoon and Shelbyville, Windsor was without a local physician for nearly 20 years, until after considerable effort it lured Dr. Roderick Matticks, 35, from Springfield to its clinic.
But then, just a couple of months after Matticks came to town, he was charged with public indecency for appearing at the Shelbyville Dairy Queen drive-up window showing something other than the correct change.
Matticks pleaded not guilty, and a Sept. 20 trial has been set.
Reports of townspeople circulating a petition in support of the doctor lured Langford and his New York film crew.
In a telephone interview, Langford said “A Current Affair” was attracted to Windsor not because of the doctor’s alleged indiscretion at the D.Q. drive-up but rather because of the reported town loyalty toward the physician, who continues to practice there.
“Those kinds of things go on every day,” said Langford of the alleged fast-food flashing. “What was interesting was that a small town seemed to stand behind him.”
But most of Windsor wasn’t about to stand for any interviews with “A Current Affair.” Locals reported that Langford and his crew spent three or four days cruising the town and getting the brush-off from most Windsorites.
Langford put a somewhat different spin on it.
“We approached all sorts of people and there were some people who spoke in (the doctor’s) defense, but the people who did not support him were more numerous and much more willing to talk about it,” he said.
Windsor resident Terry Bennett noted, however, that “I don’t know anyone who talked to (Langford’s crew). I think if anything was said it was more like, `Don’t cause Dr. Matticks any trouble.’
“Everybody in a small town is more inclined to give (the doctor) the benefit of the doubt and even if it is proven, people make mistakes and that doesn’t mean he should be tarred and feathered,” Bennett said.
Apparently disagreeing with the locals, Langford and his crew attempted an ambush interview with the doctor in the Shelby County Courthouse. While cameramen tried to film Matticks as he left the courtroom, one of the doctor’s supporters put a hand on the lens of the camera and started pushing it away. Matticks’ attorney, Robert Goldman of Springfield, then stepped in.
“The attorney got physical and then kind of came to his senses,” Langford said. “Our people were not hurt, but they were not too happy about being roughed up.”
Goldman, who said he stands 5-5 1/2, said he was flattered at being described as a ruffian, though he noted, “It was really a nothing affair.”
True to the tabloid tradition, however, Langford promised to stick on, or with, his story. “There is no air date at this point,” he said. “We’re still working on it.”
A schism over Siwash
You would think that most alumni of Knox College in Galesburg would be more than happy to be rid of a traditional nickname whose definition ranges from a verb meaning “to do something in a slipshod manner” to a derogatory noun for American Indians.
But if you thought that, you were thinking Siwashly.
The old “Siwashers,” as Knox students and athletic teams were traditionally known, took pride in a nickname derived from the once-popular “Siwash Stories” written by alumnus George Fitch, a turn-of-the-century journalist who set those tales on a fictional Midwestern campus very much like that of Knox.
Because of Fitch’s stories, the Siwash nickname became affixed to the school over the years, until, in what seemed to many a spontaneous act of political correctness, it was dumped unceremoniously by the school administration this summer.
“Some were disappointed there was a change, others were surprised that the decision came so quickly,” reported Owen Muelder, head of alumni affairs.
Most of the old-time alums were none too thrilled either with the new name selected, Prairie Fire.
“I think they let the debate team and French club pick the new nickname instead of the athletes,” said former Siwash football lineman Joe Jobst, Class of ’49, who noted that at this year’s graduation another alum brandished a sign announcing, “No Siwash, No Wampum.”
Athough Prairie Fire is unique and historically pertinent, the new nickname may be difficult to swallow for the private college’s more uptight alums, according to a report from Galesburg Register-Mail sports columnist Mike Trueblood.
Trueblood revealed that the “Prairie Fire” has been a popular brain-cell eradicator in local taverns for many years. Seems the new Knox moniker is also the title given to a shot of tequila with three drops of Tabasco sauce, thus putting the Knox Prairie Fire in the same libatious conference as the Purdue Boilermakers, the Miami Hurricanes and the Harvard Wallbangers.
Heritage of liars?
We don’t know what this says about Pontiac, Ill., and its many distinguished sons and daughters, but in celebration of its Heritage Day celebration on Saturday, it will stage a liars contest.
To identify “the biggest and best liar in Central Illinois,” the town has named a highly qualified panel-William Caisley, Charles Glennon and Harold Frobish-all real judges from the 11th Judicial Circuit.
Dial M-O-O-S-E
Not that we’re suggesting this for Mayor Richard Daley, but when you call the Drug Tip Hotline in Streator to report a suspected pusher, you’ll be dialing direct to Mayor Richard “Moose” Connor.
Mayor Moose, who answers his own phone and keeps a tight lip, says any information passed is strictly between the caller, him and, of course, the gendarmes. “I don’t even tell my wife,” he told the Bloomington Pantagraph.
Shot heard ’round the office
Another public phone line might be in order for Streator, this one a Hot Homeowner Hotline to warn antsy real estate agents of gun-toting clients.
It seems that Virgil Ramsey, 46, of Streator, appeared at his agent’s office last month with rifle in hand. He put it at the neck of said agent and then, as they say, “a struggle ensued.”
The rifle went off but without effecting any decrease in the world population of real estate peddlers.
Ramsey’s grievance?
Termites in the house he had just purchased.
Wedded bliss
In a final look at Downstate trash news, former steelworker Rusty Pumphrey, 27, of rural Decatur made the front page of the local newspaper and appeared on the “Geraldo” show recently.
His accomplishment?
Beatrice, his 72-year-old wife.
Pumphrey sees his wife, who lives in the border town Texarkana, about two weeks a month and the couple has traveled to Acapulco, Brazil, Hawaii and the Bahamas since they wed in 1992.
When they met in 1991 in an Orlando tavern, Beatrice had a great line. “She said she needed a bodyguard because she was wearing $150,000 in diamonds,” Rusty said.
Now Rusty has an even better one:
“Her having $10 million had nothing to do with us getting married,” he told the Decatur Herald & Review.
