Springfield Missouri.

December 19, 2005 5:06 PM

Springfield, Missouri the place mobsters go to die. John Gotti, Anthony Corrado, "Fat" Tony Salerno, Vito Genovese, Tony "Ducks" Corallo and now Vincent "The Chin"Gigante.
posted by flatlander (25 comments total)

Fat Tony?
posted by clevershark at 5:07 PM on December 19, 2005

Vinny the Chin gets four pages and Jack Anderson only gets two? Where, my friends, is the justice?
posted by Opposite George at 5:10 PM on December 19, 2005

Recently I was the house Jazz musician at a fine-dining restaurant frequented by the Gotti family whenever they would come into town to visit John.

They were almost always seated at the table in front of me, looked like gangsters, and would always give me this look if I got a little too loud.

Good tippers though.
posted by sourwookie at 5:14 PM on December 19, 2005

Roky Erickson was also a resident there.
posted by sourwookie at 5:15 PM on December 19, 2005

I bet muggings and other street crime are non-existant there. There are great advantages to having a mobster in your neighborhood, until you run over his son.
posted by caddis at 5:16 PM on December 19, 2005

I remember, a few years before Gotti croaked, a guy who self-identified as an attorney wearing a very expensive looking suit and wristwatch came into the bookstore I was clerking in and had a handful of books he wanted to ship. I remember it disticntly because he was shipping them to a penal institution we couldn't use UPS and had to use the US mail. The intended recipient? John Gotti.

Among the books in the bunch? Embraced By The Light. Bravo for irony.
posted by jonmc at 5:19 PM on December 19, 2005

Noriega was there too for a while. We in SW Missouri are some serious bad asses.
posted by LarryC at 5:27 PM on December 19, 2005

My Blue Heaven
posted by caddis at 5:32 PM on December 19, 2005

You could melt all of this stuff.
posted by psmealey at 5:45 PM on December 19, 2005

Brad Pitt, Don Johnson and John Ashcroft are Springfield natives.
posted by stbalbach at 6:01 PM on December 19, 2005

One of my cousins is a security guard at the medical center.

My dad's from a small town about an hour outside of Springfield, and I've spents lots and lots and lots of time there, including going to Branson before it was BRANSON (and that's another Simpsons connection).

I even went to Southwest Missouri State University for a semester. Celebrity alumni include actors Tess Harper, John Goodman, Kathleen Turner, and original members of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.

Don Johnon's actually from Crane.

My Blue Heaven makes an excellent double feature with Goodfellas; it picks up right where Goodfellas leaves off.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:14 PM on December 19, 2005

I just finished reading Selwyn Raab's Five Families (The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires ). There is a large section in the book about Gigante... his ( *cough* alleged ) attempt on Frank Costello ( who immediately retired), the pajama wearing - peeing on the street- crazy act, the brother who is a Catholic priest ... it goes on and on...

Its a great book - mostly centered in NYC (Raab was the NYT organized crime reporter for something like 25 years. ), and completely unromanticized.
posted by R. Mutt at 6:38 PM on December 19, 2005

Springfield, Springfield -- it's a hell of a town.
posted by maxsparber at 6:48 PM on December 19, 2005

Maybe they just like dining at the kick-ass restaurant at Bass Pro?

I will be in Springfield, MO, over the holidays, but I've been advised to deny any federally-indictable wrongdoings ...
posted by scruss at 7:00 PM on December 19, 2005

Scruss-Give us a windfarm while you're down here.
posted by sourwookie at 8:05 PM on December 19, 2005

We Ozarkians have quite an inferiority complex.

Besides the federal prison hospital and mobster ties, the Branson reference along with invokations of Bass Pro, Brad Pitt, John Ashcroft, and John Goodman are all de rigueur of course. But you guys left out cracks about the number of Chinese restaurants or the Bible Beltbuckle cred of having the headquarters of the Assemblies of God along with two ultraconservative Christan colleges.

And any Springfieldian worth her salt knows that one of the owners of The Moxie is a Mefite himself.
posted by daveadams at 8:12 PM on December 19, 2005

I plan on doing an FPP onCashew Chicken someday.
posted by sourwookie at 8:19 PM on December 19, 2005

Springfield is the center of the universe. Third largest Missouri city behind St. Louis. Yeah that's right, KCMO is where Springfield people consider "the big city". Represent.
posted by geoff. at 8:38 PM on December 19, 2005

Awesome, another Springfield Mefite reporting. The medical center actually looks pretty nice from a distance. Well manicured lawn, Victorian mansion estate. Aside from the razor wire, you'd never know who it housed.

Also, the blind muslim cleric behind the first WTC bombing resided there for a while.

Oh and Springfield has some weird urban legends around it, including the albino farm and the acid tunnel.
posted by clockworkjoe at 8:48 PM on December 19, 2005

Wow, this brought us Missourians out of the woodwork. Branson born and raised, people really do live in this town.
posted by shinynewnick at 6:11 AM on December 20, 2005

You're not one of the Branson Presely's, are you?
posted by sourwookie at 7:04 AM on December 20, 2005

Ha ha! Springpatch, MO reprazent! I grew up there and left as soon as I could.

The federal hospital is a nice looking, oldish facility, built before institutional structures and their grounds were designed primarily to be as cheap as possible. Residents ignore it.

Here's some more information and pictures, courtesy of the Green County Library: [pg 1], [pg 2]

From the article: "Many famous people have spent time in the Medical Center. Among them are John Gotti, Robert Stroud (the Birdman of Alcatraz), and Larry Flynt who apparently liked Springfield so much he considered buying the Elfindale Manor in which to live and perhaps start a magazine."
posted by dammitjim at 9:03 AM on December 20, 2005

I grew up in Springfield. I also split as soon as humanly possible.

It's a weird, weird place. A completely bizarre menagerie of stuff, all under the watchful theocracy of the Assemblies of God.

Philly is much nicer, thankyouvermuch.
posted by Netzapper at 3:47 PM on December 20, 2005

W.C. Fields proposed an epitaph for himself: "Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia."
posted by caddis at 4:28 PM on December 20, 2005

I dont know anything about Springfield,MO except I absolutely LOVE their unsung heros of bar-band rock that were on tour last Summer, known as the "Big Noise from Springfield Tour" with th elegendary Morrels and co. This review sums up the exact experiecne I had in Baltimore.:
"A lively, memorable evening with four exceptional acts from the heartland: R&B warriors the Bel Airs, the country-rocking Domino Kings, ex-King Brian Capps (Rick Nelson for a new era), and the damn-near-legendary Skeletons. That the total number of people on stage about outnumbered the crowd was a non-issue."

From meeting these way cool ambassadors of Springfield, I'd pack up and move there if they'd be my friend for life ...
posted by celerystick at 10:03 PM on December 21, 2005