What is Springfield Missouri like?

I partially grew up there and, recognizing that mileages may vary and not everyone’s experience will echo mine, let me tell you: Springfield MO is one of my least favorite towns that I have ever lived in.

The problems are many.

• While there are some nice residential areas, particularly around the university(MSU), the rest of it is either McMansions, bungalow style housing or older houses.
  
  Which could, in theory be nice, except Springfield has willfully turned it’s back on the entire northern third of town. That is where I grew up.
  
  It was the poorer side of town even then, but nowadays it is really bad and clearly has seen better days. Some of the houses on the North Side are kept up but the others are decrepit sad hulks with weedy gardens, ancient buckling sidewalks…there is no doubt that the richer south, who probably supplies most of the politicians have absolutely abandoned the northern third.
  
  Though, to their credit, they have made an effort to rehabilitate the old center with it’s square. When I was growing up it was practically a collection of shells with windows. Nowadys, there is a pretty vibrant night life, but I have to stress it is mostly for college kids, when it comes to bars. The center is not that interesting but it’s better than it was when I was a kid.

Being a college kid there would probably be fun, actually. There are a good amount of bars and the area around the college is nice.

• When it comes to the business zones, each corner on one of the more trafficked thoroughfares is practically indistinguishable from the next. It is a town of endlessstrip malls and blocky office buildings. They go for MILES AND MILES AND MILES. Dollar stores and fast food joints sprout from every corner like neon-lit fungi.
  
  Worse are the loan agencies. I’ve never seen a town with so many offices offering cheap loans. That ought to give you an idea of the how fucked up and ultimately mean spirited and ugly the soul of Springfield is.
• It is chock full of churches. There are churches everywhere there. Until recently every church had it’s sign out front, usually with a highly negative “fire and brimstone” message on it: Like: If you don’t believe you will burn! That kind of thing. Thankfully, that kind of message has faded a bit in the last decade or so but it was a big thing that really struck me on a visit there in 2000.
  
  But the people are very much a church-going folk. The Assembly of God has it’s headquarters there — it’s literally the goddamn Vatican of the Assembly of God church. They are the ones that speak in tongues and roll around on the floor babbling insanely during their service. My little brother got beaten up by a cop for calling them hypocrites one Sunday noon, and the cop told my brother: “"Who is the judge going to believe, me or you?”" when my brother protested.
• Springfield is one of the few towns I’ve ever been afraid to walk around in at night. Oh, there is no gang warfare or even significant minority population (the blacks all fled the place after a flurry of lynchings in the 1930s); forgive the allusion to sterotype: My point is it is pretty common in a racist society like the USA to blame high rates of violent crime on minorities, especially blacks/African Americans. Springfield proves the sterotype to be bullshit, actually) The actual murder rate is twice the national average there! Correction: (Originally, I thought it was probably at about the average, but I was told I was 'giving Springfield too much credit.' And I looked at the statistics and was surprised to learn that it was much higher than average.)
  
   No, the violence comes from either farm boys from outlying villages that come to the ‘'Big City’'’ to “beat up fags”, or from weird white trash meth types who are secret homosexuals and want to beat you up for it. Nowadays the North Side might be more danger
• As I mentioned, there is no real racial diversity there, which one can miss coming from a bigger city. Springfield misses so much for that.
  
   There are a few black people descended from the few brave enough to stay in the face of the ferocious racism of the early twentieth century, all pretty much concentrated in one smallish section in the north-center of the city; and there are a fair amount of Vietnamese who came or are descended from refugees that came to Fort Whatever in Arkansas during the War.
  
  They have all pretty much opened Asian/Thai/Chinese restaurants — so if you like Asian takeaway, it is truly a paradise.
• In fact, there are a lot of good restaurants in general in Springfield. Far more good restaurants per capita than most Midwestern towns. This is a bit curious. A friend of mine once told me that his theory was that there just was nothing else to do there but go out to eat. Of course, all of the restaurants cater to the mild palette of the average Midwesterner: nothing too spicy or exotic. Still, you can find some good stuff. And what else are you going to do?
• WalMart absolutely rules the town. They ought to rename it Walmart, Missouri. Not only are Super Walmarts ubiquitous, there is one that literally was an entire damn mall when I was growing up. Now it’s like a HUGE GARGANTUAN Wal-Mart.
  
  I like going there just so my jaw drops at the ridiculous bigness of it all. There were even Wal-Mart grocery stores, slowly squeezing the life out of other grocery stores. they are all chains themselves anyway, but a variety of chains is still better than a monopoly.
  
  Still there are a a lot of Mom and Pop establishments there, as well. I reckon a small business owner can do all right there.
• The library sort of illustrates everything I hate about Springfield. It was recently moved from the old centre(southsiders are afraid to visit the North side of town, absolutely irrationally terrifed. They built a new very, very nice building on the Southernmost part of town with no bus access so no undesirables can visit. (Correction: while this was true when it was first opened(I read a news story about it in the Springfield News-Leader) apparently this has been corrected and the library is accessible by bus.)
  
  They must have put millions of dollars into this beautiful building. The funny thing is, you go in this place and there are no more books than the old main library had when I was a kid. Why not, you know, buy some books with those millions? They try so hard to be a CITY by making this big modern library but they don't give enough of a shit REALLY to buy any goddamn books. I'm sure the librarians would have it different: make no mistake it's the politicians who make these decisions. 
• The bus system. Oh my god. I mean, it is mostly used by the homeless and the disabled, so I guess I am glad there is something but it is next to worthless. It can take hours to get to your destination and you WILL have to change buses. Heck, you might as well walk most of the time. Bottom line is, don’t live there without a car. You will not survive a season.
• The summers are pretty hot and humid. Mosquitoes abound. Bugs in general thrive in the hot almost-jungle-like climate.
• I will say, while most of the people there are frighteningly conservative(some have even told me they wish to see slavery reinstituted) the people who are a little more intelligent and different do exhibit a wry sense of ironic humor that is probably lost on your average Ozarker. But most of them end up getting out.
• They also have some big fishing supply shop for outdoorsmen. If you like shopping for fishing poles and camping gear(and I actually do enjoy camping) Bass-Pro is heaven on earth. Sprinfieldians are very proud of it.
• People are so bored there that high school sports are totally revered. Seriously, the newspaper is FULL of reports of high school football games, not only in Springfield but in every village within a one hundred mile radius. I think that is something you don’t see in larger towns.
• AS far as culture; yes, there is a symphony; there is a theatre. But let’s not kid ourselves. It IS provincial. But it would be false to say that there wasn’t there. I suppose there are a fair number of decent bar bands there, as well—music is something that America in general is good at. But if you want real country music, you really have to go to Branson which is an hour or so away.
• Outside of town there are quite picturesque highlands of the Ozarks. And Arkansas is not too far away and the highlands there —I refuse to say mountains— are really beautiful.
• There is nothing that Springfield doesn’t have (except for an Apple Store—the nearest ones are Oklahoma City, Kansas City or St.Louis) and if you have a good salary and a good job, love Jesus and are your typical conservative American, I daresay that it’s highly livable—not much different from living in suburbia anywhere, I reckon.
• If you are poor or ‘'’geo-sensitive”, naturally different, or liberal, it is a crushing, brutally sad town. My life instantly improved when I left at 18. Instantly! Everytime I return I enjoy seeing my family but I don’t think I could ever live there. I am getting depressed just thinking about it.

Addendum: Of course I've glossed over some of the good things in Springfield: the parks for example are pretty great. And apparently there are bike trails that one can follow that have been built in the last decade or so. 

 And Fall is a lovely time of year, as is Spring. I was also accused of writing 'flat-out lies' in this blog entry. That is not at all true, though there were two inaccuracies--which I've since corrected.

Written August 30; corrected August 31st