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Simpsons schmimpsons. Who needs ’em? So what if Springfield, Vt., whomped us in USA Today’s contest to
host the animated family’s movie premiere? Big fat hairy deal. I
mean, sure, it would have been fabulous to have a swank event here in
li’l ol’ Springpatch. Everybody could’ve gotten primped
up and inflated with self-importance, which, in this Springfield, would
probably translate into breaking out our best flip-flops and complaining
that the opposite political party got all the good seats.
However, based on my totally unscientific study of
movie premieres (I’ve been to a grand total of two), I can tell you
that such extravaganzas share a lot in common with your garden variety big
shindigs: an inordinate amount of time spent standing in line (even if
it’s only three minutes, it still seems inordinate), making idle
chit-chat with someone who keeps glancing over your shoulder, searching for
someone more impressive to be seen idly chit-chatting with, and of course,
an assortment of food products served on festively colored toothpicks.
The only thing that makes a movie premiere better
than, oh, say, your next-door neighbor’s nephew’s christening
or Aunt Martha and Uncle Jack’s 25th wedding anniversary is the
presence of actual celebrities — which, considering that we’re
talking about a cartoon, means what? Harry Shearer? Oh, be still my beating
heart! The best salve we have for our wounded souls is our
undisputed claim to be the home of the longest-running television show of
all time — Guiding Light.
No, there wasn’t any contest. It’s just a
fact: Reva Shayne Lewis, Harley Cooper, Alan Spaulding, and all their
lovers, ex-lovers, biological offspring, adopted children, half-cousins,
evil twins, and clones live right here. I checked at the Guiding
Light offices at CBS in New York, where
someone who doesn’t want to be named because she promised to get one
of the show writers to call me (ha!) told me that the show’s official
setting is “Springfield, USA,” same as The Simpsons. “But,” she
added, “the show does share many similarities with Springfield,
Ill.”
For example: Whenever anybody on the show wants to
have fun or cause trouble or sneak away with a lover, where do they go?
Chicago. Where do all the rich people live? At the lake. And,
coincidentally, the cops in Guiding
Light’s Springfield are all white
and incurably randy. Wikipedia claims it can’t really be our
Springfield because Guiding Light Springfield is a smaller town than Springfield, Ill.
— an argument that proves only that whatever “expert”
contributed that article has never actually set foot our little town, which
insists on behaving like a burg of 11,000. I checked with the true authority, known to her fans
around the world as “Tammy Faye,” who, in 1997, co-founded a
Web site for soap-opera fans, called Soapysirens.com. On Soapysirens, Tammy
Faye lived in a trailer park and reported on her favorite daytime dramas;
in real life, she’s computer technology specialist Becky Austwick,
who lives here in Springfield (and used to work at Illinois Times). In 1997, Tammy Faye
spun off and launched her own site, turninglight.com, focused solely on the
daytime dramas Guiding Light and As the World Turns.
Don’t bother trying to find Tammy Faye; both
Soapysirens and Turninglight are defunct. But Austwick, who began watching Guiding Light at her
mother’s knee, has enough proof to convince me that it’s set in
our town. For starters, whenever there’s trouble on Guiding Light, it’s
Illinois State Police to the rescue — complete with the real arm
patches, car decals, everything, Austwick says. Whenever any character
recites a phone number, the area code is always 217. Before 2002, the
Governor’s Mansion was occasionally mentioned in dialogue, and the
Lewis brothers’ construction company won a contract for a state job.
If that’s not enough, Austwick swears she once
saw an episode in which a character called Cassie (born Danni Shayne, full
name Cassandra Elizabeth Rae Layne Winslow) was having lunch at Light’s popular
gathering spot, Company, and actually ordered a horseshoe. Tammy Faye featured a picture of that scene on
Turninglight.com, and included a link to a recipe site.
“I remember getting a lot of e-mails asking if
people have a lot of coronary problems in Springfield,” Austwick says
(she told them about our famous Prairie Heart Institute). Did I mention there was once a doctor on Guiding Light named
Daniel St. John? “I’ve always known it was Springfield,
Ill. I don’t remember ever not knowing,” Austwick says. “I never understood
why we didn’t make a bigger deal out of it.”
Well, maybe we don’t want to be associated with
greed, corruption, addiction, adultery, and cloning. Or maybe it’s
because Abraham Lincoln preferred The Edge of
Night. We could, though, remember the first words spoken on The Guiding Light (they
dropped the “The” in the mid-1970s), back in 1937, when it was
a 15-minute radio drama on NBC. “There is a destiny that makes us brothers.
None goes his way alone. All that we send into the lives of others comes
back into our own.”
Of course, that’s too mushy. Here’s
another take on the idea, courtesy of Austwick: “I once found a Web site that explained all the
Springfields are really just one place,” she says, “connected
by a wormhole.”
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2007.
