Anecdotes about Buster Wortman

I was born in Effingham but spent my formative years in East St. Louis, attending Webster, Longfellow, Rock, and East Side. I once was invited to go to a shower at Buster Wortman's Collinsville moat house in 1958. 1 had a girlfriend who worked at the Paddock Lounge and kept the books there. "You're not planning to go to that gangster's house, are you?" my mother asked. She didn't want me to go, but I was dying to see the place. We only had one bathroom in our house and I heard that he had eight or nine. When I arrived, Buster greeted me at the door. He was kind of short and unassuming; he didn't look anything like I imagined. He was wearing a navy blue suit with pinstripes. His second and younger wife, Sylvia, was giving the shower and he didn't stay around. He disappeared and found something else to do while the shower was held in the large living room on the main floor.

(Shirley Biehl, East Side '54)