Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield

ago. Do you recall his highwa>- commissions hill? Some of the things that came out of
it. For example there was a move to have state roads made countj- roads.
A: County roads.
Q: Revert to the counties and that sort of thing. A number of things came out of the
commission.
A: I can't recall too much ahout it. 1 did have some experiencp on having some of the ol(l
roads revert hack to the owners several different times. I can remember T had certain
instances where I had to do that. But that was no deal hecause there xvas usuallj no opposition
to that. People would just go along with you on it. You had to have prrn~ission from
the. . . . But Grindle's bill itself - Grindle's operating. I can't recall too n~uch about that.
Q: Did you get to knou William Grindle very well?
A: I knew him. I can't recall too much ahout Bill.
Q: He was in the senate of course so . . .
A: Yes. We had a proup together and I think he went along with me on my projects. He
and Lyons was real close together. Bill Lyons and Grindlc, \\-hen they pot in the senate,
they had a group over there who had a nucleus and . . .
Q: fell there was a group from southern Illinois, I guess, that kind of worked together for
that sort of t.hing. What about conservation-tl-pe activity? You were on the Waterways
. . .
A: Yes
A: . . and Conservation, Fish and Game Committee most the time. What types of th~ngs
came up? Were there hunting laws and that sort of thing that came up?
A: Yes, that was a touchy deal too because coming from a duck-hunting - you could never
satisfy a11 the duck hunters hecause they'd blame everybody for not having ducks. And the
department usually has a different idea than a lot of the hunters have. And I had a lot
of dealings with the Conservation Ikpartment directly. An11 u-hile I was on this committee
we - Palmer, I think it was Palmer then. Him or the next one after him. h fellow from
Havana was the assistant. I can't remember his name now. Anyway we went to Washinyton
to try to reclaim this canal.
Q: Oh, the Illinois-Michigan Canal?
A: The Illinois-Mississippi Canal. And we made quite a study of it and I think we did get
two million ~iollars to start. f e needed about seven, eight million dollars and we got two
million dollars to give us a start. I often wondered - I was often int.erestt.(l in checking
to see whatever resulted, what happencd to that, whether they ever complpted that or they
dropped it. Rut their idea then was to take over a lot of this land that had been mined I
guess, like we had a lot of different areas anti they had ponds there and they'd try to make
them shooting areas. They even wanted to get into the lodging and recreation businesses.
Q: Oh?
A: Naturally I was always interested in recreation because I was quite a pronloter of rerre;ition
myself. Rut I couldn't see the slate getting in that too murh because my rxperience
has been when you get too far away from things like that, they're not very sorressful,
and . . .
Carl Wittmond Memoir -- Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield