After two years in Minnesota, Bellairs returned to doctoral work in the more-enjoyable environment of Chicago's Hyde Park. However, whether it was his own decision to leave or if his contract was not renewed is not immediately known.
"Coming from the Beatnik ambience of Hyde Park, where people played folk music in smoky basement clubs, to Winona must have made Bellairs feel like a visiting anthropologist," says Patricia Thomas, who feels the clash of atmospheres probably prompted Bellairs to satirically commit the memories and attitudes to paper. "The sight of those blondes in bobby sox taking classes in child development or nursing or planning to be nuns must have been positively surreal."
| "O God, Who knowest that there are some of us who live in fetid swamps which God knows do not need more rain, disregard the previous prayer [Prayer for Rain], parch the mushy earth with blistering drought, dry up the mosquito-infested dank smelly lakes of which this damned state is so proud..." |
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John Bellairs
in St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies, page 119 |
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| Bellairs always referred to his time in Minnesota as 'St. Teresa's in the Swamps.' |
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| Gerald Kadish |
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While Thomas says Bellairs described some of the young women as "bovine, corn-fed beauties with no brains," Murphy says there were many smart girls in attendance but most had a farm background and would return to the family occupation after graduation.
Bernard Markwell, a friend from the University of Chicago, feels Bellairs also "chafed under the old style pre-Vatican II rule of authoritarian nuns" and as a result, assumed a more critical stance on the Church that his article and subsequent book would later touch upon.
"Bellairs had contempt for man-made dogma -- Canon Law and the like, the stuff that had little to do with the core values of Catholicism and much to do with politics and the exercise of power," notes Thomas, adding that Bellairs relished tales of hypocrisy, such as stories about the classic popes who not only had illegitimate sons but who promoted them to bishops. "He was amused by things like Boccacio's Decameron, in which lustful nuns and priests are the rule, not the exception."
It was perhaps Markwell who played a role in luring Bellairs out of Minnesota - he was now teaching at Shimer College and very enthusiastic about being at such a liberal college. Bellairs, long tired of the establishment and unhappy and lonely because of the location, perhaps made the move out of Winona to be closer to old friends. Whether salary played an issue for leaving St. Teresa's is unknown, since he wasn't offered the Shimer College position until the summer of 1966 - almost two years later.
Fitschen notes that while letters from Bellairs were often filled with complaints about "the nuns and empty headed girls," he had enjoyed his time in Minnesota. "It gave him material for the final chapters of Fidgeta, it allowed him to perform in plays, and sent him to some interesting conferences."
"More than anything John left because he was tired of the dullness and the intellectualness of the students," says Murphy. "Had St. Teresa's been in St. Paul, it might have done better in getting people to stay but it was too tiny and too far away from anywhere. The school was too good for Winona; it, and its faculty, should have flourished elsewhere."
