Krug: 
Dig the scene on Route 14

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There are some lousy routes in and around McHenry County.

Traveling between the hours of 12:01 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. on Randall Road is suburban commuting’s equivalent of entering the ninth ring of Dante’s Inferno.

Making a left-hand turn off southbound Route 31 and onto eastbound Route 62 in Algonquin is only slightly less painful than surgery to repair a triple hernia.

Anyone who willingly commutes daily – either north or south – on Route 47 through Huntley during rush hour either is insane or insane. Or perhaps they are insane. I’ll go with insane. Yes, I am definitely sticking with insane.

And then there is Route 14, that lovely stretch of road that they call Northwest Highway, which starts at the state line just north of Harvard, is segmented by stoplights every 45 feet, and snakes all the way down to the Uptown district of Chicago – an easy half-mile walk or 25-minute drive to the shore of Lake Michigan.

Route 66 had a song written about it. Really romantic stuff, praising all the cool places and things that you see as you tour it.

If they wrote a song about Route 14, it couldn’t be played on terrestrial radio. The FCC wouldn’t have it. The lyrics would be too profane. But your teenager would download it from iTunes and listen to it to spite you.

And now that some stimulus money has fallen into our laps from the big bird that drops money from the sky for such things, commuting Route 14 has worsened.

Giant sections of concrete that – I’m not saying, I’m just saying – didn’t seem as if they needed to be repaired are cut out. Lanes have been eliminated, and there are enough construction horses to stage an orange-vest rodeo. It’s like entering Dante’s ninth ring with a triple hernia and a full-on case of insanity. Only worse, my friend.

Some people measure their commute with a clock. Those who drive Route 14 calculate it with a Mayan calendar, openly rooting for 2012.

And what about the people who have to live with the people who need Route 14 to go back and forth to work? They kiss their kids goodbye on a Monday morning and come back home in the same clothes with a Don Johnson-approved Miami Vice-like beard late Wednesday and ask what’s for dinner – and I am talking only about the moms.

In an era of handouts, what kind of special health care package can we offer them for the extra medication required to hear about how bad the drive to and from work is every day?

Stimulus, stimulus, where’s my stimulus?

Ah well, it can’t go on forever.

I’ve been driving on that road for the past 15 years, and it only seems like 25.

Maybe I put in another five years of driving it and I can just retire.

You can come with me.

We’ll get a group discount on some hernia surgery.

It’ll be great.

• • •

Glad I could help: Wrote last Sunday about how President Obama and his band of merry men and women should shift their focus away from jamming a national health care plan down our throats and try to help us put two chickens in every pot.

Incredibly, word from Washington broke in the middle of last week that Team Obama was working on a national job summit or some such thing.

Sounds incredible. I envision an abandoned manufacturing center – cavernous and empty – buzzing with the energy of Americans from all across the land shuffling about with résumés in hand in the greatest job fair the world has known.

Recruiters would be standing there, asking people as part of their interview process to say those oh-so-essential lines, such as, “Would you like ketchup and salt with that, hon?” and, “For only 99 cents more, you can freaky-size that, buddy.”

Heck, we’ve been wondering for years what they would do with the former Motorola monolith in Harvard. Here’s our big chance to get on the board, gang.

And with all the success of Obama’s Beer Summit, we could stage sit-downs with the folks from Main Street and Wall Street and crack open a few cold ones and talk it out.

I see tables of unemployed construction workers, skilled laborers, and steelworkers cracking open cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and discussing the possible links between greed and the 10.2 percent unemployment rate with wing-tipped pinstripers sipping small-batch scotch with their pinkies in the air.

That would be fantastic. It could evolve into feats of strength or mixed martial arts smack-downs. We could televise the entire deal and use the advertising revenue to stimulate the economy. It might be just what reality TV needs: an infusion of reality.

OK, I really have to stop thinking so much.

• • •

Coming Monday: If you live in a village where a special service area was approved to aid in the development of the community or to pay for sewer or some other such infrastructure improvement, you’ll want to check out our story about this contentious financing mechanism Monday in the Northwest Herald.

You’ll also hear from area experts who sat in for a videotaped panel discussion about the subject at NWHerald.com.

Be sure to check out both the print and online editions to get the whole story on this divisive issue.

• • •

Clip and save: If you missed it, dig Friday’s A section out of the recycling bin and check out the editorial page. Jeff Stahler, editorial cartoonist of the Columbus Dispatch, nailed the jobs story with his depiction of an elementary-age school kid standing next to his father on career day. Little kid simply says, “This is my dad and he has a job!”

Not everybody’s kid can say that anymore.

• • •

End of an era: Facing pressure from the community, Prairie Grove District 46 Superintendent Mary Fasbender announced last week that she was leaving at the end of the school year.

She and Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance Joel Murphy, who also resigned effective the end of the year, each acknowledged that the district’s controversial insurance issues (according to published reports, they’ve been accused of withholding insurance plan information from teachers so that they would not have to take less favorable plans themselves) were posing a distraction and thought it best to skedaddle.

Some school administrators leave with legions of admirers wanting to name buildings as tribute to their successes and accomplishments. Others are celebrated by the masses when the screen door slaps against their hinder for the final time. Maybe a memorial mobile classroom is in order.

Pretty obvious which scenario will play out in District 46.

• • •

And finally … : I’ve heard the chatter about Prairie Grove District 46 and Cary District 26 merging, joining forces or somehow creating a strategic alliance that will allow them to leverage synergies across multileveled platforms and create a new unified district that will be bigger, stronger and able to run faster than anything other than the Six Million Dollar Deficit, err, Man.

My guess is that if you put Districts 46 and 26 together, you’d get District 72, and not much more than that.

Back to the drawing board, gang.

Now don’t forget your Exacto knife.

• Chris Krug is executive editor of the Northwest Herald. Contact Chris by calling 815-459-4122, or by e-mail at ckrug@nwherald.com. Keep up with his rants, raves and insights by following ChrisKrug (no space) at Twitter.com.

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