November brings with it many things, including, of course, Major League Baseball.
“DEADLINE PLAN FOR NOV. 1 AND NOV. 2 EDITIONS,” read the marching orders from the copy desk on Monday, with the use of “caps lock” indicating that this was as serious as a declaration of war or man walking on the moon.
Without giving away any trade secrets, suffice it to say that plans were announced to hold the presses for a special “replate” to get in the result of Tuesday’s monumental Game 6 of the 2016 World Series into print for Wednesday editions.
If you’re reading this in print and wondering why Tuesday’s result isn’t included in this exact space, that’s because no one is holding the presses for the lower men on the totem pole. All I can say as of this writing (long, long before the start of Game 6) is hey, how about that game last night? Crazy, huh? Wow.
A little more insight about how the sausage is made in the local newspaper business: Back in October 2003, when the Cubs were a win away from taking the National League Championship Series, an editor asked me to write a column about “the Cubs going to the World Series” that would be put in storage until they won the pennant.
I protested that this would jinx the whole deal. I went ahead and wrote it anyway. Go ahead and blame me for everything that happened in October 2003.
But back to November 2016. The drama of the Cubs-Indians Great Lakes World Series has extended into a month historically and notoriously known around those lakes as the time that fall starts to feel like winter.
It was not for nothing that Gordon Lightfoot so memorably wrote about “the gales of November” and how “the wind in the wire made a tattletale sound.” Midwesterners need no introduction to those days when the wind howls out of Canada and sweeps away any remaining leaves or lawn chairs.
Naturally, our current November barged in Tuesday with a 75-degree afternoon and a seven-day forecast rich with days in the 60s and nighttime lows nowhere near the 30s. No real surprise in light of current events.
But there is another post-October surprise waiting for anyone who hoped that the end of construction season would mean the end of any and all roadwork in Lake County — the Washington Street underpass project in Grayslake will not be wrapped up by Thanksgiving, as originally scheduled.
“Unless our new president, whoever that is, extends Thanksgiving to July, that won’t happen,” resident engineer Matt Powers said on Tuesday, confirming that the original estimated completion date for the $23 million project was pegged for Nov. 23 when work began in early 2015.
“Right now, we are working after two delays,” Powers added. “We had delays with utilities on the front end of the project that took about three months to reconcile, (and) then we had another delay working with the railroad on track closures, which can be very tricky thing with all the freight trains and Metra using that line.”
All told, Powers said, this means the project stands at roughly 68 percent complete, and the arrival of winter weather means that certain big-ticket tasks will have to wait until spring. In other words, those of us who drive in and around central Lake County will continue to have our existence ruled by the vagaries of train traffic on the Canadian National Railway.
True story: On Oct. 13, I was headed eastbound on Route 120 in Grayslake approaching the CN tracks around 4:30 p.m. when the crossing gate went down. A freight train slowly rolled into the crossing … and stopped dead. Some time later, a Metra train rolled through on the second track, which seemed to be why the freight train stopped, because the double-track only goes so far.
But then a second freight train slowly rolled into the crossing on the second track … and also stopped dead. Some guy ahead of me in a truck loudly yelled a curse word that begins with a letter between E and G.
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Traffic backed up in hurricane-evacuation fashion for 45 long minutes before the trains cleared out and the gates went back up. If you wonder why people want that Washington Street underpass project to become reality, there’s one chapter of your answer. Every motorist who lives in the area can write separate chapters.
Cross your fingers and hope that November’s warm weather kicks up again as soon as possible in 2017, or we might be waiting until the Cubs return to the World Series for the underpass to provide a measure of salvation.
Twitter @NewsSunDanMoran