Expect traffic snarls in central Downers Grove to increase considerably, although the official detour route is Illinois 53 to Ogden Avenue.

In other, better, traffic news, the village recently installed a stop sign on Grant Street at Middaugh Avenue, just south of Herrick Middle School.

This measure is long overdue, as any parent who has tried to pull out of the Herrick parking lot during drop-off or pick-up times can tell you. But more important it will prevent the terrible pedestrian accident that has been waiting to happen at the intersection for years.

My family has spent four years at Herrick, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen vehicles sail through the Grant crosswalk before and after school as throngs of middle-schoolers waited to cross.

I was concerned enough to send an e-mail to the school administration last year, and I contemplated trying to get the requisite number of parents and neighbors involved to bring the matter to the Traffic and Parking Commission.

I failed to do that, but it’s good news that both the school and TAP saw the problem and moved to rectify it. Future Herrick students will be safer as a result — and parents will no longer stress over how long it will take them to get out of the school lot.

Bryan Place residents can look to regain power later today, once Com Ed has finished installing a new transformer, said Communications Director Doug Kozlowski, who with Village Manager Dave Fieldman, has been maintaining contact with Com Ed since Friday’s storms knocked out power to at least 1,000 Downers Grove residents.

Another 25 customers in the area of Belmont Road and Pershing Avenue are due to see power restored – if Com Ed can locate the household that has been running a generator.

The generator could be a serious safety concern once the electrical grid comes back online, because it could send unregulated voltage through the system, Kozlowski explained. Com Ed personnel are going door to door in an attempt to locate the generator, he said.

Also of concern to the village is the one or two customers who may not get power restored along with the rest of their neighborhood. Once it appears the area is back online, Com Ed considers the job accomplished.

Residents without power may not realize that they have to contact Com Ed again if they continue to have a problem, so the village has been helping with that, Kozlowski said. “We were working phones pretty late last night.”

As of last night, at least one resident of the Banchory Woods development was still without power, he said.

The village is attributing the outages to tree branches falling on wires. Public Works has been attending to the damages since the first storm was clearing the area and was preparing chippers and calling in workers by mid-afternoon on Friday.

While many areas have been cleared, the village continues to address damage to parkway trees, Kozlowski said. “Part of it is waiting to see what branches turns brown on trees,” he said.

As a reminder, the village doesn’t dispose of vegetation that falls on private property.

Photo credit: Greg

Pictured at right (click to enlarge) is a commercial property on Ogden Avenue at Prince Street, where the weeds have grown tall enough to obscure the fire hydrant. Another formerly shaggy downtown commercial property, which is currently for sale, has been recently restored to neatness by a grounds crew.

The village code calls for action once grass or weeds hit the 10-inch mark, said Doug Kozlowski, director of communications.

With the growing number of foreclosures and unoccupied commercial properties, the problem of overgrown green spaces is also on the upswing.

When Code Services personnel observe or are alerted to  such properties, they contact the mortgage holders and give them 10 days to deal with the overgrowth.

That task is more complicated when the foreclosure process is underway, Kozlowski said. “In those situations it may be difficult to contact the lender or mortgage company. So at that point, the village will hire a contractor to do the work.”

The village recoups its costs by putting a lien on the property, he said.

Neighbors or other residents are often the first to report overgrown properties or other property maintenance issues. “They are absolutely encouraged to contact us so we can take steps to remedy the situation,” Kozlowski said.

“Because of the weather we’ve had things are definitely growing and the calls have increased.”

Want to report an overgrown property? Call the village at (630)434-5500.

By now maybe everyone’s seen this one on Maple? Originally it was fairly straight up farm house style. (Folk Victorian?  Can a reader help me out here?  I don’t know what different styles are).  There’s an addition to the west side and a front porch across the north front.  This is at a prime residential location in the village.  In the past, some homes on Maple were replaced by much larger new homes, some homes were preserved, and some added onto and enhanced.  

The owners here chose to add-on and enhance.  The character  of the neighborhood stays intact.  The new front  porch ties it together and makes it whole.  An  excellent example of how builders can  renew, reuse,  and remodel and keep it all looking like  it’s always  been there, always belonged.  Bonus, the contractor has kept the parkway trees safe and fenced properly.  Corcoran Homes had their shingle out on this one.

This house begged for a picture at Washington Park.  Another example of  a house that will get significantly larger, yet by matching the existing structure, keep the look and feel of the original.  It’s proportions and height are in keeping with the neighborhood.  The turret feature provides interest and detail, and the front entry is now centrally located on the front.  I didn’t catch a builder name but the van I think was Village Remodeling.  Bonus, the owners kept their stone borders up around their trees.  It looks like the builders took steps to leave them alone and they look like they’re in good shape.  Retaining a 40 year tree is way cheaper than planting a 40 year old tree.  And that was the little one.

There’s more examples of this kind of home enhancement going on around the village.  Tear-downs have not been happening much lately, but build-ups seem to getting more popular.

Two play areas, a pavilion, and the fountain get ready for final touches.

Along Franklin, the terraced viewing areas patiently await fans.

A fantastic place to watch kid's soccer that will help blunt problems from heavy rains. Sadly, we lost some mature trees to the left of this photo...

...but happily saved most of them along Prairie.

Click on any photo for a larger version.

This cooperative project is one of three between the village and the Park District.  There’s another retention area being built into the north east corner of McCullom Park does not have the dramatic whole-park reconstruction.  There, the hoops have been moved and are being used heavily at their new location.  Bonus: easier to monitor and more visible to the public.

Sterling Park North is the third area, and challenges there have delayed construction.  Soil testing and pre-construction continue this year.

Washington Park looks like it will be finished and on-line this year.  After weeks and weeks filled with the rumble and noise of thousands of trucks, residents were sorely tested.  When the plans were first unveiled two years ago it looked like an award winner, and right now it’s looking to be a fantastic addition to the neighborhood, the envy of Downers Grove and the surrounding communities.

This will also attract national attention as an innovative dual-purpose public facility built into an existing older neighborhood, and in turn helping  publicize DG to the world outside our doorstep as, oh, say a great place to live and work…and play.

The Lemon Tree recipe contest has been extended until March 22, giving local cooks more time to submit their original or modified recipes in sandwich, soup, salad and lemon dessert categories.

Laura Hart, the store’s specialty food manager, encouraged local cooks to submit published or family recipes that they have adapted, as well original creations.

“By tweaking an ingredient you can turn someone else’s recipe into your own,” she said.

Coincidentally, I tweaked a lemon dessert recipe just last night, although in my case, “tweaking” meant combining the ingredients of the Barefoot Contessa’s Lemon Yogurt Cake in the wrong order and failing to reserve a half-cup of lemon juice. Instead of using it to create a syrup that would have been poured over the freshly baked cake, I tossed it into the mix, which then necessitated the addition of sugar.

My family liked it — once it completed baking, which took a very long time, considering all the liquid ingredients — although I doubt it would pass muster as a possible addition to The Lemon Tree’s menu. Dishes from the winning recipes will be available for purchase at the store through August.

Recipes can be submitted through the store’s Web site, where contestants can find rules and instructions. Finalists will prepare their dishes for judging at Dream Interiors, 5122 Main St., on March 28.

Oh sure, like most men of his era I’m sure necessity dictated he be a handy guy around the house — dependable repair services were likely scarce in the Thirties and I’m pretty sure Sears Hardware was closed on weekends.

The simple stuff he could handle. Pet canary peck a hole in the plaster? Wallpaper peeling in the bedroom? That damn furnace acting up again? No problem. Like most wives, Mrs. Kerchner had a lengthy ‘honey do’ list she henpecked poor Messers over and when he wasn’t hanging out over at the Moose lodge or ‘hunting’ with the guys he would get to it, promise.

But finish carpentry? No. The gap between fine craftsman and weekend warrior hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years, and Messers was no Bob Villa.

I know this because I live in the house Messers built.

Downers Grove is believed to host one of the nation’s largest collections of Sears-Roebuck Catalog kit homes, most built between 1908 and 1940.

As insane as it may seem now, it was assumed that the average Joe (or Messers) of the time could assemble his own home with little more than a hammer, saw and the ability to turn a screwdriver. One could also assume that do-it-yourself home assembly required the patience of Job and a steady stream of rock-gut moonshine, this being the days before power tools and Home Depot.

Somehow the Messerses of the age managed just fine. Most of them.

Sometime in the fall of 1922, Messers kissed his wife on the cheek and made the first of what was likely hundreds of trips to the rail yard near the recently extended Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, and began to load up the more than 30,000 individually cataloged and labeled pieces of lumber that would soon become their home.

A Sears catalog ‘kit’ home, the ‘Cornell’ model on page 61 of the Sears Home catalog of 1920. The home that, in an unimaginable moment of naïveté, I purchased in Spring 2004, eight decades after the last of the creaky floorboards were clumsily hammered into place.

Did I mention that Messers was not a carpenter?

I’ve read a few books dedicated to the history of the Sears Catalog Home (thin volumes, all), and the emotional attachment the current owners feel about sharing a unique piece of sturdy American craftsmanship.

Sometimes I get emotional about my house. It usually involves uncontrollable fits of rage and hysterical laughter every time I open a wall and discover that the short in the outlet was caused by a frayed cloth wire coming in contact with the beer can pull-tab that was holding it against the joist. Messers enjoyed combining alcohol and home repair. Actually that’s something we have in common.

I think he was a short man. I assumed this when I smacked my forehead squarely into the ceiling as I was navigating a queen box spring up the stairs into what would soon be our bedroom. Try as we might, the box spring would advance no further than the second stair, so a full-sized bed it was.

It’s just one of the many concessions we’ve been forced to accept in order to live in Messer’s house, although somewhere between the 123 and 125 time I smacked my head into the ceiling while half asleep, I grabbed a claw hammer and smashed the overhang into a pile of plaster rubble and shattered lathe.

Thankfully, we have a contractor on speed dial and, with another dip into our dwindling savings, we now have a queen-size bed in our bedroom. I wonder if Messers would approve, or would he think us vain? The previous owner lived here 20 years. He’s taller than me, which means for approximately half his life he instinctively ducked his head E-VAA-REE TIME he went up and down the stairs. Apparently he didn’t own a claw hammer.

We’ve found little scraps of Messers’ life every year in our home: copies of the Daily News from 1925, postcards addressed to him and his lovely wife ‘E’, rail-tags on old fixtures and lumber stamped with his name and an assembly number identifying where it should be installed.

I’ve discovered many ‘Part #126-F hammered into Part #634-L, while Part #127-F is holding up the furnace downstairs. I guessing he lost the instruction manual and rather than face the wrath of Mrs. Kerchner (“I knew it! You’d loose your pants if I didn’t hand you your belt! What else have you lost?!? Well? I bet Mrs. Nesbit’s husband knows where his manual is! Maybe I should call him over to finish the house!! Messers I swear by God..”) he just winged it. Come to think of it we have that in common, too.

I’ve lost track of how many times a contractor has scratched his head and said “Wow! Never seen that before.” Messers had a sense of humor. When we refinished the scary basement we found that the main line that carried the plumbing into the house from the street was propped off the basement floor by a coffee can perched atop a cinder block.

When we removed the can (Hills Brothers), the line cracked and, since it was made of lead, had to be replaced all the way out to the curb. Our neighbors still recall the summer of 2007 as the year the cicadas returned and the moron across the street had the city break up the parkway and half the street. I still have that can.

I’ll admit to a few sentimental moments in Messers’ house. During the Basement ‘Big Dig’ Project (as it came to be known) we converted the old root cellar into a pantry/wine cellar. Originally we called that space the ‘room where the bad kids go’ because it was cold 4’ x 8’ space with a low ceiling and jagged chunks of grey masonry sticking out from the walls.

Messers had built a row of floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves from scrap lumber undoubtedly left over from combining Part #126-F into Part #634-L. Like most of his handiwork, no two pieces lined up at the same angle and the entire assemblage shrugged like it felt shame over its own existence.

Still, he did take the time to paint it all a lovely shade of flesh and it served us well as a storage place for our dog’s dry food. I actually felt a moment of compassion for it just before I swung the sledgehammer down the first time. It got easier after that.

Sometimes I fantasize about discovering a rusty old toolbox hidden behind a wall somewhere, filled with the life savings Messers wouldn’t entrust to a bank. I did find some old bones wrapped in cloth once. I’m pretty sure they were too small to be human, then again, I’m no doctor.

The misaligned trim, the water damage, the nightmarish black tangle of fraying electrical wires, hidden and spreading like a ghost behind the walls, I can’t blame it all on poor Messers (or ‘Mess’ as I suspect his friends called him).

There have been three other families who lived in his house before we arrived and I know for a fact none of them were carpenters either. I think the difference is that they all learned to accept (overlook??) the irregularities in Messers’ handiwork, some of them no doubt contributing some of their own. I admire them. I wish I could look past the trim that isn’t mitre cut or those damn counterweights that make opening a window sound like a garbage truck falling off the Sears tower.

I want to be like them, oblivious to the faults. I want to refer to cracked plaster as ‘charm’ and creaking floorboards as ‘character’, it just hasn’t happened for me. Honestly after four years of almost non-stop restoration, there isn’t a whole lot of Messers left in his house — and I don’t feel any real affection for what remains.

However, I do feel a sense of loss at having never met the man in person. I think I would have liked him. We could have sat down in the backyard over a metal rain-tub full of cold Schlitz on ice and swapped stories of home improvement misadventures, and how expensive screws are now versus 1924. I could show off my power tools, I could introduce him to that wondrous tool called a ‘level’ that ensures that everything magically lines up evenly. He would be impressed. After all, I think we have allot in common.

You see, Messers Kerchner was no carpenter.

And neither am I.

Meat is a resident of Downers Grove. He lives in Messers’ house,  a 1924 Sears Catalog Home, lovingly built by Messers himself.

Southworth house at Main and Prairie. G. Curry photo

The shocking aftermath of the Jan. 2 fire in the 4700 block of Main Street is plain to see: A burned-out shell of a house with boarded up windows, blackened siding and a gaping roof.

What isn’t so obvious is the huge outpouring of support that already is being extended to homeowner Beth Southworth and her two children. Within hours, friends, neighbors and residents who have never met the family were seeking ways to help.

I’ve written before on how caring this community is in times of challenge and crisis, but each time I see people reach out to those less fortunate, whether because of illness, hard times or a house fire, I count myself lucky to live here and also to be able to help where I can.

Earlier this week, board members of Helping Girls Navigate Adolescence Inc., offered a helping hand to one of our own whose house burned less than a week before Christmas.

The Southworth fire offers all of us another opportunity to be generous. April Marron is spearheading the collection of gift cards and clothing for the family, who lost everything in the blaze. They’re currently looking for Target, Jewel and other gift cards and clothing donations to provision Southworth, her 10-year-old daughter and her nine-year-old son. The boy wears size 10 or 12, the daughter wears women’s extra-small clothing and Southworth is a size 0.

Donations can be dropped off or mailed to Marron at 3780 Downers Drive, 60515.

“People have been so tremendously generous,” she said, adding that Mike Geisen of My Favorite Toy Store in Downers Grove invited the kids to choose whatever toys they wanted, so they are set for amusements.

Among the harder items to replace will be family photos and other keepsakes. Friends at Belle Aire school are combing through their pictures for ones that include the Southworth kids and the Panther Cheerleaders organization is replacing the daughter’s cheering trophies.

“There is nothing left,” Marron said.

Given the speed at which the house was engulfed, friends and family are thankful that it wasn’t more tragic. Southworth was able to rouse her sleeping children and get out of the house after the fire broke out about 11:15 p.m. Investigators believe the fire started when a curtain was ignited by a burning candle.

“She didn’t even think the fire was that bad at first,” Marron said. “She went back in to get the cat out from under a bed.”

Noting the two fires during comments at Tuesday’s village council meeting, Commissioner Sean P. Durkin urged residents to be careful. The season’s low humidity, dried-out evergreens, and fireplaces and candles are a dangerous combination, he said.

There’s a new schedule this year, kicking off with the Community Tree Lighting Ceremony on Friday rather than the usual Sunday after Thanksgiving.  While you’re waiting for the big event, vote for your favorite gingerbread house at the Downtown Management Corp. offices and enjoy apple cider and cookies inside the train station, compliments of Downers Grove Family Medicine.

New this year, more than 70 businesses will light the streets with luminaria in advance of the tree ceremony. Want your own luminaria? As a winter fundraiser, the Downers Grove Junior Woman’s Club will be selling kits near Santa’s house at Main Street and Curtiss Avenue from 4-7 p.m. Friday and  12:30-3:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 29.

The kits, which include enough bags, candles and sand for eight luminaries, are $10 each, or $8 each for three or more.

Speaking of lights, come 4:30 p.m., the mayor will flip the switch to light the giant tree.  Donated by Joan Allen, the tree will feature more than 1,072 homemade ornaments created by 69 different organizations and individuals.

Caroling by the Downers Grove Choral Society will follow.

Saturday, Nov. 28, is shopping day, with holiday specials available throughout the downtown. There also will be a Holiday Fashion Show hosted by Jolie Boutique at noon at Capri Ristorante. Tickets are $25 per person and are available at the restaurant, 630-241-0695.

The Santa Parade is set for 1 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 29., followed by a cookie walk, carriage rides and visits with Santa in his house until 4 p.m. Look for the live reindeer will be pawing the ground. There will also be a Kids Korner where the young ones can shop and get free gift wrapping. And don’t forget to vote for your favorite gingerbread house!

All these events just mark the start of the holiday season. Santa will be available in his house through the month of December, carolers will be on hand every Saturday and downtown shops will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays,  from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays.

Also coming in December is the Holiday Classic Film Festival at the Tivoli. Look for Miracle on 34th Street on Sunday, Dec.13; A Christmas Story on Monday, Dec. 14, 3 Godfathers on Tuesday, Dec. 15 (all at 7 and 9:30 p.m.) and White Christamas at 1:30, 4, 7 and 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 16.

The Tivoli will also host the West Towns Chorus presentation of The Gift of Christmas at 8 p.m., Friday, Dec. 11; 2 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 12 and 1:30 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 13.

Know of more holiday cheer? Add it here.

At any rate,  Halloween seemed a little off this year. We were so busy, and it was so rainy, in the days before the holiday that we waited until the last minute to make the pumpkin run. Big mistake. Due to rainy conditions? lower inventories? greedy consumers? there was not a single garden-variety orange pumpkin to be had at Wannemakers, Clover’s, TJ’s, Dominick’s or Jewel Saturday.

We settled for a squash, a dusty orange Cinderella pumpkin and a creamy white version of the old stand-by.  And they were actually kind of fun. The washed-out Cinderella pumpkin revealed an electric orange interior when carved. The white pumpkin looked suitably ghostly and the squash made an awesome cat-o-lantern when laid on its side — and stayed perfectly lit all night.

But the foot traffic seemed way down this year, which was a huge surprise for a Saturday Halloween. As always, I worried at the last minute that we wouldn’t have enough candy and sent hubby to the store for “one or two more bags.” He came back with six — a punishable offense in this household where the stay-at-home mom/worker prefers not to be confronted by that sort of temptation.

Sent a huge bagful to a Halloween party with my son, who helpfully returned home with same.

Anybody else left with major reserves of Halloween candy? Or were the trick-or-treaters out in  force in your neighborhood?