Third Ward Alderman Ray Pawlak says the half wall on East Side Drive will be cleaned up but its removal will have to wait until spring.
I was out walking with my colleague, Nagel, when I uncovered the evidence of the half-wall case.
It seems that the 2-foot-tall wall on the east side of East Side Drive had been tilting for some months due to the settling of the berms that border a wide-open grassy Geneva East detention area where kids play soccer, throw Fisbees and fly kites—or where dogs walk their colleagues during the warm-weather months.
Just a week before, the only collapsed part of the 100-yard-long half wall was a 15-foot stretch that city crews had quickly repaired.
I did some quick sniffing around and it became apparent to me that something was not as it seemed. Applying my keen senses, heightened through years of disciplined training, as well as the extraordinary powers of deduction that have made my name legend, I knew almost instantly that the culprit in this case was not just Mother Nature.
"Take a few pictures with your digital camera, will you old boy?" I instructed my new-media associate. What you see here are the results of the preliminary investigation.
Indeed, my conjectures turned out to be correct, as they so often do.
Third Ward Alderman Ray Pawlak said Monday that the parts of the wall that recently came down probably were the handiwork of vandals rather than crumbling under the pressure of the berms that separate the street from the retention area near Moore Park, across the street from Good Templar Park.
Previously, Pawlak said he hope that the whole wall would be fixed or removed by the end of October, but that just wasn't to be. When the wall is taken down, the ground around it will need seeding and perhaps sodding, he said, and mid-November isn't the right time of the year to do that.
In the meantime, the Third Ward alderman said city crews would remove the cement cinder blocks that have been knocked down, cleaning up the area and putting an end to this case, which we will call, for now, the Incident of the Curious Dog in the Daytime.
"Mark my words, Nagel, this is not the last we have seen of this case," I told my aging sidekick. He looked confused but nodded his tiny head in assent.
