Publications & Sites 
Saturday train show a delightful way to help the historical society
Sara Clarkson
Updated: April 9, 2012 2:29PM
It’s not just the tots who will be rapt at the Clarendon Hills Historical Society’s Model Train Show this Saturday, April 14. Their adult chaperones are often equally as entranced at the annual event.
This year’s show promises bells and whistles and lots of locomotion again as a 40-foot, three-track, nine-train model will be set up in the Community Center, 315 Chicago Ave. in the Clarendon Hills Park District’s activity center. As in past years, the exhibit is meant to have some hands-on, very kid-friendly elements, too, according to Annette Hillman, the Clarendon Hills Historical Society vice president.
The cost to attend is still only $5 per family, though apparently some people have abused this policy in the past and tried to bring in their neighbors although this is a fundraiser for historical society programing. Meanwhile, historical society board President Dianne Hiller has applied for a Burlington Northern Santa Fe Foundation Grant to offset the costs of the event. The train show runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The Daily Scoop will sell refreshments.
The next historical society fundraiser is the May 10 pre-Mother’s Day plant sale at Bronswood Greenhouses on 3805 Madison St., Hinsdale. During Daisy Days to be held on June 15 and 16 this year, the historical society will hold a split-the-pot raffle with tickets only $10 a piece and no more than 500 tickets being sold. The raffle winner, who will have almost infinitely better odds of winning this pot than a Mega Millions one, will take 30 percent of the pot. A new event for this year is a trolley tour of historic Naperville, which is set for Aug. 8 and will feature the Millennium Carillon on the tour as well as an opportunity to visit the Naper settlement.
As far as progress on Heritage Hall, the former pumping station on Ann and Sheridan streets which is to be converted into a meeting space and the permanent home of the historical society, progress is slow but steady according to Hiller. Most of the physical inventory has been consolidated into the building now and is being catalogued and organized. Those items which can be digitally stored through scanning and photography are being saved that way. The board has asked contractors for revised bids on the construction and repair work the building needs, since the previous bids are now out-of-date.
“Hopefully, we can start to reach out to the community for fundraising,” Hiller said.
For more information about the Clarendon Hills Historical Society, visit its website at www.clarendonhillshistory.org.
Elaborate requests
Back when this scribbler was in high school, if a boy wanted to ask a girl to the prom, he picked up the phone. The phone was attached to the wall and the boy would have to dial it. If he didn’t want to use the phone, he would hem and haw and ask the girl face-to-face. Those techniques seem to be way too simple and frankly way too unimaginative for today’s overstimulated youth. These days, the boy may enlist several of his friends to put on an elaborate skit ending with a prom proposal. For example, one young man and three of his friends went to the home of a targeted girl one evening last week and rang the doorbell. There, to the song “Good Feeling” by Flo Rida, the four boys danced using chairs as props — echoing a routine that High School Pom Squad used for Homecoming — and turned the chairs around as the song concluded with “P-R-O-M?” spelled out. Fortunately, the girl accepted the boy’s request. Perhaps the requisite bouquet of roses helped, but, also due to the considerable amount of texting — negotiating and arranging between her friends and his — before this and the hundreds of other elaborate schemes this past week, the results were known before the boy and his friends took their chairs and their pride and danced in the driveway.
New 5K run
The Healthy Park, Healthy Patients 5K run is an inaugural fundraising event scheduled for April 22 at the Katherine Legge Memorial Park. Proceeds will benefit KLM neighbor RLM Specialty Hospital, which is just north of the park as well as the Hinsdale Parks and Recreation department, which of course oversees KLM and all the other parks in Hinsdale. RML Specialty Hospital is a long-term acute care hospital for patients with prolonged and severe medical issues. The nonprofit has as its medical partners the Loyola University Health System and Advocate Health Care.
The course starts in KLM just to the west and south of the Hinsdale Center for the Arts, exits the park and goes north on County Line Road to 57th Street. Runners and walkers will then head west to Madison Street, turn left to go south and then turn east just south of 57th Street, heading east to hit 60th Street and back into KLM to finish in front of Hinsdale Center for the arts. The runners will leave at 8 a.m. and the walkers will leave at 8:05 a.m. The event will also feature a race breakfast, live music, an expo and vendors as well as awards ceremony.
BMO Harris Bank is the sponsor, and race participants will have to pick up their packets before the race at certain bank locations. Registration for the walk and run is due by April 16. For more information, visit the website www.healthy5K.com.
