Hooray! This week-end marks our town’s sasquatch-e-tennial: the anniversary of the day Bigfoot crawled out of Spring Rock Park and founded Western Springs.

Wait, that doesn’t sound right. I got it! It’s the quasi-mod-ennial. On Sunday we remember the day the Hunchback of Notre-Dame climbed to the top of the Water Tower. The historical record shows he nearly fell to his death, but was saved by the mighty arms of our founder Bigfoot.

I’ve gotten myself confused now. Is it the quasar-star-tennial? That was the day a burst of energy from space beamed aliens to town. Isn’t this how Bigfoot learned to dowse for our infamous springs?

Actually, it’s our Quasquicentennial celebration: qua (like quarter) + que (and) + cent (100) + enn (year) + a suffix. 

In Everyday Math terms this is a 4^th grade math test I would fail. In linguistic terms, this is the entire Latin language in one word. Is this proof that “atin-lay” is easy enough to have been spoken right here? Yes.

Before our founding, Romans landed on the shore of Lake Michigan in search of a place to build aqueducts when they found our springs. They built their aqueducts and also lots of hair salons, banks and churches.

These people became so skilled in building they pulled permits to build a tower capable of pumping spring water to many families with enough force to power a Slip 'N Slide.

We needed the water tower because the citizens took too many showers and the outdoor springs dried up. All that was left was an invisible underground river of some type of pink sediment that stains toilet bowls and white grout. Suddenly building a tower to extract the water was more important than ever, and everyone with white grout was really mad.

The Romans installed hard-wired smoke alarms and French drains “to code” in their new tower. The work was completed well enough to support the weight of a Roman legion or a hunchback but not well enough to get their bond money back.

Our ancestors decided to share expenses by living in the newly-built tower.  This action made the Assessor very angry, and he dispersed the people so they would have to live in separate homes with unique PIN numbers.

Although the people dispersed, they never left town. They never moved more than a few blocks away and were never tempted to leave with the aliens on their starship because there are no “Blue Ribbon” schools on Mars. I will be at that “Blue Ribbon” school on Sunday for the sasquatchetennial, and probably in 25 years for the sesquicentennial with my (ahem) grandchildren.  Happy 125th Western Springs!