Park Ridge, Ill. Lovely town, it is. The Big Ten’s headquarters emanate from there, it’s Hillary Clinton’s and Harrison Ford’s hometown and scenes from the movies The Breakfast Club and Blues Brothers were shot in Park Ridge. (My mother also works at Lutheran General Hospital there.) Not all Chicago suburbs can claim such an artistic and political background.

But all is not well in the Park Ridge. Demons haunt, ghosts linger — it’s a scene out of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. You see, the Illinois Department of Transportation put up “Honorary Jim Hendry Way” signs on two traffic-signal poles at the intersection of Touhy Avenue,  Northwest Highway and Prospect Avenue. Hendry hails from Park Ridge, as well.

Neither the city aldermen or mayor had any clue about it; no one alerted them to the new signs. And this comes just before the city voted to prohibit honorary signs Monday. BUM BUM BUM.

Zingsheim said an IDOT representative said crews were ordered to install the signs based on an ”executive order from the governor’s office.”

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At Monday night’s City Council meeting, when resident Judy Barclay asked why they had been posted, 4th Ward Alderman Jim Allegretti replied, ”The answer is, we just don’t know.”

OK, an “executive order from the governor’s office”? Is Rod Blagojevich really this delusional that he’d try and supercede a town ordinance just before it went into effect to honor the Chicago Cubs GM, a man who, though noteworthy, isn’t exactly Martin Luther King, Jr.?

If you’re wondering, that answer is “yes.”

Also see: Ziller at the Sporting Blog.