According to Google Reviews, or at least one reviewer, Chestnut Park, which is part of the Hoffman Estates Park District, is a good place to fish. Nice to know, though I don’t plan on fishing there. The other day I stopped by for a look at the park. Why? Because I’ve been driving by it for years — nearly 18 years — and never had done so.

It’s a pleasant pocket park, surrounded by houses and probably put in by the subdivider 50-odd years ago, with the fishing pond as the central feature. Maybe we can detect the hand of Jack Hoffman himself in the configuration of the park, or least one of his draftsmen.

Note that the grass has turned green. That seems to happen overnight around this time of year, sometimes in early April, but this year in late March.

As I was leaving, I noticed a plaque on a rock. I’d never noticed that before, either.

One of the large genre of sad plaques. It isn’t hard to learn what happened to Meghan. Not even 15 years old, she was killed crossing a major street near the park.

Not long afterward, the Illinois House passed a resolution honoring the girl, promising to build pedestrian overpasses at the major roads near Hoffman Estates High School, to prevent such a thing happening again. I drive by that location often, and I have to report that the Meghan Krueger Overpasses were never built here in chronically cash-starved Illinois.