Each week, Bear Facts will post an article from a past issue. These articles can demonstrate what life was like for a high school student in that year. What seemed important to them that seems commonplace now? What were the issues facing high school students of the day? This week’s article ran in April 1980.

By Kathy Zumski

Bear Facts recently had the opportunity to conduct an interview with a street in Lake Zurich.

Bear Facts: Is it hard being a street in Lake Zurich?

Street X: Well, a few years ago it was great, no problem. Every once in a while a semi, or something like it, would drive over me. Today I’m lucky if those heavy trucks only go over me three times in a day.

Bear Facts: I see. Are there any advantages to the job?

Street X: You bet! Like when the snow finally melted.  Boy did I have a lot of fun with those crazy drivers. They’d come speeding down me, late at night, and not notice that I had buckled in many places. There’s got to be about ten hubcaps in the gutter next to me.

Bear Facts: You sound like the vengeful type, are you?

Street X: Listen, if a kid is stupid enough to ride his bike on my fresh tar, then he deserves to have a layer of stones covering his tires.

Bear Facts: Did you ever wish you were something else?

Street X: Oh sure. My father is a cornerstone for a building and my mother is a street, too, but she’s in Chicago. I’d like to be in the foundation of a building, so that I can’t be ruined by careless people.

Bear Facts: What do you do for relaxation?

Street X: I usually count the number of VW beetles that drive on me. There isn’t much for a street to do.

Bear Facts: What street do you admire most?

Street X: That’s an easy question. With no doubt, it has to be Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. There is probably no other street in the world that so many important people have driven on.

Bear Facts: Considering how you feel about Lake Zurich, is there any place in the world, where you’d like to be a street?

Street X: Well, it wouldn’t be in the United States. People here do not treat streets with the respect we deserve. I’d pick a nice European town or city. Those people don’t drive as many cars, and they have such pretty roads.

Bear Facts: Thank-you for the interview.

Street X: Thank-you for letting me get some things off my asphalt.