Some jobs are better than others. But Frank Novak and his crew believe their jobs are the best, by a dam site.
Where else can someone get paid to spend a pleasant summer day lolling about one of the most popular waterways in North America?
Actually, there`s more to their job than that. But as operators of the Stratton Lock and Dam-which until last year was known as the McHenry Lock and Dam-that is an important part of their job.
Each year Novak and his six-man crew put more than 20,000 boats through the McHenry lock as the vessels travel above and below the dam on the Fox River near McHenry. It`s a safe bet that more boaters float through the McHenry lock each year than through any other lock in North America.
”There`s no way to prove or disprove if this is the busiest lock in North America, but we`re pretty sure that it is,” said Novak, 44, lockmaster at the lock for the last 18 years. He was a locktender there four years before that.
The locktenders at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., on the St. Mary`s River between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, once claimed their lock operation was the busiest in North America. But after Novak visited those locks while on vacation several years ago, they changed their boast.
”I was taking a tour of the locks-sort of a busman`s holiday, I guess-and they were saying they had the busiest lock operation,” Novak said. ”I told them that I operated a lock and that we put more boats through our lock each year than they put through theirs. And their numbers were for five locks, four on the U.S. side and one on the Canadian side, whereas we have only one lock.”
The Sault Ste. Marie locktenders were doubtful at first. ”They asked,
`What river do you work on? Where is this place?` ” Novak said. ”Once I convinced them I was telling the truth, we totaled up tonnages and figured that one Great Lakes ship loaded with taconite (iron ore) that goes through their locks weighs more than all the boats that go through my lock in an entire year. So now they say more tons of shipping sail through their locks than through any other locks in North America.”
But that`s as it was meant to be. The McHenry lock also is perhaps the only lock in operation in the United States or Canada that was built solely to accommodate pleasure boaters, according to Novak.
The Sault Ste. Marie locks and locks on other rivers such as the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois were designed primarily to serve commercial interests. Pleasure boats go through locks on those rivers, but they do so with huge merchant ships, river barges and tug boats.
Not so on the Fox River, which begins in Wisconsin and flows south through the Chain O` Lakes, one of the nation`s busiest waterways, before emptying into the Illinois River at Ottawa.
Novak said 23,092 pleasure boats, everything from one-person jet skis to 40-foot cabin cruisers, went through the McHenry lock last year, and probably most of the boaters had no idea the lock`s name had been changed.
The state last year renamed the lock in honor of William G. Stratton, who was governor when it was built in 1960. But because only state bureaucrats and those who are paid to work at the lock call it the Stratton lock (”Sometimes I still answer the phone by saying `McHenry lock,` ” Novak said), tradition dictates that it will continue to be known as the McHenry lock for a long time to come.
The biggest attraction for boaters who use the lock is the Chain O`
Lakes, 10 lakes in Lake and McHenry Counties that are actually a series of wide spots in the river. The Chain covers 6,063 acres of water and has about 23,000 boats registered on it as well as the Lake and McHenry County portions of the river, according to Michael J. Wieser, executive director of the Fox River Chain O` Lakes Waterway Management Agency.
One of those boaters is Rudy Stepan of McHenry, who one recent Wednesday evening brought his speedboat into the lock with a call of ”Hey,
commissioner!” Stepan and a friend of his, Julie Ozog of McHenry, were on their way to the Edgewater Beach Hotel near Burton`s Bridge, several miles downstream from the dam.
Who`s the commissioner?
”These guys are the river commissioners,” Stepan said, jokingly referring to the locktenders.
”He`s one of our regulars,” said locktender Jeff Thompson of McHenry, who as a 13-year veteran at the lock is second in seniority to Novak.
During the six minutes that it took the water level in the lock to change so that the boat could continue downstream, Stepan and Thompson deadpanned on the merits of installing a beer and wine concession at the lock.
”You boys could pick up a lot of extra money,” Stepan said, knowing full well that such a thing would never be done. Boaters sail through the lock free. ”Stock some white zinfandel, a little burgundy, some nice chardonnay. You could throw the money into the state treasury. Yeah, that`s it! You could use the proceeds to reduce our taxes.”
Thompson shook his head. ”We get enough drunks through here as it is,”
he said. ”How about a hot dog concession?”
Novak, who stands about 6 feet tall and has a football player`s build, is a gentle diplomat when it comes to the problem of drunken boaters.
”They`re out there” is about all he`ll say about them.
Locktender Joe Jendrzejcyk of Wonder Lake (who goes by Joe J. for obvious reasons) is more open about the problem of drunken boaters.
”We`ve seen passengers fall out of their boat right in the middle of the lock,” he said. ”I`ll never forget this one time when a man and his wife pulled into the lock. He was over 6 feet tall and his wife was barely 5 feet tall.
”Well, when you pull into the lock, you`re supposed to grab ropes at the side of the lock to keep your boat in position. But boats are rounded at the front and squared off at the back, so there`s a tendency to swing one end of the boat out when you pull it up against the side,” he said. ”The husband and his wife were yelling at each other, pulling back and forth against the ropes, and suddenly the guy was just hanging there in midair. The boat had swung out from underneath him. He was dressed all in white-white shirt, white pants, white shoes-and all he could do was let go and fall into the water. It was hilarious. He crawled out, covered in green slime.”
That boater was lucky. All he bruised was his dignity.
Drunken boaters can maim or kill themselves and others on the river, so the Lake and McHenry County Sheriff`s Departments have cracked down on drunken boaters in recent years. The locktenders sometimes lend a hand in that effort. The lockhouse (the building the locktenders sit in to monitor the lock and the river) also is equipped with a radio that the locktenders can use to alert the sheriff`s patrols to drunken or unruly boaters.
Weekends are the busiest time at the lock, because that`s when the most boaters are out. Novak said two-hour waits to get through the lock are not uncommon. Thursday nights also can be bad.
”Tell your readers to stay off the river on Thursday nights,” said Thompson. ”Blarney`s Island has boat races on Thursday nights, and a lot of people are pretty wild on their way back home.”
Blarney`s Island is a bar set on stilts in a channel at the mouth of Grass Lake at the north end of the Chain O` Lakes. ”People heading north through the lock on Thursdays all want to know how to get to Blarney`s Island,” Thompson said. ”They`re a lively bunch.”
Were it not for the lock and dam at McHenry, such boating activities likely could not occur. The Chain would be too shallow in many spots. According to Novak, a group of riverfront homeowners built a dam of wooden timbers near the site of the current dam in 1907 to raise the water level above the dam to improve boating and fishing. They replaced that dam with one made of metal sheet pilings in 1915. In 1923, the homeowners turned over the dam to the state to maintain.
A flood destroyed that dam in 1938, and the state built the existing dam of concrete and limestone blocks the following year. The river is about 6 feet higher above the dam than below it.
The state also installed five metal lift gates to the west side of the dam spillway. By raising or lowering those gates, the locktenders can help maintain normal water levels above the dam. The lock sits slightly west and north of the lift gates. Before the state built the lock in 1960, there was no way for boaters to get beyond the dam, short of running their boats ashore and carrying them around it.
The locktenders have several duties. They, of course, run and maintain the lock, a metal chamber about 20 feet wide and 70 feet long with
hydraulically operated metal gates on either end. They also monitor river levels and adjust the lift gates as needed and put channel markers and no-wake signs in the river and maintain them throughout the boating season.
Contrary to what many people who live near the river believe, the lift gates do little to control floods, according to Novak.
”There is some flood control but not much,” he said. ”The gates really have little effect on high water. Their main function is to hold back water in times of normal or low flows. In periods of little rain, water levels would drop so much that if we didn`t hold back some water, a lot of areas on the Chain would be too shallow for boaters.”
Monitoring stations at the dam and at several locations on the river and on major tributaries above the dam enable Novak to know how much to raise or lower the gates. The monitoring stations have electronic recorders that send information on rainfall, wind speed and direction and water flows directly to a computer in the lockhouse or through telephone lines attached to a computer through a modem.
The information also goes to the Illinois Department of Transportation office in Schaumburg. The lock operation is an arm of IDOT`s Division of Water Resources and is funded by IDOT. There is no charge to boaters for use of the lock.
From 8 a.m. until midnight beginning May 1 and lasting through Oct. 31, the lock is in operation. The rest of the year the lock operators monitor river levels, do maintenance work on the lock and channel marker, and maintain the grounds.
The lockhouse is a small, low red brick building that sits directly in front of the lock. That`s where the locktenders and their radio and electronic monitoring equipment can be found. A larger storage building that houses channel marker buoys and no-wake signs, a pontoon boat and tools to maintain the lock sits a few hundred feet west of the lockhouse. A slough owned by the Illinois Department of Conservation is beyond that. Moraine Hills State Park is directly across the river from the lock.
About 1,000 feet of rope and pilings serve as moorings above and below the lock. On busy days, boats can back up well beyond the moorings as they wait their turn to go through.
One recent early Sunday afternoon, Dale and Debbie Wiegand of rural Barrington went through the lock. As the water level in the lock dropped so they could continue on their way, they talked about their day on the river.
”It`s our first time out this year,” Dale Wiegand said. ”We`re headed back home. We love the river, but those of us who spend a lot of time on it know that on the weekends, you`ve got to get on the river early so you can get off before the traffic gets bad.”
Debbie Wiegand, as it turns out, also knows something about locks. She said her father was a captain in the merchant marine and regularly sailed 700- foot-long cargo ships through the Sault Ste. Marie locks.
How does the McHenry lock compare to those locks? ”The principle is the same, but the scale is a bit different,” she said.
To move boaters through the lock, the locktenders open the lock to boaters in the order they arrive. On busy days when lines start to form, they fill the lock with as many boats as they can. Six or seven at a time is typical. Large metal gates slowly swing open or closed at the touch of a couple of buttons on control panels at either end of the lock, just outside the lockhouse. The locktenders alternate between upstream- and downstream-bound boats.
To raise the water level for boats headed above the dam, about 90,000 gallons of water pour into the lock through a valve just inside the upstream gates. To lower the water level for boats headed below the dam, the water pours out of the lock immediately below the downstream gates.
For the boys in Fremont School Cub Scout Pack 89 Den 4 in Mundelein, getting a close-up look at the lock operation was just the thing they needed to earn their engineering badges. Scout leader George Pannhausen of Mundelein took the seven Scouts to the lock for a tour shortly before it opened this year. Novak, who`s a Boy Scout troop leader in McHenry, gives tours to several school groups and Scout troops each year.
”I`ve got a 16-foot boat that I`ve taken through the lock a few times,” Pannhausen said, ”and one day it occurred to me that the kids in my Scout troop would enjoy seeing the lock. And since a lot of engineering goes into building locks and dams, I thought a tour would be a good way for them to earn their engineering badges.”
So one day last April, Pannhausen drove to the lock to see if someone there would show the Scouts around. He found Novak ”working on some big gears and covered in grease.” Pannhausen told Novak what he had in mind, and they arranged a time and date for the tour.
According to Pannhausen, ”Frank was great. He took the kids onto the catwalk over the lift gates, and the water was rushing out and splashing beneath them. That was kind of scary, so of course the kids loved that.
”Frank also showed them the fish ladders (that allow fish to move above and below the lock) and sat them down on the island between the spillway and the gates and told them all about the lock and dam,” Pannhausen said. ”Then he took a pontoon boat through the lock to show the kids how it worked, and then he showed them how the river is monitored. He even showed them where beavers had cut down some trees.
”These were 11- and 12-year-olds, and it`s usually hard to hold their interest, but Frank did a real good job.”
Not everyone always compliments the locktenders. They sometimes hear complaints from property owners about water levels. ”We`re in the middle,”
Novak said. ”People above the dam will complain that water levels are too high when floods hit, and people below will complain that water levels are too low during dry spells.”
And boaters on busy days sometimes grumble about having to wait two or three hours to get through the lock. But most of them are in a good mood despite such waits. They realize that only so many boats can fit in the lock at any one time. And besides, there are worse ways to spend a summer afternoon than by lazing it away on a quiet backwater away from the congested main channel of the river.
And even though the locktenders are busy working to get those boaters through the lock, they know there are worse ways to spend a workday, too.
”Nearly everyone we deal with is having fun and relaxing, and they`re almost always pleasant,” Novak said. ”We get to be outdoors, close to nature, in a pretty setting. It`s hard to beat all that.”
