Well I’ll be a monkey’s ... aunt?

The relationship part of that saying doesn’t really apply to this week’s column, but the monkey part sure does.

Last week, we took a crack at unlocking the secrets of the Monkey House, a shell of a building that stands about midway through the grounds of the Hickory Knolls Natural Area in St. Charles. Oral history told us that the building once belonged to the St. Charles School for Boys (aka “the Boys’ Home”), the operation that predated today’s Illinois Youth Center on Route 38. But what we couldn’t figure out was, where did the “monkey” part come in?