I took the picture below of the field that sits at the southwest corner of Patterson Road and Grange Hall Road. Extending south to Shakertown Road, it is the City of Beavercreek’s newest, and largest, park at 148 acres. After receiving hundreds of name suggestions, the Beavercreek City Council named it Spring House Park. It's still in need of quite a bit of new funding, so it might take a few years before the site is fully developed.
This land holds a truckload of happy memories for me. My mother's brother Bud, his wife Jessie, and their nine kids moved to a house on this property back around the time I was born and we all knew it as "The Otto Farm". For decades they would hold a family picnic on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, and it never seemed to rain, regardless of the forecast. It was a day full of volleyball and basketball games, picnic tables full of fried chicken, potato salad, and such, my uncle using his tractor to pull us through their fields on hayrides, and cracking open-pit fires complete with burning marshmallows and S'mores.
After they passed, the house was destroyed for firefighter training and the chicken coup and barn were taken down. The property has been vacant for at least 25 years with almost nothing remaining I can recognize. The gravel path seen below was the driveway up to the house and the rest Mother Nature took care of in her usual way.
I can't wait for the day I can walk again on this land and recall all those good times.
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