hunt69
301 posts
Aug 27, 2011
7:49 AM
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This really demonstrates to me,how similar our memories are of that era.Only the locations around Dayton are different.Thanks for sharing tlturbo
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AllenN71
294 posts
Aug 27, 2011
7:54 PM
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Pretty good, Turbo. You'd probably make a pretty good gun writer (for the gun mags, you know). You ought to try writing an essay about your boyhood in the open fields plinking and with what; that sort of thing resonates really well with folks like those gun mag folks, who put a premium into showing what shooting means as part of the American Character. The bit about the guy with his own private range and digging out the used boolits to recycle the lead was a great detail. Check out some mags like Shooting Times etc. write an essay and submit it for publication (if they like) "At your regular freelance rates". Betcha you might (betcha you MIGHT? talk about a no risk bet) find a good way to make a little extra dough.
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tlturbo
266 posts
Aug 28, 2011
6:18 AM
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Allen - glad you liked it. Might have to consider that idea. I was going to include the following in the article but ran out of room.
Since I shot a lot of trap, I started reloading my own shotgun shells. Greg, my friend, and I belonged to the Wright Patt Rod and Gun Club and hunted pheasants on the base most weekends. He asked me to load some shells for him and I filled the area around the pellets in the shell with baby powder. You should have seen the look on his face when he shot them. Looked like an old civil war musket blackpowder cloud. I thought we were all going to die from laughing.
I'm sure we all have soooo many different stories like the above to tell and everytime I read someone elses story, I remember more. I love it. Make me think of things I had long forgotten. Too bad we can't tell a LOT of the stories. Curt would have a coranary.
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87 Buick GN
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AllenN71
295 posts
Aug 28, 2011
8:55 AM
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Watch out for them re-loads, and don't buy em at gun shows. I was at the Miami Valley gun range back in 1972 and some guy blew up a S&W Model 19 with one of his buddy's handloads. Kabooms ain't NO fun.
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tlturbo
267 posts
Aug 28, 2011
10:24 AM
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Especially those for my .50 - 214 grains makes a BIG boom.
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87 Buick GN
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tlturbo
354 posts
Jul 12, 2012
9:16 AM
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THIS IS A REPOST (in 2 parts) OF THE ORIGINAL STORY THAT SOMEHOW DISAPPEARED FROM THE BEGINNING OF THIS THREAD.
PART ONE
Allen inspired me to write this article with his great rendition but I put it off. Then last week I went into Google Earth and looked at the area around Beavercreek where I lived during my Jr & Sr High School years (1960-1965) then off and on until I moved to FL in 72. I decided that he was right in trying to pass along these great times so here is MY version of Exploring Nature in Beavercreek 1960-1972.
My dad worked at Wright Patt when I was born and we lived in Fairborn near the High School then after 1st grade he got transferred to Memphis and then we came back at the start of 8th grade. I had always lived in a city so when dad bought a house out in the country in Beavercreek, I loved it. If you go East on New Germany Trebine Rd from it’s intersection with Bellbrook Fairfield Rd about ½ mile on the right is a development (they were called plats back then) called Brook Hollow. That is where we lived.
For a newer understanding, that intersection is right smack in the middle of the Farifield Commons Mall area.
Brook Hollow was the only development in the area. All the way West on Trebine to Airways (it wasn’t blocked off behind Home Depot then) and then East down to Beaver Valley Rd was nothing but scattered farms with their barns and fields of corn, etc. Same with going N or S on Bellbrook Fairfield. Nutter Center wasn’t there, just old fields and woods where the Air Force had barracks back in the 50’s and Wright State wasn’t there.
OK, you get the idea. Anyway, we lived about 1 block off of Trebine Rd and across the road was a farm with barn, sheep, a big woods and fields. (This later became College Hills development). The woods had a winding trail through it that came out on the back side and then down a hill to a small creek. In the winter we would sled down this windy trail, out the back side, down the hill and TRY to jump over the creek. TRY is the key word. We even tried to build ramps to jump over it but somehow we always ended up in the creek.
In the summer we could catch small fish, snakes and crawdads in the creek. It ran from where the mall is now, under Trebine and we could follow it for several miles as it wound around to Beaver Valley Rd. There was one hole we could swim in and a friend of mine had a horse he kept at the farm across from the house and we would bathe the horse in that pool then we would ride it bareback down to the putter golf across from the Frostop Rootbeer at Airways and National. The guy let us play for free so he could ride the horse. Only problem with the horse was that coming home he knew about a ½ mile from the barn where we were headed and off he would go with us hanging on for dear life as there was no stopping him till he got to the barn.
All the fields around the area were good in the winter for hunting rabbits and pheasants. I was a gun nut (belonged to the Wright Patt Jr Rifle Club and was first person to become a Distinguished Expert). I would throw my target 22 over my shoulder and head across the road and down into the distant fields to shoot woodchucks and crows OR I would take my pellet gun over to the barn and shoot mice and rats. I remember one day I got 4 BIG rats and I carried them home by their tails to show my mom. For some reason she wasn’t as near as excited over my accomplishment as I was. If I tried walking down the road with the rifle these days, the SWAT and Homeland Security would have me in handcuffs.
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87 Buick GN
Last Edited by on Jul 14, 2012 5:38 AM
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tlturbo
355 posts
Jul 12, 2012
9:20 AM
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PART TWO
Back behind what later became College Hills, whoever owned the land and woods had built a little shed in the middle of a meadow and about 100 yards away was a vertical hillside across the little creek. This was their rifle range. We would spend hours digging out the lead bullets from the hillside to melt down to make balls for my muzzleloader.
We could follow the creek all the way over to the landfill that used to be North up Beaver Valley Rd towards Fairborn. There also was a little dirt track up near there where they raced motorcycles. We met a couple of cute girls there one time on one of our excursions.
If you walked about a quarter mile through corn fields on the West side of our development, you could get to the back yard of a house that had a large pond behind it. We discovered it was stocked with nice bass but were told to STAY OUT. Who US??? It didn’t take us long to learn we could lie behind the little levee that they built around the pond and cast OVER it into the lake. We would take turns watching the bobber with binoculars from the woods and signal whoever had the rod when the bobber went down and to reel the fish in over the levee. We never did
get caught again but lots of fish did. These same people didn’t like me shooting squirrels in the trees in their back yard.
There were also great woods between the development and Kemp Rd where we hunted squirrels. We also built great tree houses back there with old lumber we scrounged from the houses being built in the neighborhood.
All of these farms, houses, ponds and fields are all gone, the roads straightened out and huge malls built. I WAS able to barely trace the old creek with Google Earth but in places they have run it through culverts through a new development. The old dairy farm just East is now a golf course and there are no fields, just houses now. Looking at it on Google Earth is very depressing.
After High School I got into cars. First was a fast sky blue 61 Pontiac built by George Montgomery and then a 66 silver 427 corvette conv and finally a gold 69 Corvette conv with a wild paint job by the Egyptian. We discovered the intersection of Bellbrook Fairfield and New German Trebine Rd was exactly ¼ mile to the top of the big dip in the road just before Brook Hollow. This became my ‘test track’. I graduated from roaming the local fields to cruising the drive in restaurants. I would also drive to a little gun club just behind the Skyborn Drive-in on Wed nights to shoot trap. I also bought a boat and we would ski at Triangle Park on weekends and an occasional summer afternoon after work.
The kid roaming the neighborhood had changedinto someone roaming the town. But thank goodness all those memories still exist. I can close my eyes and still picture perfectly the beautiful tall trees in the woods with the little trails and paths and the creek winding through them, the roads lined with fields of corn, and how that several square mile area in rural Beavercreek was my little piece of the world.
I would also like to express my gratitude to my next door neighbor and cohort in crime in most of these adventures. Greg Raynor and I did everything together and he will always be a part of these great memories. We lost track of each other after High School and I learned last year that he ended up a Springfield police officer and was tragically killed on duty in the early 70's. Rest in Peace Greg and thanks for the memories.
Hope these images bring back some fond memories for others of you that spent part of their childhood in the Dayton area.
Terry
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87 Buick GN
Last Edited by on Jul 20, 2012 7:47 AM
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blue J
37 posts
Jul 13, 2012
2:02 PM
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Thanks, Terry-
This is really cool to read (even though I'm not a 'gun nut', as you put it...hahaha). So true that Beavercreek has changed dramatically, pretty much everywhere west of Beaver Valley Road. There are some places to the east of Beaver Valley, the area that is still called Beavercreek Township, that I would bet still looks the same as it did long ago. (I'd be willing to take some photos and send them to you if you'd like, just to see if any of it is as you remember).
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tlturbo
357 posts
Jul 14, 2012
5:37 AM
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Thanks Blue
I never spent much time out East on Trebine much past Beaver Valley. I'd hit Beaver Vallry and head N toward Fairborn or S to get down to Dayton Xenia E of the High School. OR if I went to Xenia the back way instead of 35 which was seldom. Only thing I really remember out that way was a big antenna farm and going N on Beaver Valley there was a big landfill (dump in those days terminology) where we would shoot rats and crows.
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87 Buick GN
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blue J
47 posts
Jul 23, 2012
10:21 AM
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I believe the 'antenna farm', as you called it (hahaha), is still there. Also, the northern-most part of Kemp Road, for about a half-mile stretch at the top of the hill before it leads down to Beaver Valley, is still all farm land.
I also wonder if you remember an apple orchard on the south side of Beaver Valley, between Fairgrounds Rd. and Dayton-Xenia. It was still there when I moved to town (it was directly across the street from the platte where I live now)...it was still there until about 2006, I think.
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tlturbo
372 posts
Jul 24, 2012
4:57 AM
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Don't remember the orchard but there used to be a sharp s turn where Kemp? met Beavervalley? My dad wrecked my motorcycle trying to take the last turn (S on BV from Kemp) and totally destroyed his ankle.
Do you remember on the West side of Hanes where Lantz met it there was a car and old truck salvage yard? Also, you mentioned the hill on Kemp before it went down to Beavervalley - somewhere back N of that area was a large incinerator in the early 60's. Looked like a big bee hive with screen on top? It was back near where they built the Green Valley pool.
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87 Buick GN
Last Edited by tlturbo on May 15, 2013 12:57 PM
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blue J
55 posts
Jul 27, 2012
10:47 AM
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I know that intersection at Kemp and BV well- I don't know if there was back when, but there's a stop sign there now. As you travel south on Beaver Valley from that point, there are four or five nice houses between there and the 90-degree curve (and then a few more, as you go further south).
I took a drive up the Kemp hill one morning earlier this week (definitely a detour from my commute to work, but I left the house early) out to the spot where that incinerator was- was it just out in a field, or was it farmland then? It might be a little bit west of where I'm thinking, but anyway, it's a lot of farmland now, and then all of a sudden- boom! Suburbia.
That spot on Hanes where the salvage yard was now has a little mini-mart and...more houses. So many people, you know...
I remember the very last house on New Germany-Trebein, the very last hold-out that blocked the huge expansion of that road, to the west of the mall (but that's all a part of the past now, too). I imagine that's right where Brook Haven was, correct?
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tlturbo
378 posts
Jul 27, 2012
5:30 PM
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Thanks Blue,
Going S on Beaver Valley, Dad made the first hard right turn at Kemp then on the immediate hard left, skidded on gravel and hit the fence along the right side and finally hit that big tree right on the fence line. Probably changed by now.
I'm not sure about the incinerator other than we would walk through the fields going East more or less where Green Hills pool is now. We kept walking until we got to some woods that had a stream running through it and eventually ended up near Beaver Vally. My best guess on it's location would be East and a slight bit South from Green Hills Pool. This was before the development N of Kemp was built
My Dr was in a little strip center across Hanes from that salvage yard and I remember all the old delivery trucks sitting in there.
If you go East on Trebine about a 1/2 mile from Fairfield you get to Brook Hollow on the right. Big Woods Trail. Back then, there was a big dip in the road with the creek running under it at the bottom.
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87 Buick GN
Last Edited by on Jul 27, 2012 5:32 PM
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blue J
65 posts
Dec 15, 2012
5:28 AM
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Terry-
This may sound strange, but I wonder if you remember a small (VERY small) graveyard that is right on North Fairfield, just a couple hundred feet north of the intersection at Kemp Road. I think about what the land must have looked like back then- the dates of death go back to the mid to late 19th century, I believe. Anyway...these days, I'm struck by the fact that it's still there, adjacent to (sort of in between) the parking lots of a Walgreen's and a Goodwill store. It's not marked with any sign at all; it's just there.
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Suddenly you were gone
From all the lives you left your mark upon
8/25/1967 - 7/23/1986
All I know is she sang a little while,
And then flew on
6/12/1970 - 10/15/2008
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tlturbo
436 posts
Dec 16, 2012
5:17 AM
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I found it on Wikimapia and this is the note on it. I DO NOT remember it but do remember that on that corner of Kemp, there was some kind of a used furniture or something store. Stopped in there once or twice and they had all kinds of used stuff I believe. Maybe it was like a Bargain Barn or something though. Not sure. This was pre 72.
Old cemetery (Beavercreek )(Beavercreek )
This is an old cemetery, completely surrounded by commercial parking lots and a major thoroughfare.
The oldest (legible) stones date to the 1870s and the most recent is from the mid-1940s. Most date from around the turn of the 19th century. It doesn't seem to have been a family burying ground since most of the names on the tombstones are different.
It appears that some of the graves (or possibly just the stones) have been removed because the tombstones are oddly spaced.
World / USA / Ohio / Beavercreek
Coordinates: 39°45'23"N 84°3'14"W
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87 Buick GN
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