This column appeared on Sunday, July 20, 2008
Spending time in West Caln is not something I have made a point of in the near three decades I have lived in Chester County, but given the events of earlier this month it might be something I’ll be putting on my free time agenda more often.
On July 10, the county commissioners ponied up almost $1 million to give to West Caln and the Natural Lands Trust so that the township can create a township park out of an area known locally as the Barren Hills.
It sounds like it’ll be a winner.
The Barren Hills make up a ridge that looks out over the farms that dot the still-rural landscape of West Caln. Township Manager Gary Dunlap, who apparently did not get the memo warning against excessive friendliness towards members of the working press, likened the hills to the bucolic Serpentine Barrens outside Oxford.
The 168-acres that will eventually be known as Birch Run Forest is prime woodland that screams for hiking paths, bike trails and places to sit in cool shade.
The park will also be adjacent to other areas of open space nearby that wind up at Chambers Lake and Hibernia Park, two spots on the map that don’t get nearly the attention they deserve when it comes to discussions of where to spend the odd recreational moments you find yourself having after finishing up the grocery shopping.
To get a sense of the place, purely in the interest of journalistic integrity and having nothing to due to the mid-July ennui that has gripped the Chester County Courthouse, I took a drive out to the Barren Hills last week.
To give you and idea of what West Caln is like, imagine a set of rolling hills that are populated by neat suburban ranch houses and occasional Mennonite farms. Picture a place where your new McMansion might not look out of place, but where your neighbors might have a fenced-in pen for their 20 head of cattle. Envision narrow country roads where turkey vultures gnawing their way through a road kill carcass are as common a sight as signs that advertise “Local Honey Sold Here.” See in your mind’s eye a place where old men cutting their lawns wear cowboy hats, without the slightest trace or irony.
Along the way. I remembered the few times I spent in West Caln and marveled at how your history always has a way of catching up to you.
When I first moved to the county in August 1980 from a coal-mining town in western Kentucky, I spent my first night at a house on Sandy Hill, not two miles from the Barren Hills. One of my first stories for the Daily Local News was about the contaminated Superfund site there has since been reclaimed into woodland. And I spent a memorable week house-sitting in the late 1980s at a place in Hibernia, wakened on a Saturday morning by the presence of hundreds of fishermen outside by the Brandywine. (It was Opening Day for trout season.)
West Caln isn’t around the corner, unless you live in Coatesville, of course. You have to drive some to get there. But it’s a trip I can see taking when the mood strikes me to relax. Vultures or no.
Showing posts with label Parks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parks. Show all posts
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Going, Going ... Gone!
This appeared June 11, 2006
This was supposed to be a column about the monstrosity township officials in West Goshen are attempting to pass off to the unsuspecting public as their latest "park" - that steel-caged nightmare motorists on Route 100 can view under construction just outside West Chester.
That is, if they can stand the sight of it without screaming and shielding their children's eyes, like you would a particularly grim traffic accident.
And it still is about that, in a way. But more, it's about backyard softball, shady summer evenings, hitting your first home run and an inevitable loss of innocence.
Oh yeah, and beer.
Back in the middle of the Reagan Era, I used to play softball in a coed league with colleagues from the Daily Local News and various friends. The league didn't have a field of its own, and many of the games were scattered across the county - Lionville, Embreeville, a lot across from Schramm's manufacturing plant on Virginia Avenue near Henderson High, wherever.
But the favorite place for all of us to play was a lot we called Ashbridge Field, located in the Green Hills Farm section of West Goshen on, appropriately enough, Ashbridge Road.
We affectionately nicknamed the place "The Bandbox," because of its relatively tiny dimensions. People who had never dreamed of ever being able to jack one over the fence looked at the field and started doing their best Babe Ruth imitation.
It wasn't a formal baseball field, really. I thought of it mostly as some guy's backyard.
Sure, it had a backstop and benches for the players, a few bleacher seats and cutouts for home plate and the bases. But it was a little lopsided and you had to park your car on the grass, and every once in a while a foul ball would find its way into the next-door neighbor's hedges and you'd have to go root around for the ball for 10 minutes or so while everybody else waited.
In other words, it was the perfect place to play a softball game on an August night, then spend 45 minutes replaying the game over a few cold beers as twilight came on.
I decided to visit the field recently for the first time in decades, my idea being to compare its informal glory with the new Park on Route 100. But to my dismay, Ashbridge is gone.
In its place is Richard C. Cloud Park - Mr. Cloud, I assume, being the guy who built the field in his backyard. Ashbridge had been taken over by West Goshen, and is now part of its Recreational Gulag.
As I pulled into the new macadam parking lot and stared in disbelief at the concrete block dugouts, steel fences and regulation baselines, I spotted with horror the ultimate symbol that the party was over for my Field of Dreams: A sign grandly proclaimed the field's "Rules and Regulations."
Closed at dusk. Crowds must register with township. No open burning. All goofing off prosecuted. And, most depressingly: "Alcoholic beverages are prohibited in the parks."
Driving away from the field, I remember President Reagan once saying something about government being the problem and not the solution. Never have I agreed with him more.
The only benefit I took away from the change? One of the rules of the field stated plainly:
"Golf is prohibited."
This was supposed to be a column about the monstrosity township officials in West Goshen are attempting to pass off to the unsuspecting public as their latest "park" - that steel-caged nightmare motorists on Route 100 can view under construction just outside West Chester.
That is, if they can stand the sight of it without screaming and shielding their children's eyes, like you would a particularly grim traffic accident.
And it still is about that, in a way. But more, it's about backyard softball, shady summer evenings, hitting your first home run and an inevitable loss of innocence.
Oh yeah, and beer.
Back in the middle of the Reagan Era, I used to play softball in a coed league with colleagues from the Daily Local News and various friends. The league didn't have a field of its own, and many of the games were scattered across the county - Lionville, Embreeville, a lot across from Schramm's manufacturing plant on Virginia Avenue near Henderson High, wherever.
But the favorite place for all of us to play was a lot we called Ashbridge Field, located in the Green Hills Farm section of West Goshen on, appropriately enough, Ashbridge Road.
We affectionately nicknamed the place "The Bandbox," because of its relatively tiny dimensions. People who had never dreamed of ever being able to jack one over the fence looked at the field and started doing their best Babe Ruth imitation.
It wasn't a formal baseball field, really. I thought of it mostly as some guy's backyard.
Sure, it had a backstop and benches for the players, a few bleacher seats and cutouts for home plate and the bases. But it was a little lopsided and you had to park your car on the grass, and every once in a while a foul ball would find its way into the next-door neighbor's hedges and you'd have to go root around for the ball for 10 minutes or so while everybody else waited.
In other words, it was the perfect place to play a softball game on an August night, then spend 45 minutes replaying the game over a few cold beers as twilight came on.
I decided to visit the field recently for the first time in decades, my idea being to compare its informal glory with the new Park on Route 100. But to my dismay, Ashbridge is gone.
In its place is Richard C. Cloud Park - Mr. Cloud, I assume, being the guy who built the field in his backyard. Ashbridge had been taken over by West Goshen, and is now part of its Recreational Gulag.
As I pulled into the new macadam parking lot and stared in disbelief at the concrete block dugouts, steel fences and regulation baselines, I spotted with horror the ultimate symbol that the party was over for my Field of Dreams: A sign grandly proclaimed the field's "Rules and Regulations."
Closed at dusk. Crowds must register with township. No open burning. All goofing off prosecuted. And, most depressingly: "Alcoholic beverages are prohibited in the parks."
Driving away from the field, I remember President Reagan once saying something about government being the problem and not the solution. Never have I agreed with him more.
The only benefit I took away from the change? One of the rules of the field stated plainly:
"Golf is prohibited."
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