Ever wondered what it was like growing up on Danada Farm?

DuPage County resident Pat Marcus never really knew Dan and Ada Rice, but she grew up on their Danada Farm in Wheaton.

Born Pat Meyers, Marcus was the daughter of Otto Meyers, who ran part of the Rices' farming operations on a year-to-year lease. Her father raised corn, soybeans, wheat and oats.

"We had to raise alfalfa hay for the horses," Pat recalled.

Half of what they raised went to the Rices.

"I met Mr. Rice once in the 30-some years we were there," Marcus said.

One day, a man pulled up in a Cadillac and her mother went out with the dog to find just who the person thought he was. Turns out he owned the place.

Marcus never met Ada Rice, but she did she watch the thoroughbred horses Ada loved to race.

"If I could drag my body out of bed early in the morning, it was neat to watch the horses run," she said. "Their horse won the Kentucky Derby - that was awesome."

Marcus didn't get invited to the Rices' famous parties, but she heard about them.

Mostly, she was a girl happily growing up on the farm where she lived from 1956 to 1983.

"As far as you could see, it was open land. It was wonderful," she said.

An only child, Marcus pitched in on the farm chores and got teased for it because she was a girl. She learned to drive a tractor at an early age.

"I sometimes would stop the tractor to watch the deer playing in front of me," she said. "You don't get much closer to God than that."

The Meyers were paid once a year and finances were tight. One year after a tractor caught on fire and had to be replaced, the third-grader knew she needed to be careful about what she put on her Christmas wish list.

"I could look at my mother's face and see what the price was," Marcus said. "I thought out what I really wanted."

The Meyers lived in a house on the west side of Naperville Road. While they were still tenants, the house was torn down and replaced with a home that now serves as the guard house for the Danada Forest Preserve.

Before they moved to their new dwelling, people would hit their heads on the door frame of the old house, Marcus recalled.

"There wasn't a straight piece of wood in that house," she said.

After the Rices died, her father was given his first and only three-year lease to the property. Marcus stayed on the property into her adult years.

"I kept coming back and working the farm," she said.