Rober Grether Interview, 2011

Abstract

On March 23, 2011 Robert Grether shared his farming experiences in the Cuyahoga Valley. He spent a great deal of time working for Mr. Earva Bender on the Bender Farm, located on Akron Peninsula Road just down the street from several farms owned by Mr. Grether's family. Farming was a tradition for the Grether family, started by his great-grandparents, that unfortunately ended with Mr. Grether's generation. This interview covers Mr. Grether's school years, his life working on farms, and some of his experiences afterwards.

Interviewee

Grether, Robert (interviewee)

Interviewer

Crompton, Emily (interviewer)

Project

Cuyahoga Valley Project

Date

3-23-2011

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

68 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Rober Grether Interview, 2011" (2011). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 518015.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/143

Related Resources

Constructing, Consuming, and Conserving America @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Transcription sponsored by Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Emily Crompton [00:00:03] Alright. Hello, this is Emily Crompton. Today is March 23, 2011, and I am interviewing Robert Grether for the Cuyahoga Valley Agriculture Project and Cleveland State University. Could you please state your name for the record and spell your last name for us?

Robert Grether [00:00:21] My last name is Grether, G-R-E-T-H-E-R.

Emily Crompton [00:00:29] Now can you tell us a little bit about yourself, starting with when and where you were born and where you are living now?

Robert Grether [00:00:34] I was born in Akron, Ohio, and when I was six years old, I moved to Stow. I went to school there for six years and then moved to Northampton. Then, yeah, Northhampton. I think I was 13 years old when I moved to Northampton. Went to Northampton School for two years and then went to Hudson High School for four years, graduated from Hudson High School, but I lived in Northampton all the time because we didn't have a high school there.

Emily Crompton [00:01:32] Are you still living in Northampton today?

Robert Grether [00:01:34] Yes, I'm living on Bath Road. Well, it's Cuyahoga Falls now but it was old Northampton.

Emily Crompton [00:01:42] How did your family begin farming in the Cuyahoga Valley?

Robert Grether [00:01:46] Well, my great-grandparents' farm there was mostly a family farm and they raised a few cows and chickens and mostly vegetables. Stuff for the animals and for the house, they canned a lot.

Emily Crompton [00:02:15] Do you know exactly which crops they grew?

Robert Grether [00:02:17] Well, it was corn, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, green beans and onions. Tomatoes. Did I say tomatoes? Yeah.

Emily Crompton [00:02:41] Were you able to visit this farm or was it out of their possession by the time you were old enough to visit it?

Robert Grether [00:02:47] I was about only about three months old when they were doing that. But after we moved here, we done a little bit of farming, we raised vegetables for the house and stuff, but then I went to work at Bender's farm when I was 14.

Emily Crompton [00:03:21] Were the Benders friends of the family? Is that how you got to work at Bender Farm?

Robert Grether [00:03:24] Yeah, they've been around a long time. We knew him and he was looking for help.

Emily Crompton [00:03:36] So how did these earlier family members approached farming? Was it a lot different than the practices that you applied at the Bender Farm?

Robert Grether [00:03:43] Well, I did work one year for Ben Hardy, and we used horses back then. We made hay, raised sweet corn, rye, wheat, few tomatoes, garden vegetables and I worked there one year and then I went to work for Bender Farm.

Emily Crompton [00:04:23] What about the farms that were owned by your grandfather, Otto, and your great uncle, Ed? What do you remember about those?

Robert Grether [00:04:30] They were eighteen acres, each one. My grandfather, my great uncle Ed, and Howard Grether and Charles Grether. Now Charles Grether had an 80-acre farm on Bath Road where he farmed with horses and he raised corn, wheat, and hay and he had dairy cows.

Emily Crompton [00:05:16] What relation are Howard and Charles to you?

Robert Grether [00:05:16] Howard Grether was a great uncle and Charlie Grether was a great uncle. They were all brothers.

Emily Crompton [00:05:34] Did you get to spend a good deal of time on their farms as you were growing up?

Robert Grether [00:05:40] Yeah, I just helped on those farms a little bit.

Emily Crompton [00:05:49] Could uou describe the landscape of these farms to me, any memorable landscapes on the farms for you?

Robert Grether [00:05:56] About what part of it?

Emily Crompton [00:05:59] Anything you remember about any of these farms belonging to your relatives, is there anything that really pops in your mind when you think of them?

Robert Grether [00:06:07] You mean like the family farms or the...

Emily Crompton [00:06:09] Yes.

Robert Grether [00:06:11] Well, [laughs] the family farms we had, Charlie Grether had the biggest one, and we rode horses and helped make hay. That was the biggest thing, and then they had thrashing back then. All the farmers went together and they had one thrashing machine and they'd all get together one or two days and thrash the wheat and rye and stuff at that farm and move on to the next one. But most of it was done with horses.

Emily Crompton [00:07:00] What would be an early and very important memory for you at the Cuyahoga Valley?.

Robert Grether [00:07:06] Well, I remember swimming in Yellow Creek and we couldn't swim in Cuyahoga River because it was too polluted. And couldn't fish there because the fish wouldn't live in there. But it was wide open, there was a lot of things to see down in here. We had Indian mounds and found a lot of arrowheads and pottery from the Indians.

Emily Crompton [00:07:57] Tell me a little bit about when you started learning about agriculture and starting to work on the farms.

Robert Grether [00:08:01] Well, I went to work for Benders and in the wintertime, we'd start the vegetables in the greenhouse. Plant 'em and then when they were probably a couple inches high, we'd transplant them into rows and then keep them in there until the last frost. After that, then we'd transplant them into the field. And then we started the sweet corn in April and usually was around July, first of July, maybe the last of June, we'd start picking our first sweet corn. We have usually a patch of sweet corn coming due every week until clear in October. And it was all hand picked sweet corn, we used a horse and a skid. And then the tomatoes, the muskmelon, we raised those, we'd pick all this stuff, we'd sort it and basket it up, and take it into the farmer's market in Akron. It was three times a week, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. We'd get in there about 5:00 in the morning.

Emily Crompton [00:09:46] And how large was the Bender Farm?

Robert Grether [00:09:54] I think it was 275 acres.

Emily Crompton [00:09:57] Could you describe what the farm looked like for me?

Robert Grether [00:10:04] Well, the house was up on the hill, it was a two-family house, and it had a three-story barn with an inside silo, and it had... When I first went there, we had a horse barn and an old garage. And then later on, we built a new shop and garage, tore the old horse barn down, and then built a new greenhouse and we worked on the top floor of the barn. We built a bridge across to the top floor so we could drive in from upstairs. The bottom of the barn was used for the cattle in the wintertime. The cattle were out in the pasture all summer, beef cattle. And then in the fall, we'd bundle up what was left of the corn and put it in a barn for feed during the winter, and then we'd make hay probably a couple thousand bales of hay for the winter, put that in the barn. And later on, as we got more business, we leased more land, some across the river on riverview and some down further towards the peninsula. And the one year, we had 275 acres of sweet corn and hand-picked all of it and started selling more at the house and it got to where we didn't even have to go to the market. Everybody come out to the house to buy it. Like I said, we raised a lot of muskmelon, tomatoes, and then later on, watermelon and pumpkins and different types of corn for decoration that was sold right there at the house. Then I got older, so I went to work in a shop, worked for myself for a while.

Emily Crompton [00:12:49] And what did you do in the shop?

Robert Grether [00:12:52] I was a machinist for a while, for about three years.

Emily Crompton [00:13:04] As far as the buildings on the Bender farm, were they similar to that of those on your family farms or were they a lot different?

Robert Grether [00:13:11] The buildings on which?

Emily Crompton [00:13:14] On the Bender farm. Were they similar to the ones you had on the family farms?

Robert Grether [00:13:19] No, they didn't have any greenhouses on our farms. They had the barns, but they weren't as big. This barn on the Bender farm with a huge barn; it had an 80-foot inside silo, which is very rare. It was a bank barn and it had three different levels where you could go into it and it held a lot of hay. Earva got a hammer mill and he started grinding some of the corn and a few oats for the cow feed. In the wintertime, we spent most of the time redoing and working on the building, working on the greenhouse, redoing the tractors. We had an old F-12 tractor, old iron wheeled tractor, and there was a Farmall H and a Farmall M. And Earva's brother Frank had the farm next to him where Towpath Village is now, and he raised vegetables there and we helped him. One year in the spring after he got everything planted, he rolled a tractor over on top of him and broke his hip. We had to run both farms that year.

Emily Crompton [00:15:08] And how large was his brother's farm? How large was the brother's farm?

Robert Grether [00:15:17] I think he had probably 40 or 50 acres.

Emily Crompton [00:15:26] Did he raise the same sort of crops that Mr. Bender did?

Robert Grether [00:15:27] Pretty much, he raised a few more garden vegetables like peppers and squash. He raised sweetcorn, lot of tomatoes, eggplant, stuff like that, but he sold it at the market too.

Emily Crompton [00:15:53] When did Mr. Bender make the switch from going to the farmer's market to just selling from the house?

Robert Grether [00:15:58] It was probably somewhere in the 1950s, late '50s.

Emily Crompton [00:16:13] How was he able to switch like that? Did have to advertise to people first or did they just know?

Robert Grether [00:16:16] Word of mouth. We had good stuff and they come and bought it.

Emily Crompton [00:16:24] Of the crops that you mentioned that you grew up, were there any challenges associated with any of them, or was it pretty much straightforward farming?

Robert Grether [00:16:33] Yeah, it was just regular farming, you know. We stuck to, the biggest one was sweet corn and tomatoes, and the melons, the cantaloupes, and the watermelon was just sort of an extra thing. We usually put in about five acres of tomatoes and about five or six acres of melons. We grew a lot of flowers for up around the house to they had probably six flower beds in the yard up there. He had an orchard there, it was probably 25 apple trees on it. But the cows got mostly the apples.

Emily Crompton [00:17:44] What sort of animals did they have? Was it just cows and horses or did they have other things like that?

Robert Grether [00:17:48] They had one horse that we used for pulling the sled to pick the sweet corn and the rest of it was beef cows. Anywhere from 15 to 35 beef cows at a time. They lived off the pasture and the hay and stuff in the winter, and then he'd sell them off every five, six years, sell off and then restart again.

Emily Crompton [00:18:23] Now the flowers that were up by the house, did they sell them for decoration or were they just decoration for the house itself?

Robert Grether [00:18:29] The vegetables and stuff or the corn?

Emily Crompton [00:18:33] The flower beds that were up by the house that you mentioned.

Robert Grether [00:18:36] While the corn, tomatoes and melons were sold mainly at the house and then later on he started selling down by the road, that was the pumpkins, squash, corn, the decorative corn and stuff like that.

Emily Crompton [00:19:00] Were those common crops for farms in the area? Did he have a particular reason for choosing those crops?

Robert Grether [00:19:06] Well, most everybody around here grew that stuff. Just as we've done it for commercial use. Well, it's like Szalay's sell now. Are you familiar with Szalay's sweet corn farms?

Emily Crompton [00:19:26] I am not.

Robert Grether [00:19:31] They have a big market down here now. I forget the name of that road, there on Riverview and there's a short road across. It's near Everett there, but they sell quite a bit of stuff there now. We were the two biggest ones, Szalay's and Bender's. And Szalay's mostly pick their corn with machines where we were hand-picked it all.

Emily Crompton [00:20:06] How long did it take to handpick a crop?

Speaker 1 [00:20:10] Well, we'd pick the patch of sweet corn, take about a week. Pick it out and go to the next patch, pick in there for a week. On the tomatoes, there was days we picked a five hundred pack of tomatoes and then sort those and take them to market. There was a lot of market days when we would be working till 2:30 in the morning, sort and unload and get it all loaded and head for market.

Emily Crompton [00:20:52] What was working with you at this time? Was it just you and the Bender family?

Robert Grether [00:20:57] Bender didn't have any kids, it was me and my two brothers. We worked there.

Emily Crompton [00:21:05] And what were your brothers' names and ages?

Robert Grether [00:21:08] Dick Grether and Tom Grether.

Emily Crompton [00:21:15] Were they your elder siblings?

Robert Grether [00:21:16] I'm the oldest.

Emily Crompton [00:21:25] Now, did you all start working there at about the same time or did you start several years before them?

Robert Grether [00:21:28] Pretty much. Pretty much.

Emily Crompton [00:21:33] Can you tell me what a typical day at work would be like for you?

Robert Grether [00:21:36] Well, you usually start about seven or eight in the morning. With picking corn, you usually started at seven. You had to wear rain suit for the dew until about ten or eleven and then take that off because it got too hot. And then we'd usually pick corn until probably one and then after that, we'd get it all sorted and up to the house and then we start on the tomatoes. Pick them all afternoon, sort of them, basket them up, load them up, and head for market.

Emily Crompton [00:22:26] Were you there year-round working or were there certain seasons that they had you come in?

Robert Grether [00:22:31] Well, the sweet corn you started, like I said, around the end of June, early July. Tomatoes were towards the end of July. Tomatoes lasted into September and then the sweet corn usually lasts until the first frost in October. The melons, they come in in probably late July or August and they only last about a month or month and a half, then they were done. But the tomatoes, we'd picked them until it got too cheap. Then we let people come and pick their own for a dollar a bushel. They used those for canning tomatoes.

Emily Crompton [00:23:23] Did you help with the canning process at all? Can you tell me about that?

Robert Grether [00:23:32] Well, I used to can when I was younger, but I didn't. I was only about seven or eight, nine when I done the canning.

Emily Crompton [00:23:46] Tell me about the different techniques and technology that you used while you were working.

Robert Grether [00:23:50] Well, like I said, we used horses. We had old tractors, we had Farmall F-12. Well, I think that was about a 1930 and the Farmall H I think it was '47 or '48 and then it got stolen, so he went and bought a Farmall M about 1950 and used that until he quit farming.

Emily Crompton [00:24:38] How many changes came to the technology over the years?

Robert Grether [00:24:43] We never changed a whole lot. We did go from two-bottom plow to three-bottom, and then as he got the bigger tractor, we went to a hydraulic disk instead of the old trailer disk. And far as the planning and cultivating, we used the old F-12 all along because it was set up for that. That's what we use it for with iron wheels. You couldn't run it on a road.

Emily Crompton [00:25:27] Tell me a little bit about how the Bender farm got started.

Robert Grether [00:25:32] Well, as far as I can remember, Earva bought it for taxes. Now I can't remember whether it was his family-owned at one time or whether the Jim Brown family owned it then, but anyway, he bought it for taxes in the '30s.

Emily Crompton [00:26:04] How large was it when he first purchased it?

Robert Grether [00:26:07] Well, it was the same size, about 275 acres.

Emily Crompton [00:26:15] Now you got spent a great deal of time in various farms over the years. Could you tell me about what sort of changes you saw as you were working on these different farms?

Robert Grether [00:26:25] Well, there wasn't a whole lot. The only changes that I started was probably late in the '50s and started in the '60s when they started to get more machinery. They started getting in the hay balers instead of breaking the hay and put it on the wagon and take it up stored in the barn. They started getting hay balers and then a bale it right in a field before they put it in a barn. But when I was on the Hardy farm, we done it all with horses, no baler and hands shocking the rye. And you know, running the combines, they started getting the self-propelled combines probably in the '60s. But we never got in it, we were done farming by then.

Emily Crompton [00:27:43] And about when did they stop farming?

Robert Grether [00:27:48] You know, I'm trying to remember. It was around '64 or '65, somewhere in there. Earva was getting too old, and he... The family that was living there, the Darsts, they helped him a lot. But he got Alzheimer's and couldn't work it anymore, so they couldn't farm. They started renting the land out, Szalay's started renting it and raising sweetcorn.

Emily Crompton [00:28:40] Did they remain on the property? Did they still live there after they stopped farming?.

Robert Grether [00:28:45] They had to put Earva in Manor Care and then Katherine lived there for about three or four years and then she went to a nursing home. And I think the park bought it then.

[00:29:11] What sort of changes came to the property when the park bought the land?

Robert Grether [00:29:14] Well, they didn't do anything with it for quite a few years, and I noticed this past year they rebuilt the barn. I haven't been up, I can't get up to the house, but the house is still standing and don't look too bad. Another thing, we had the gas well there and every about every three years we had to bail the water out of the gas well. We'd done that with an old bailer and Farmall tractor, it was 1500 feet deep. That was a winter job bailing that and that took about three or four weeks to bail the water out. When you bail the water, the gas pressure builds up higher because the gas well run the two furnaces in the house, two fireplaces, the forge in the garage and the shop and run the greenhouse.

Emily Crompton [00:30:24] About how large was the greenhouse and what sort of crops that you keep in there? Was it [inaudible]?

Robert Grether [00:30:29] The greenhouse was probably thirty feet long and probably 20 feet wide.

Emily Crompton [00:30:43] Did you help build the greenhouse or was it there when you started? Can you tell me a little bit about that process?

Robert Grether [00:30:49] Well, the old one was wood and it just got dilapidated. So we put up concrete foundations for the new one and then from about four feet up was all glass. That was another winter job.

Emily Crompton [00:31:22] Can you tell me a little bit more about your family farms? What years did they start farming and when did they stop?

Robert Grether [00:31:29] Oh, they farmed probably starting in 1880. Somewhere in there, I can't remember because I wasn't around. But most of their farming was done early in the early years. It wasn't a whole lot after probably the [19]40s.

Emily Crompton [00:32:08] Was your family's first farming experiences in the Cuyahoga Valley or had they been farmers previously?

Robert Grether [00:32:13] Me or them?

Emily Crompton [00:32:15] Your family.

Robert Grether [00:32:16] No, I don't think they were farming previously, they lived in the city. When they moved out here, they farmed and then, you know, it was mainly to keep your family going. They had milk cows, farm for vegetables, and had the horses and raised hay. Just so they could survive. But the early days was rough back then, they had big families and my dad's family was nine kids. And my great grandfather had, I think six or seven. I think it was four boys and three girls. And well, the Hardys was down there, my great aunt married one of the Hardys and they had trucking and they raised corn down there too, that was on Riverview side. And some of the boys they had, well, Hardys had trucking and the boys would load sand to railroad siding, there at Bath and Riverview Road. And they built the disposal plant back probably in the '30s, early '30s, '29, somewhere in there.

Emily Crompton [00:34:15] So why did your family decide to move to the Cuyahoga Valley and where had they lived previously?

Robert Grether [00:34:21] Well, we had our place. You mean my original family?

Emily Crompton [00:34:28] Yes.

Robert Grether [00:34:28] That I don't know. They just, I guess they moved out of the city because they needed to get out in the country. Probably if you talk to Gary Grether, he's got a lot of the old information. He's got a lot of the history on the Grether family.

Emily Crompton [00:34:53] And what relation is he to you?

Robert Grether [00:34:57] I think he is a second cousin, something like the second or third.

Emily Crompton [00:35:04] Did you grow up with him?

Robert Grether [00:35:07] Well, my grandfather and uncle Ed lived side by side, and Gary was uncle Ed's grandson. And we lived up on top of the hill and they lived down on Akron Peninsula Road.

Emily Crompton [00:35:38] Can you tell me when the Nation Parks Service began in buying out properties? Do you remember any changes when that came?

Robert Grether [00:35:44] That was probably late [19]60s, early [19]70s. Speculators started buying some of the land and the park bought it all. Seibert, Darryl Seibert was one of those who come in and buy land and sell it the park. But my aunt that just died two years ago, she was 98 and a half. She lived on the old Grether farm till she died. In fact, her old house is still standing there. And her husband was a World War One veteran and she was one of the last living widows of the World War One. She lived on aunt Grether's section of the old farm.

Emily Crompton [00:37:03] Did she do any farming or was she just on the property?

Robert Grether [00:37:07] No, she was domestic help, her and her husband. With all Grethers on that whole farm at one time. There was well, there was one Williams, Thelma Williams, she was one of the Grether's girls, but that was the only other one that wasn't a Grether. Her husband was away, but they'd done a little bit of farming, not much. He was a barber. But let's see, there was Ed, Howard, Charlie, Thelma. There were about 90 or 100 acres there that was the farm. The original old farmhouse was right there in the corner of Steels Corners and Akron Peninsula Road, but it finally give up the ghost a few years ago. But Howard Grether still lives there. That's young Howard.

Emily Crompton [00:38:27] What does he do?

Robert Grether [00:38:34] He's retired now, retired from the army as a major, and he went into ministry for fifteen years. He's retired from that now. But that's about all I know about it.

Emily Crompton [00:38:57] So when the National Park Service came in, there weren't any real changes made to the land?

Robert Grether [00:39:02] There wasn't?

Emily Crompton [00:39:04] Any real changes made to the land. Did they leave it as it was?

Robert Grether [00:39:12] They made some changes down at Everett. They rebuild a lot of them old houses down there. I guess they use them for offices now, but they tore down most of the houses and just everything just grew up in Everett. I've noticed the last few years they started mowing a few of the fields to keep it so the grass and grow and the deer have something to eat. But other than that, they haven't changed a whole lot. Just letting things grow and go back to nature.

Emily Crompton [00:40:11] What about the community itself? How has it changed over the years that you've been here?

Robert Grether [00:40:16] Well, in 1950, they were 5,000 people in Northampton because my mother took the census year. And back then, we knew just about everybody. I'd say most of the people that I knew back then are all passed away by now. There was the Herbruck farm, Hardy farm, Bier's, Meyers' Farm, Himelright Farm, and the Charlie O'Neil farm. That was most of the farms.

Emily Crompton [00:41:29] Are any of those families still in the area?

Robert Grether [00:41:32] Meyerses still do some farming. They have a few horses and they raise some grain and hay. All the Erbanks were around back then, too. There's only one or two of them left. But it's changed a lot, becoming very populated. It's growing houses now. But when the park moved in and started buying everything before we moved, merged with Cuyahoga Falls, there was only about 900 kids in the whole Northampton Peninsula school district. But now there's probably over 2,000.

Emily Crompton [00:42:59] Thinking back over your years in the Valley, what is the strongest memory related to farming that you have?

Robert Grether [00:43:03] Working day and night. They were long days. We come home from market about seven o'clock. We have a few orders to pick, do that, and then we go home and go to bed. That will start the next day, picking again and keep the cycle going.

Emily Crompton [00:43:33] What about during your school year? How did that conflict with the farming?

Robert Grether [00:43:38] Which?

Emily Crompton [00:43:38] During your school years since you were on the farm quite often.

Robert Grether [00:43:43] Worked and went to school, that was about it. They didn't have much time to do anything else. In the wintertime, we'd done a little bit, we belonged to the Grange, the Northampton teenager group in the church, and that was about it.

Emily Crompton [00:44:16] Could you tell me a little bit about the Grange? About the Grange, could you tell me about it?

Robert Grether [00:44:20] I was mainly in the juvenile grange, and then when I graduated up to subordinate Grange, I went in the army. But the Grange used to have—well let's see. What was the last year we had that Northampton festival? Hmm. It was, I don't know, when we merged. I don't know. I can't even remember when they merged with Cuyahoga Falls. It's probably been ten, maybe fifteen years ago, no way it could have been longer than that. I've been retired twenty years, maybe twenty-five years. That was probably what, in the '70s? Maybe the '80s, somewhere in there. We had a Northhampton festival where anyone wanted to come in, they could set up a booth and Krieger's would donate to sweetcorn and we'd have an auction and some shows. Everybody just had a good time and then the falls, when they merged, wouldn't let us do it anymore. They told us we could do it up at the shopping center, but we had to charge twenty-five dollars per booth and have insurance on everything and we just give it up. It was just a fun thing for everybody that wanted to do something up there. It was right there at the town hall, the old town hall where the fire station is now. The town hall, the Falls says they'll leave it there as long as the Grange is around because the Grange has been in there forever. The Kaiser Farm that town hall is on now is all in the park now. Well, that's in the Cuyahoga Falls park. She donated the Kaiser farm to the city of Cuyahoga Falls. But they used to have a fair there at the town hall, they'd bring vegetables and corn and rabbits and chickens, pigs and have them judged and give prizes.

Emily Crompton [00:47:34] How many people in the community were involved with it? Was a lot of your family involved?

Robert Grether [00:47:37] Yeah, they were. There was probably a hundred people.

Emily Crompton [00:47:57] Was it usually farmers who would participate in this or was open to the general public as well?

Robert Grether [00:48:00] Anybody that wanted to bring stuff in. The Grange put most of it on. When the Grange quit doing it, then four or five of us got together and just started having it on our own. Just to have a good time.

Speaker 2 [00:48:24] Who were those four or five? What families were the ones who put it on after the Grange?

Robert Grether [00:48:28] It was Grethers, Olivers, Krieger's. I can't remember, all of them. Gerringer. There's a couple that helped, Reds. A lot of the old families.

Emily Crompton [00:49:03] Did the gatherings grow smaller after the Grange or were you able to maintain the sort of size that they had established?

Robert Grether [00:49:08] It was a little bit smaller. We used to rent a tent, a big tent, put it in a parking lot there. That's where they'd have an auction and a show. Anybody wanted to put on an act or something, come in and do it.

Emily Crompton [00:49:35] Could you describe the layout of the gathering for me? Was it all on like a pl

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