Abstract
Willis Meyers' family has farmed in the Cuyahoga Valley since the middle to late nineteenth century. Willis grew up in Northampton, and has many memories of family, farm, and community life, businesses, technology, and transportation from the Great Depression era forward. Ronnie, Willis' son, currently owns the farm on Steels Corners Road, where he has had a successful horse farming business. Willis, 95 years old, has many memories of the history of the valley, and shared detailed stories about what it was like to grow up and raise a family on a farm, manage multiple jobs, and adapt to changes in technology and the community.
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Interviewee
Meyers, Ronnie (interviewee); Meyers, Willis (interviewee)
Interviewer
Conklin, Carolyn (interviewer)
Project
Cuyahoga Valley Project
Date
5-4-2011
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
76 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Ronnie and Willis Meyer Interview, 2011" (2011). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 518039.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/154
Transcript
Transcription sponsored by Cuyahoga Valley National Park
Carolyn Conklin [00:00:02] Okay, so I'm going to start. I'm going to say today's date, introduce myself, and then ask both of you to introduce yourselves.
Ronnie Meyers [00:00:10] Okay.
Carolyn Conklin [00:00:10] And then we'll start. Alright. My name is Carolyn Conklin. Today is May 4th, 2011, and Ronnie and Willis, could you introduce yourselves?
Ronnie Meyers [00:00:20] This is my dad, Willis Meyers, and I'm Ronnie, his son, first son.
Carolyn Conklin [00:00:27] And when were you both born?
Ronnie Meyers [00:00:29] Dad was born in 1915 and I was born in 1935.
Carolyn Conklin [00:00:35] And can you explain your relationship to the Valley? How did how did your family come to be here?
Ronnie Meyers [00:00:42] Well, Dad, you want to explain how your family came to be here?
Willis Meyers [00:00:48] I don't think I could.
Ronnie Meyers [00:00:50] Well, I can... I can tell you a little bit. And some of this is documented into the history of Summit County. But we've been there five generations on that road and we had a great grandfather that was on a riverboat captain and he settled in Northampton. Came off there at Botzum, you know where Botzum is, and he... You know where Botzum is? Botzum is the corner Bath Road and Riverview Roads.
Carolyn Conklin [00:01:24] Okay.
Ronnie Meyers [00:01:25] That's a... And he settled there and we've all evolved since in. That date was, I don't know, but I'm going to say late 1800s.
Carolyn Conklin [00:01:41] And is that the same property that's been with the family?
Ronnie Meyers [00:01:43] No, we... This is... Dad was born on a farm east of where we live and his dad bought a farm. Was heir to a farm east of that yet on Steels Corners Road. All on Steels Corners Road. Was in less than two miles of where we live. And then in 1942, Dad bought the farm where we now live. Dad still lives in the old farmhouse there, and I live on the upper end of the farm.
Carolyn Conklin [00:02:17] Could you share anything you know about your great grandparents or your family history that we could document, you know, their experiences in the Valley farming?
Ronnie Meyers [00:02:28] Well, they were all farmers and in all in that area. Do you want to add anything? What?
Willis Meyers [00:02:36] Well...
Ronnie Meyers [00:02:43] Dad's dad, my grandfather, had a... How much ground was in that farm? 135 acres?
Willis Meyers [00:02:51] 126.
Ronnie Meyers [00:02:52] 126. And he was a farmer there. And he also had a slaughterhouse and had a feed business and had a store...
Willis Meyers [00:03:03] Grocery store, cider mill. He doctored all the livestock in the township, and outside of that he didn't have nothing to do. Of course he always had a hired man 'cause his kids wasn't old enough to help him then. So he kept a hired man all the time.
Carolyn Conklin [00:03:28] And what was it like to grow up on a farm?
Willis Meyers [00:03:32] Well. I don't know.
Ronnie Meyers [00:03:40] My early memories was lots of work. I mean, we worked. At that time you work seven days a week, you know, from daylight to dark and...
Willis Meyers [00:03:53] Can you turn this thing up? I don't hear too good.
Carolyn Conklin [00:03:58] Do you need me to talk louder?
Willis Meyers [00:03:59] Yeah.
Carolyn Conklin [00:03:59] Okay.
Willis Meyers [00:04:02] I thought maybe you could use this or something.
Ronnie Meyers [00:04:04] So that's for you to talk into, Dad.
Willis Meyers [00:04:08] Oh, well...
Ronnie Meyers [00:04:11] You want to share any of your early memories of... A kid on the farm?
Willis Meyers [00:04:21] Well, we had... We helped, of course, but we weren't old enough to do too much, you know, and like I say, had a grocery store and dairy cows, cider mill.
Ronnie Meyers [00:04:45] Slaughterhouse.
Willis Meyers [00:04:45] Slaughterhouse. And he brought all the livestock in the township because there wasn't no markets for them in the township anywhere. They all had to go to Cleveland to the Stockyards at that time, and he bought all the livestock and... And then he doctored all the livestock. And that's about it.
Carolyn Conklin [00:05:23] Do you remember any chores or responsibilities you had when you were young?
Willis Meyers [00:05:27] Oh, yeah. Us kids all had chores to do. You know, we went to school in the morning, and when we got home one evening, why we changed our clothes to farm clothes and we had, all had chores to do, and we got old enough to milk a cow, why we each had so many cows to milk in the morning and the night before we went to school... And... Of course, we helped some in the summertime too, you know, we was big enough to drive the horses and there were no tractors then nobody had a tractor. The farmers didn't like tractors anyway. They thought it ruined the soil. So everybody had horses.
Ronnie Meyers [00:06:38] Dad's parents go back to horse and buggy times, and then later, of course, they had Model T, Model A Ford cars, but when he was young, it was all horses. Transportation and farm work was all done by horses.
Willis Meyers [00:06:56] And my dad was kinda young when he passed away and had left us kids to do what we could do, you know, and my mother finally sold the farm. But that's about it, I guess.
Carolyn Conklin [00:07:20] Can you tell me what that, what your parents farm looked like, what kind of a layout? Can you describe it for me?
Willis Meyers [00:07:27] Well, it was fairly level. The whole farm was pretty level, you know. And we had frontage on two roads, Steels Corners Road and...
Ronnie Meyers [00:07:42] Haas.
Willis Meyers [00:07:42] Haas Road. We had three quarters of a mile frontage on each road, we had. And... Of course, they did everything the hard way in them days, you know. Like I say, there was no tractors and everything was done the hard way. And that's about it, I guess.
Carolyn Conklin [00:08:15] Did you go to school or were you taught at home?
Willis Meyers [00:08:18] Well, they had school, about like the Amish have it now, within two miles, the schools are, with each other so they can walk to school. And we had to do the same thing. And then they got to where my dad, they finally got to where they had busses, you know, and he drove us. Well, we walked to school with the bus sitting in the yard, we still had to go to school because we lived under two mile[s]. If you lived under two mile[s], why you had walk to school and we went to a one-room school. There was the school at Steels Corners and there was a school at Art's Corners. That's where we live now. And there was, I think, seven schools in the township all together, so... And the school teachers, they boarded with the farmers because they had to be close to the school so they could walk, you know. And I was a janitor in the school at that time. I had to keep the fire going in the potbelly stove and I had to clean, you know, I had to clean the floor every day. And the teacher paid me her wages. I got two dollars a month for being janitor at the school and so...
Ronnie Meyers [00:10:14] And you was glad to get it, wasn't you?
Willis Meyers [00:10:16] Glad to get it, yeah. It was a lot of money.
Carolyn Conklin [00:10:23] How many siblings did you have?
Willis Meyers [00:10:25] How many what?
Carolyn Conklin [00:10:26] Siblings? Brothers and sisters?
Ronnie Meyers [00:10:29] Kids.
Willis Meyers [00:10:30] Had one brother and one sister. They're both gone now. I was the youngest one in my family.
Carolyn Conklin [00:10:42] And what did you do for fun?
Willis Meyers [00:10:45] Well, through the wintertime we either skated or we'd sled ride, and we had a low spot on the farm and that used to get maybe a foot or two of water in it, and that would freeze over, naturally. And at night we built a bonfire and all the neighbor kids would come and we'd either skate or sled ride, one of the two. And that was... That was about the recreation.
Carolyn Conklin [00:11:23] Did you mostly play with your brother and sister or did you have friends?
Willis Meyers [00:11:28] No, we had... We had friends around. You know, they'd come and play with us. There was always some of our age and naturally we played with them.
Carolyn Conklin [00:11:45] Was the community close? Were there were events that neighbors came together?
Willis Meyers [00:11:51] Well, the big thing was the homecoming and that was once a year, you know, and of course everybody in the township would come to that. And they'd, they go into the falls in town and have the merchants donate the prizes, you know. They had different games and there was a prize for every game like horseshoe pitching and baseball and everything you can think of they had, and they'd... You'd get prizes and give the winners. Of course horseshoe was a big deal at that time. You know, they'd have marble games and about everything you can think of. The people visited each other in them times, you know, they didn't go very far because they had to take a horse and buggy, and so they had different things going on. And they... In the school they had things. They had buy socials and cake socials and Bach socials and... The men would try to buy the teachers, you know, they wanted to have the teachers fire cake or whatever it was, and so they would try to get the kids to find out, you know, what her pie was or what her cake was so they could bid on it. They had a regular auction, they did. They used to have quite a few of them through the wintertime. But the big thing was the homecoming because everybody in the township went to that.
Carolyn Conklin [00:13:57] Did you win any prizes at this homecoming?
Willis Meyers [00:13:59] Well, I suppose I did. Maybe a jackknife or something like that, you know.
Ronnie Meyers [00:14:06] You won a watermelon eating contest that time, didn't you?
Willis Meyers [00:14:09] I... Yeah.
Ronnie Meyers [00:14:11] Isn't that what you won the jackpot in?
Willis Meyers [00:14:12] Yeah. Yeah, they... Of course, their contest would be for different age kids, you know, and I guess I win a few things. I don't remember. It's a long time to remember back.
Ronnie Meyers [00:14:26] He still likes watermelon.
Willis Meyers [00:14:29] Yeah. [laughs] He still could eat watermelon.
Carolyn Conklin [00:14:33] Was that eating watermelon the fastest or the most watermelon? what was the prize for?
Willis Meyers [00:14:40] Well, it was... There was a lot of different prizes. You know, they had a whole list of games for kids to play. They had races and three, three-legged races. I don't know if... You probably don't... never heard of that, but what they did was they'd have a feed sack and one leg would be in the feed sack of each person and they call that a three-legged race. You know, that was a big deal too.
Carolyn Conklin [00:15:19] What time of year was homecoming held?
Willis Meyers [00:15:22] Well, it was usually in the middle of the summer. You know, they always had a church, and they had big crowds at that time. That was back in the Model T Ford days, you know. Everybody drove Model T Ford. That's all there was at that time, you might say. And...
Carolyn Conklin [00:15:50] So you said your your mother eventually sold the farm?
Willis Meyers [00:15:54] She sold it after my dad passed away.
Carolyn Conklin [00:15:58] And when was that?
Willis Meyers [00:16:01] I don't remember exactly when, but it was in the Depression days, and nobody had no money, you know. And the man that she sold it to was an attorney in the Goodrich, and he just happened to have a little money, you know, and she got eight thousand dollars for 126 acres and two houses. So, you know, it was worse in that time. And fact is, my place, I paid six thousand dollars for it. So...
Ronnie Meyers [00:16:44] That was 1942.
Willis Meyers [00:16:46] That was in Depression days. You know.
Carolyn Conklin [00:16:51] And where did you go when your mom sold the farm?
Willis Meyers [00:16:57] Well, I was...
Ronnie Meyers [00:17:04] Him, him and his brother, each got ten acres of that farm.
Willis Meyers [00:17:07] She give us ten acres on the upper part of the farm. My brother got ten and I got ten, and the store building, well, we wasn't in business no more with the store building. And I moved that on my ten acres, I did. It was about... Oh, maybe a quarter of a mile or so, and I had a man help me, and we moved the store building. Was a new store building at that time. And he helped me and of course, we had to go and get the road shut off, you know, because you couldn't do it today, but we did then because there was nobody on the road [inaudible], only horse and buggies. And we dug a basement up on my ten acres and we moved it up there. And then my uncle was a carpenter and he remodeled it and made a house out of it. And so that's where I lived then.
Carolyn Conklin [00:18:25] And how did you physically move the building?
Willis Meyers [00:18:30] Well, this man had a tractor. He was the one out of the township, I guess, the only one that did have one, and I had a truck and we, between the two, we moved it a quarter of a mile on the road.
Ronnie Meyers [00:18:51] They skidded it on rollers.
Willis Meyers [00:18:53] We started in the morning at daylight and just barely got off the road in the driveway at dark at night. That's how long it took us. And... But we had to go into the courthouse and get the road shut off for that day.
Carolyn Conklin [00:19:14] And did... and you set up, that's where you set up your farm?
Willis Meyers [00:19:20] Well, we only had ten acres, you know.
Carolyn Conklin [00:19:25] But did you grow anything or did you have another job?
Willis Meyers [00:19:29] Oh, yeah, I had three jobs. I worked three jobs for three years and... You want me to tell you about the jobs?
Carolyn Conklin [00:19:41] Yes, please.
Willis Meyers [00:19:43] Well, we had cows. That's where I live now, we had a dairy of cows and Ronnie here was big enough at that time to help me milk 'em in the morning. And we'd get up at four o'clock in the morning and then he'd feed 'em and water 'em, and I'd go to the school and get my school bus out. And I had two trips to make to the school with the bus. And then the Landmark Farm Bureau was in Cuyahoga Falls, and that's where I worked, and I would go in there then by nine o'clock in the morning and work till three, and then I'd have to be out back to the school by three o'clock to start taking the kids home. And then I would go home after that and we'd eat supper. And then we had to milk the cows again. Had to milk twice a day. And then I finally got a tractor. And Ronnie wasn't big enough to climb up on it. I had to help him up on that and I'd start it up and start it in the field, and then he would drive it then. He knew enough to if something happened to shut the key off. You know, he was out in the wide open fields. So I did that for three years, so...
Ronnie Meyers [00:21:28] I was eight, eight years old when he got that tractor.
Carolyn Conklin [00:21:33] Do you remember any other stories from that time?
Ronnie Meyers [00:21:38] Lots of them, but he's doing a good job. Go ahead.
Willis Meyers [00:21:42] Yeah, and I had a thirty-five hundred dollar mortgage on the farm. That's all I had on it. Like I say, I give six thousand dollars for the farm and... So I had to work three jobs to make thirty-five dollar a month payment. That was my payment and I had to work the three jobs in order to make that, you know. It didn't sound much, but it was a lot in them days.
Carolyn Conklin [00:22:21] And where did you sell the dairy products from the cows?
Willis Meyers [00:22:26] Well, it all went Akron. It went to [Cuyahoga] Falls for a little while. Lawson Milk Company in the Falls, they bought it for a while and then there was, oh, probably four or five milk companies in Akron. And whoever needed to milk the worst, why that's where the milk hauler would take it. See? It might go to Akron one day and might go to the Falls one day. And you never know when or where it was going to go, but... And we had a milk hauler that picked it up. He picked it up with horses and wagons for a long time. And all the roads, you know, it was all dirt roads. It was no improved road nowhere and the mud would be axle deep on the wagon for him to pick the milk up. And then, well, I can give you a story about him. He was a man that liked to drink pretty well and he went to town with the milk in the morning and then he went to one of the beer joints and drink for the rest of the day. And he'd let the horses go home and they'd come back out to Northampton by themselves. So, you know how much traffic would be on the road, you know, because they'd have to meet cars. And then he had a couple of his boys at home. They'd wait for him and unhitch 'em and take the harness off and feed 'em and water 'em and put 'em away. And he'd walk home from town every day.
Carolyn Conklin [00:24:30] Did you have to pay the milk hauler to take your milk or...
Willis Meyers [00:24:34] You paided 'em so much a hundred pounds. So...
Carolyn Conklin [00:24:41] So did you... Did you contact the milk companies in Akron or elsewhere yourself, or were you just dealing with the milk hauler?
Willis Meyers [00:24:51] No, no. You had... You had the milk cans and you had a number on them cans—t was painted on 'em—and of course, they knowed by that number who it was for. [Of] course it was weighed, you know, and it was... I think we got a dollar a half a hundred at that time, and that would be twelve gallon[s]. We'd get a dollar and a half for twelve gallon[s] of milk.
Ronnie Meyers [00:25:27] Those deals were made sometimes by the farmer themselves and sometimes a milk hauler would suggest, so that wasn't, you know, whatever the situation arose.
Willis Meyers [00:25:38] And maybe in the summertime where it was real hot, you know, your milk would get sour real quick. And if it was sour when they got to the milk company, why they'd send it back. And then the following day, when the milk man picked up your milk, he'd drop that off and farmers, pretty much all farmers had some hogs, you know, and they'd dump the milk and the hogs would drink it. And that's the way they worked that. But he didn't get very much for it.
Carolyn Conklin [00:26:21] About how many cows did you have?
Willis Meyers [00:26:24] Well, we had ten, ten that we milked and then we had young ones, you know, that we raised. The females, you kept all them, and the bull calves, you sold them to stockyards, and then you'd raise them. And it would be maybe two years before you got any milk out of 'em, you know. So usually ten was all we milked, and maybe we had ten that was growing up, you know. So we had twenty then all together.
Carolyn Conklin [00:27:13] And what does it take to have dairy cows? Is it a very challenging... What kind of challenges did you face?
Willis Meyers [00:27:19] Well, you know what a barn looks like, and that's what you had. And you had different sized barns. You know, some would hold more cows than others did. And you usually kept whatever cows your barn would hold, and then you raise so much feed every year and you knew how much feed the cows would eat and so you usually kept enough in the barn, you know, for over the wintertime.
Carolyn Conklin [00:28:00] Did you face any challenges on your farm?
Willis Meyers [00:28:02] Any what?
Carolyn Conklin [00:28:03] Challenges to... Either with the dairy cows or, you know, weather-related pests, anything like that?
Ronnie Meyers [00:28:14] Every day on a farm you face that, and you did back then too, and...
Willis Meyers [00:28:20] And then you didn't have no water and no water under pressure, and you had to have a pond for the cows to drink out of every day. Of course, all during the wintertime, well they would be froze over and they you'd have to go there and cut the ice for 'em to drink. Every day you had to do that. And then the weather would be cold and snow and they'd be tickled to death to come back and get in the barn where it was warm, you know, the cows would. So you didn't have to worry about them coming back. As soon as they drank, they'd come right back. Then they'd just get a drink once a day and...
Ronnie Meyers [00:29:11] The cattle you'd turn out and they'd go to the pond and drink, come back, but the hogs and chickens, you had to carry water from the pond to the hogs because and the same way with the chickens too.
Willis Meyers [00:29:22] All you had was a cistern, which comes off of the roof, you know, of the buildings, and that's how you get water and that. And that's what you used in the house was out of the cisterns. And there wasn't too much water underground in the wells at that time, and people were so poor they couldn't be hire it done, so they just used the cistern and got by with it, cistern and a pond.
Carolyn Conklin [00:30:02] Did you have electricity?
Willis Meyers [00:30:04] Well, there wasn't very many. We had a light plant of our own in the basement and it was batteries is what it was, and they'd last about a week, the batteries would, maybe they'd be 15, 20 batteries all hooked together and they would last probably a week. And then you had an outfit that would charge the batteries, and he'd start that up and they would run all day long. And then the batteries would last for another week. And you had a telephone. They had what they called party lines, and maybe they'd be twelve people on one party and maybe they'd be two or three or four who wanted to use it at the same time. And them women would get in a squabble over that, you know. They'd lie about they needed the phone to call a doctor or something, and in order to get on it, you know, and all they wanted to do was talk to the neighbors. I got one of the telephones. [inaudible] he got me one. I got it on the wall, you know, and you had a bell on it and a little crank. And you could call people that was on your line. You could call them yourself. You didn't have to have an operator. If you had a long distance, well, then you had to get a hold of the operator, and what you did, if it was a twelve-party line, maybe there was twelve rings for that to get that party to talk to 'em, you know. And with this crank, you'd make them rings and you could call anybody who was on your line up until... They was twelve, and if you had a party line with only one party, you only had to make one ring. If they had twelve rings, you had a list of all of them, and you had to ring twelve rings to get them. So that's the way the telephone worked at that time.
Ronnie Meyers [00:32:35] Also, a twelve-party line, there were very few secrets in the community because whoever was talking, anyone could pick that receiver up and listen in, so...
Willis Meyers [00:32:43] Yeah, you could listen to anybody in them twelve parties, you could listen to 'em and find out what their business was. There was a lot of squabbles over the party lines. It wasn't nothing done about it.
Carolyn Conklin [00:33:02] Did you also have to have a garden? Did you grow any of your own food?
Willis Meyers [00:33:11] Oh, you growed everything in the garden. You had a room in the basement off that was, didn't have any heat in it, and you could keep apples and carrots and turnips and all that kind of stuff. You could keep it all winter in there. And then my dad had the slaughterhouse, he'd butcher beef and hang it up in the slaughterhouse, and you had temperatures maybe zero for two weeks at a time. And that would freeze just like it freezes in the freezer now. And you could go out to slaughterhouse and cut whatever chunk you wanted, you know, a steak or a roast or, you'd grind your own sausage, you can grind your own hamburger. And you pretty well lived on what you raised at that time. You didn't have to go to the store too much. And your mother'd make your own bread and your own cakes and pies, and there was a lot better eating than they are today.
Carolyn Conklin [00:34:39] You said your brother had another ten acres?
Willis Meyers [00:34:43] Yeah, we had twenty acres on the upper part of the farm and he had ten and I had ten.
Carolyn Conklin [00:34:51] And what did he do?
Willis Meyers [00:34:56] What did...
Carolyn Conklin [00:34:57] Did... What job did he have? Did he use his farm for anything like dairy cattle?
Willis Meyers [00:35:04] Well, when he was old enough to get married, his wife had a little pop factory in Akron and he worked in out. And that's about the only job he ever had.
Carolyn Conklin [00:35:25] So did he put his acreage to use, or did you use it for your cows?
Willis Meyers [00:35:30] Well, all we ever had was a garden. You know, we really used it in the farm just like it, you know, was always belonged to my mother, and we'd just plow that and use it in the farm to raise feed for the cattle.
Carolyn Conklin [00:35:57] And how long did you have the cows?
Willis Meyers [00:36:01] Oh, my...
Ronnie Meyers [00:36:04] Do you wanna know when you sold a dairy at home at our place?
Willis Meyers [00:36:07] Well, when we sold it at home, it would've been, and I don't want to say it.
Ronnie Meyers [00:36:14] '52. 1952.
Willis Meyers [00:36:16] It was still Depression days.
Ronnie Meyers [00:36:18] No, I'm talking about you're... You're talking about it at his home or after? See, he milked cows when I was a kid, but they milked cows up until the time his dad died.
Willis Meyers [00:36:34] We was on my dad's farm to begin with. Of course, then when I went to where I am right now, we had a dairy there, and we milked cows there. Well, I guess I've been there, what, 71 years?
Ronnie Meyers [00:36:52] You've been there, no. I was eight. I'm 75.
Willis Meyers [00:36:56] It was in '42.
Ronnie Meyers [00:36:57] 1942.
Willis Meyers [00:36:58] Whatever that would've been.
Ronnie Meyers [00:36:59] Yeah, 1942.
Willis Meyers [00:37:02] So we had cows right away when we went there.
Carolyn Conklin [00:37:08] And at that farm...
Willis Meyers [00:37:11] That's where I am now.
Carolyn Conklin [00:37:13] Right. How long did you have the cows there?
Willis Meyers [00:37:16] Well...
Ronnie Meyers [00:37:17] Had a dairy till '52, but then we had beef cattle after that.
Carolyn Conklin [00:37:21] Okay. And how did that operation work with the beef cattle? What did you have to do? Who did you sell to?
Willis Meyers [00:37:37] Well... What would you say?
Ronnie Meyers [00:37:46] Well, we started a... We was getting to the point where I was in high school and... A lot of other things going on. I had other jobs, too. And we decided we wanted to raise some Hereford cattle, raised Hereford cows, so he sold some breeding stock early on. And then after that, it evolved into a commercial herd where we had cows and calves, and then later on, we just had feeder cattle. We'd buy feeder cattle and keep 'em and so on in the fall. We always fattened a few cattle for our own self, our own food. You know, we always raised our own food there. This was after we sold the dairies.
Willis Meyers [00:38:30] The only market there was was the Cleveland Stockyards. That was the only market and they'd all... Everybody in the township, if they had a pig or a cow or a horse or whatever to sell, why they called my dad and of course he'd go there and ask them what they wanted for it. And they didn't have no idea because, you know, they didn't know what the market was at that time. They had no way of finding out, so they'd call my dad and whatever they had, why he'd buy it, and then he had a man come every morning, every Monday morning, and he'd go to the Cleveland Stockyards every Monday morning. Whatever in the township we had, he'd take it and take it up there. And then he'd want to know what you wanted for what you had, and my dad says, well, what's it worth? And he'd say, Well, what do you want for it? In the end, my dad would tell him and there was no problem. You know, he'd just take out his checkbook and write out a check for it because he knew that he never paid too much or anything, you know, and the people that was on the farm that had it, they didn't have no idea what it was worth. And then later on, when they got some markets around for it, you know, like community sales and they had a place to take 'em then, and a lot of 'em would haul 'em their self to sell 'em. But it was rough to begin with because they all, everything had to go to Cleveland, and nobody had any way to get there.
Carolyn Conklin [00:40:47] So when did you begin the Belgian horse farm?
Ronnie Meyers [00:40:53] Well, that was after I grew up.
Willis Meyers [00:40:57] Th
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