By RICHARD SITLER
Indiana Correspondent

FARMERSVILLE, Ohio — The over-sized tires of a fertilizer sprayer roll through the downtown streets of Farmersville. This is not uncommon for this rural village of Jackson Township in Montgomery County, Ohio.

The sprayer pulls into the Valley View Feeds/Brubaker Grain Elevator on the west end of town. The elevator sits along an active rail line. For years, the elevator has been an integral part of Farmersville, which is west of Dayton and north of Germantown.

Living in the shadow of the elevator since 1957 is Everett and Emma Cline. The Clines, who are in their 80s, are owners of a nicely kept home on a corner lot. Everett is an encyclopedia of Farmersville history.

Everett remembers horse-and-buggy rigs along the streets of town instead of the large, modern tractors that are on the road these days.

Farmersville is a traditional farming community that appears to retain the same purposes today as it did in the past. The town is not large, but has a substantial residential area laid out on a grid of streets mostly lined with two-story houses, many built in the 1800s in a plain, federal style. Many are brick.
The community has several businesses. There is a salon, a barbershop, a bank, a hardware store, a medical clinic, a bakery and cafe, a meat market, a fire station and a gas station with convenience store.

The Clines raised a girl and three boys in Farmersville, and saw many changes throughout the years including the consolidation of the Farmersville High School with Germantown in 1971 to create the Valley View High School Spartans.
An imposing brick building down the street from the Clines used to be Farmersville High School. It is now a Masonic Lodge. Everett supported his family by working for Delco. He started at Delco after marrying Emma in 1946. Everett worked there for 36 years.

“Years ago we had three groceries, a movie theater (which became a Chevy dealer in the 1930s),“ Everett reported.

He remembers the details about the town’s grain elevator and all of the owners it has had through the years. Everett recalled the depot building that used to stand along the “old Cincinnati Jackson Michigan line.”

“When I was a kid, we used to have a mail car,” Everett recounted. “A ham radio operator ran it.”

He said someone bought the depot and converted it to a house.
Everett reported that a different house in town is home to the historical society. Someone removed the siding off of the building, and discovered that it was a log house. Everett said it “used to be Forest Bickle’s place.”

Everett also remembers a buggy shop, an implement business and that there were three blacksmiths in town. There still is a business in town that makes horse-racing sulkies - Superior Sulky at the corner of Center and Jackson Streets.

Before Everett married and “set up house” in town, he worked for his father on the farm. He grew up on a 160-acre farm. His father, Clarence Edward Cline, moved to the farm outside of Farmersville from Germantown in 1922. He farmed it until 1946. They raised pigs, sheep, hogs, chickens, geese and turkeys. They also had a garden.

“We raised our own food. We had our own milk,” said Everett, who admitted that he started milking cows at age seven. “I had certain cows to milk. I had to get up at 5 a.m.”

He said horses and mules were the engines on his father’s farm in the 1930s.
“I remember the Depression,” he added. “We didn’t have any money, but we had plenty to eat. Nobody had any money back then.”

Emma’s father didn’t have a farm, but he did farm work. He was a thresher.
Emma grew up in Jefferson Township. Her father harvested and steamed tobacco beds. The Clines said tobacco was a major crop in the area in the 1930s; it was a different variety of tobacco than what is raised in Kentucky.
Most of the roads in the 1930s were still gravel.  Everett was raised in a home without electricity, but he remembers when it was first installed.

“The W.P.A. tarred the first road, cleaned the ditches. I remember as it was just yesterday,” he recalled.

Telephone communication is another area of great change through the years. As a boy, the family phone was tied to a party line with 8-10 people on one line.

He said everyone had different rings. They always knew when someone had a call. He said the phone office and exchange was on North Walnut Street in Farmersville.

“I remember an uncle who used to drive a horse and buggy,” Everett said. We didn’t know we were poor. Everyone helped each other. It is a lot different now. (Farmers) have equipment now that I never thought of.”
The Clines are satisfied with the years they’ve shared in Farmersville.
“I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else,” Everett said. Emma agreed.