Village of Evendale, OH - Arthur C. Cox

We first moved here in 1957 to the old farmhouse that belonged to Clark McGrew on the corner of Glendale-Milford and Rte 126. He had moved to a new house that he had built on Arborhill and my Dad, Charlie Cox, rented the farm property from Clark McGrew. When we moved here, I went to Evendale School in the 7^th and 8^th Grade. Mr. Myron Luke was there at that time and Ruth Friend, who later became my mother-in-law, was his secretary.

My Dad started working for the Village in 1956 and this is how that all came about: Mr. McGrew had met my Dad through the old Comer& Jordan Auction Barn that used to be in Springdale. He was looking for somebody to break some ponies that he had for his grand kids (that would be Bruce and Kaye and I forget the others names), and so my Dad told him that his sons could break the ponies. Mr. McGrew agreed and my Dad picked up the ponies and hauled them to our place. At that time, we lived on the Sycamore Farms on Route 4, which is now Fairfield. It was just a county then. I was probably ten or eleven at the time and attended school in Fairfield. It took us about three months to break the ponies -- we were gentle with the ponies and the grand kids could ride them after we broke them.

Mr. McGrew was so impressed with how we broke the ponies that he called my Dad and asked if he would be interested in a job with the Village. Mr. McGrew set up an interview for my Dad with all of the council at that time. After the interview (I don’t know how many other people they may have interviewed at the time), they decided to hire my Dad as Service Director -- I don’t know if they even gave him a title at that time -- I think it was just the Service Department. That was in 1956.

Mr. McGrew had an empty barn that he allowed the Village to use as the first Service Garage because there was nothing for that purpose on the grounds. The barn was used to park the truck and keep the tools and things like that for a couple of years until the Village had the Service Garage built on the municipal grounds in 1959.

My Dad worked here approximately one year before anyone else was hired. The second person hired was my grandfather (last name is Murphy). At the time, all the roads were different than they are now. There was a lot of work -- patching roads, cutting grass (grass and weeds were everywhere) and picking up paper. You would not believe how much paper there was -- they picked up tons of paper. They hired me in the summer time when I was fourteen years old. I had to get a work permit and have a physical exam. The biggest thing was cutting weeds and picking up paper. Back at that time, they really never had good equipment -- they used a old tractor that never had power steering on it -- it was equipped with a sickle bar (a sickle bar is a bar that goes out to side and the blades go back and forth) and that is what they used to cut all the grass, besides using a hand scythe. They didn’t have weed eaters back then.

The main streets were Glendale-Milford, Reading Road, Evendale Drive, Cooper Road, and part of Plainfield. That was pretty much the area, but it took a long time when you do all that by hand. There was also a lot of street sign work. Then the development of these grounds began in1959, and we had the grounds to mow -- all that was done with a tractor and a small mower about 5 ft. wide. All trimming was done with little hand mowers -- it was quite an operation.

About 1960, the Village wanted to hire a third person, but I do not remember his name. By then my grandfather had died. In fact, he died while working on the back of the truck during a snowstorm. He had an aneurysm that burst. In the 50’s we didn’t have salt spreaders, and you had to shovel everything off by hand. The only roads we really maintained were the hills on Glendale-Milford and on Mohler Road. By the time they shoveled those hills, there would be two little tracks about the width of a tire. When they could get two tracks that would go all the way to the top of the hill, they thought that would be great because they could go home -- but they had already worked 24 or 38 hours or something like that.

We had the farm - a garden and horses. We also raised some beef cattle on the property. We traded horses (my Dad, myself and my brothers). Mr. McGrew really liked dairy cattle and he would buy and sell -- he was a well known trader before he ever met my Dad. In fact, there used to be a central gathering place down in this area (I don’t know exactly where, but Jim Gorman might remember some of those areas) where they would drive all the cattle to the stockyards down in Cincinnati -- this was some years ago.

I had my brothers -- we were very, very close. Bruce Koehn, who was Clark McGrew’s grandson, was a real good friend of mine and my younger brother, Cecil, and some of the fellows at school, like Horstmeyer. We bummed around at school together. We stayed pretty busy.

No, that was off territory for us. My Dad was strict. If you were going somewhere, you had to ask him and so he got that through to us. We didn’t do too much without him knowing it. We used to play down in the creek where the bank (PNC) is and up through there all the way to the back of the farm. We used to ride horses on all that property and over in Schappacher’s property. Mr. Schappacher was a stickler about our not riding in the crops -- we had to ride around the fields, which was the right thing. We used to ride up to the cemetery.

When we first moved here in 1957, the Race Bowl was still in operation and I loved it. They would have races sometimes on Friday, but most of the time on Saturday night. We would go over to the races, and because we knew some of the people who worked over there (like Horstmeyer who raced cars -- Offenhausers they called them, or midget racers), we were kind of privileged. He used to let us in and we would go down in the pits while they raced the midget cars. They had old stock cars that they raced. This was a pretty big thing -- they drew crowds from everywhere.

It was a quarter-mile track and it was a fast track It had a very high bank, and in fact you could not walk on those banks because the angle was so high. You almost had to tie yourself to a rope to walk up those banks -- that is how high they were. Some famous people came there but I don’t remember their names (Joe Flavin may remember some of the names).

One of the things that we would do if we didn’t want to go to the races (it depended on who was working if we could get in free), was sit on the top of the front porch of McGrew’s old house where we could see half of the race track. We would climb out the window and sit on the roof of that porch and

I remember one time that they brought a circus to town and they had the circus right in the race bowl area. We got to go to the circus and it was a fun time. They had an ostrich, an elephant, a mule and a couple of other animals, and they set up a line and asked for volunteers to ride -- to see who could cross the finish line. So, I volunteered and I rode the ostrich -- and I came in first. The elephant had the trainer with it and, of course, it did not more too fast -- but that ostrich took off pretty fast. I was eleven or twelve at the time.

That went on for a few years after we moved here. I think they tore the racetrack down in 1959 or 1960. It was a sad day for me when they tore down the Race Bowl. They took all the poles out (pole lights were moved to the ball fields at the recreation center) and disassembled some of the things that were usable. Then they brought a dozer in and roughed up all the concrete. I am not really sure but I think they might have even used some of the dirt across the bypass.

I got my first car when I was sixteen – a l949 Ford. My Dad said that his boys deserved a car and he paid for half of it and we had to pay the other half, plus the insurance. He helped each one of us buy our first car and that worked out pretty nice. It was really a big thing to get that first car.

I started in 1961 - right out of high school (Princeton High School). Lawrence joined about a year later - 1962. Things really began to develop then. Les Lynch was hired before I came along -- maybe in 1959, and he worked here about three years and he did an excellent job, but when a job came open with Rumpke (we weren’t making much money and it was hard to raise a family) he went to work for Don Richman and Rumpke Inc. That is when the Village hired me, and when they needed a third person, Lawrence was hired.

I remember when I first started here, (I think I was 19 years old) there would be days that Mr. McGrew would drive through the Village and he would see us working (sweat would be rolling off of us) and he would say “son, when was the last time you got a drink of water.” I would say that it had been a while and he would say “I think you should go get one -- you are looking like you are too hot.” He was a great man and a very kind person too. Ken Morgan followed Clark McGrew as Mayor, and Ken was a good man too. I really thought a lot of Ken -- he had a lot of the same qualities as Mr. McGrew.

I believe in the 1960’s. The municipal complex spread out a lot more during that time. The Mayor and Council wanted to keep the properties and the roads looking nice, and so they began providing better equipment. Everyone realized that we just couldn’t do it by hand anymore, so they bought some good equipment and they have been able to keep that up fortunately. Over the years we have been able to get some of the best and I always appreciated that. In 1972, the council felt that we needed a foreman or assistant in the Service Department, and so they made that position available and gave that to me, and a little pay difference. I took care of most of the records and things like that. My Dad retired in 1976, and the Council gave me the Service Director job. When Bill Trapp was Mayor the title was changed to Public Works Director.

I don’t recall the dates but we were in several snowplow rodeos held at Dayton University. They set up an obstacle course and then you would have to take the truck that was fully equipped with a snow plow spreader and then drive the obstacle course in a timed event -- from the time you started to the time you stop, plus the various obstacles that you would go through. You would start out with maybe a thousand points and then if you did something wrong, they would deduct the points. You didn’t try to go real fast but it was timed and maybe they gave you three or four minutes to go through the whole course and the closest you came to the three minutes -- Pete Broermann won first place and a couple of second places.

It used to be the pump house for St. Rita’s School. There was a well and that was tapped in to the artesian wells that is the same as Glendale Water Works. It is all in the same aquifer that goes from here all the way up to the Great Lakes. I think it is part of the Miami Aquifer. The Glendale Water Works on Sharon Avenue has a map that shows the underground aquifer that comes down and goes under Evendale Drive-- down through Lockland. That old pump house is where St. Rita got its water.

My cousin, Delbert Cox, was auctioning in 1972, and he needed some weekend help and he asked me if I would help him. I was a ring man (I would hold the items up) and then after that he said that he couldn’t do it all by himself and thought I should get my license. I started apprentice in 1973 and got my regular license in 1975. I took a home course, which was a book and a record, and you would listen to the record and try to do the same thing. Then you would read this book and some tongue twisters and then you kind of developed your own little thing. Now, there is a two-week course that is mandatory,

Along about that time, the business began to grow and after about eight to ten years, it developed into at least one person’s full time job. Delbert was working full time at another job at the time and I was working here -- and so he decided to quit his full time job and go into the auction business full time.